By Brian Roebke
Editor
The quaint village of Wrightstown is a great place with great living conditions, low crime, good services, and good schools.
However, it’s not all puppy dogs and rainbows.
Police Chief Greg Deike told the village board at its last meeting they had another significant drug arrest on Patricia Lane in January that netted 24 lbs. of marijuana, methamphetamine, mushrooms, prescription medications, and charges of maintaining a drug trafficking place.
“We worked with the Brown County Drug Task Force on that one and ultimately got a search warrant and made an arrest,” he said.
It’s the second significant drug arrest this winter in the village.
Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach declared fentanyl as a Community Health Crisis for Brown County last fall. Brown County Public Health and partners are pulling together efforts to address and deal with the root causes of opioid use to make systemic and lasting changes.
Deike is working with the school district on holding a community event on drugs and fentanyl.
“I thought this would be a really good thing to do in light of the recent drugs incidents that happened in the village,” he said.
Deike contacted Brown County Public Health to join the event where they can get information to the community.
“Our focus is basically drugs in Brown County, in Wrightstown, in our schools, and in our homes,” he said.
Deike said fentanyl can be in many forms, including meth being laced with fentanyl. “When we test for methamphetamine we also test for fentanyl and we’ve had several instances in both cases where it came back positive,” he said.
The drug task force is now seeing M-30 pills that look like oxycodone pills that are actually fentanyl pills that are sold on the street.
He did note that most of the drugs seen in the village are transient, where they find them on traffic stops of people who do not live in the area.
“We’re not seeing a lot of heroin right now, but it’s transient,” he said.
Asked by Trustee Sue Byers why people would use fentanyl despite the dangers of using the drug, including death, Deike said it gives people an extra high.
“The more you use it, the less of an effect it has, so they need to lace it with something else just to continue to get a better effect on it,” he said. “Just a small amount of fentanyl can kill you.”
A few years ago, a police officer in Menasha found a deceased person and while reaching in his pockets to look for identification, he went down after making contact with fentanyl.
The Wrightstown Police Department has a two-person policy for handling drugs. While one officer is handling the drugs under the fuming hood, another is in the room with, but not next to, them in case they go down and need to be given Narcan, which quickly reverses the effects of the drug within minutes.
Village Administrator Travis Coenen said some drug dealers give out Narcan with the illegal drugs they sell.
The “advantage” for that is the Narcan saves their life so they can sell them more drugs.
However, the person who is being treated is sometimes upset because their high is ruined.
Deike believes drug dealers think they can “hide” in Wrightstown because of its size and quietness, but he knows they are coming through the village and in two recent cases, doing business in the village.
“People talk, or you tick off one of your customers and then they say they’re selling drugs at this house,” he said.