Greater Harrisburg's Community Magazine

Drug Busts: 25 Harrisburg-area dealers charged in ongoing AG operation

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro

After two drug raids early this morning, Harrisburg residents on Luce and Balm streets felt safe to come out on their porches again, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.

“They could come outside again with confidence in their safety and well-being,” Shapiro said at a press conference today. “People are being held hostage in their own neighborhoods by these dealers and by these users who frequent these homes and street corners.”

The morning raids resulted in arrests that Shapiro announced today as part of an ongoing operation with the Attorney General’s Mobile Street Crimes Unit. Since the operation began in November, the unit has arrested 131 dealers selling heroin, the opioid fentanyl, powder cocaine, crack cocaine and other drugs in the Harrisburg region, AG officials said.

“These are serious dealers who were attracting users and crime,” Shapiro said. “These dealers are now out of business.”

Thirteen of the 25 alleged drug dealers whose names were released today are in custody, Shapiro said.

The ongoing operation also resulted in confiscating 17 illegally owned guns, seizing illegal drugs and more than $18,000 since November, Shapiro said.

Shapiro called this morning’s drug busts a “textbook [example] of what went well.”

The unit arrested two dealers on the 100-block of Balm St., near State and Cameron streets, seized $2,900 and nine grams of cocaine. At a house on the 2300-block of Luce Street, near Derry Street, the unit arrested one dealer, officials said.

The unit, which Shapiro accompanied this morning, found three young children, a baby and a mother “looking shocked” in the second home, Shapiro said.

“My heart is broken for the children in the drug-infested neighborhoods,” he said. “We need to do better by these children.”

Mayor Eric Papenfuse and Police Chief Thomas Carter invited the unit into the city to target street-level dealers in November, Shapiro said. Papenfuse called Shapiro a “friend of the city.”

“This is an example of the cooperation necessary to do justice,” Papenfuse said.

The unit works with local municipalities across the state to target street-level crimes, normally related to drugs or gangs, AG officials said.

The Mobile Street Crimes Unit also works with Dauphin County agencies, state police agencies, federal agencies and the local police departments in Middletown, Susquehanna Township, Lower Paxton Township and Steelton.

“As you can see, we all stand up here as one,” Carter said, joined by officials from the cooperating agencies and municipalities. “Everybody has given their word that we will fight this drug war and we will save as many kids as we can. because the future is all about our kids.”

“These communities made it a priority to target street-level dealers,” Shapiro said.

Author: Danielle Roth

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