New DEA Initiative Targets Cities in Arkansas, Missouri

The Drug Enforcement Administration announces a new initiative, Operation Overdrive,

More below from a release from the Drug Enforcement Administration:

The Drug Enforcement Administration has announced a new initiative, Operation Overdrive, aimed at combatting the rising rates of drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths plaguing American communities. Last fall, DEA initiated a data-driven approach using national crime statistics and CDC data to identify hot spots of drug-related violence and overdose deaths across the country, in order to devote its law enforcement resources to where they will have the most impact: the communities where criminal drug networks are causing the most harm.
Operation Overdrive, which launched Feb. 1, uses a data-driven, intelligence-led approach to identify and dismantle criminal drug networks operating in areas with the highest rates of violence and overdoses. DEA, working in partnership with its fellow federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, has mapped the threats and initiated enforcement operations against those networks in 34 locations across 23 states in the initial phase of Operation Overdrive. Those locations include Kansas City, Little Rock, and St. Louis. 

The United States faces an unprecedented overdose epidemic claiming 275 lives every day. Violence, often associated with drug-related activity, is also rising sharply nationwide: in 2020, homicides increased a record 30%, and 77% of the murders in the United States were committed with a firearm. In 2021, DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 8,700 firearms connected to investigations of drug trafficking organizations.

Operation Overdrive revealed alarming trends about the networks that DEA has mapped. The vast majority of identified criminal drug networks are engaged in gun violence. A majority of identified criminal drug networks sell fentanyl or methamphetamine. And almost all of the identified criminal drug networks that sell those deadly synthetic drugs (fentanyl or methamphetamine) are also engaged in violent gun crimes.

“DEA’s objective is clear,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “DEA will bring all it has to bear to make our communities safer and healthier, and to reverse the devastating trends of drug-related violence and overdoses plaguing our Nation. The gravity of these threats requires a data-driven approach to pinpoint the most dangerous networks threatening our communities, and leveraging our strongest levers across federal, state, and local partners to bring them down.”