A mourning mother insisted that the people who sold her son a fatal heroin dose were still dealing drugs at a house on 27th Street and Slevin Street in Louisville’s Portland neighborhood. She said she couldn’t get the police to do anything about it, so she called WAVE 3 Troubleshooter John Boel. He takes you Behind the Investigation, where he picked up his camera, and confronted the dealers.
Watch the full investigation here: https://bit.ly/3G4LgZP
A mourning mother insisted that the people who sold her son a fatal heroin dose were still dealing drugs at a house on 27th Street and Slevin Street in Louisville’s Portland neighborhood. She said she couldn’t get the police to do anything about it, so she called WAVE 3 Troubleshooter John Boel. He takes you Behind the Investigation, where he picked up his camera, and confronted the dealers.
Watch the full investigation here: https://bit.ly/3G4LgZP
Wave three news troubleshooters John Ball and Italia Martinez take you behind the investigation right now on Wave three news now. Hello and welcome to another Troubleshooter podcast. I'm here with my counterpart, John Ball, with all of his sometimes crazy investigations. You've got a really good one to share with us today. Yeah, we're going to get into the subject about the topic. That is the number one complaint that I get in the troubleshooter department, and that is there's a drug house in my neighborhood called police a million times. I call the city. Nobody's doing anything about it. Can you please do something about it? I've been doing these kinds of stories for more than 10 years. How has it changed during that time? It really hasn't changed. I would like to say that they're getting more slick, more covert. They're not. It's brazen. It's as a matter of fact, they're getting sloppier over the years and they're still they're still not getting caught. Right. It's very bizarre. Well, that's I think, part of the story that jumps out at me the most. Tell us what after you got those calls, you decide to go out there. Tell us what you do from there. OK, so what I do is when I get a complaint, I go out, I have an unmarked vehicle. Sometimes I use my own vehicle and I go out and I just I lay low, parked far away and watch to see if there really is indeed something going on. Sometimes there is. Sometimes it literally takes me 30 seconds to tell. This is a flourishing, wild drug house. So one of the ones I did recently in this past year, a guy came out and OD'd and had a seizure right there on the sidewalk. So I was like, wow, I guess this tip was incredible video. So I check it out and then then I have to develop a plan because there's a lot more when it comes to surveillance than meets the eye. Like you got to kind of be a chameleon. Yeah, I have to. You can't you can't sit in a car and run the air conditioning or the heater in the winter. Right. Because you'll stand out. People will know what you're doing. So people know exactly what goes on in these neighborhoods. Right. And there are there are families who sit right out on the front porch and you can't be in front of them because they'll obviously they're looking around. They know, you know, that something's going on. So you have to kind of be a chameleon. A lot of times I'll come in and I'll dress down like in in the summer, I'll wear shorts in a in a cut off shirt or a tank top, crack the windows and wear the same color clothing as the interior of my car. And and I've been largely successful over the years doing that because people can literally walk right up and not really notice that you're in the car. So here's the question, though. I see you at times, you know, you're in these areas where unfortunately there's a lot of violence that goes on in some of the most drug infused neighborhoods. And then there's parts where you go out and you start talking to people. And I'm always watching this thinking, oh, my gosh, you've you're a brave man. Well, there's a new corporate policy here that I have to have bodyguards with, you know, in twenty twenty one when I go. And the piece we're about to show you here that I did most recently on this subject, we had bodyguards with us. But no, I don't. Aside from walking up last year, I timed it out. So we walked out right when a deal right when the supplier was supplying the drugs to the house for the money. I knew the pattern and how that was going. Aside from that time when I was scared, I'm usually not scared. And I don't know why. I don't know why. I to tell you the truth, you talk about this in the NEWSROOM tonight. I'm almost more scared now going to Wal-Mart in Middletown with the carjackings going on than I am doing something like this, because, you know, it's the power of the camera. The people usually turn and run. They don't really feel threatened. They feel freaked out. So I don't feel like it's a dangerous situation, but it probably is. Well, it certainly seems that way, especially when we're watching. We you know, we both have different styles of investigative reporting. I will. There's no stone unturned in my investigations, but I will not do what you do because I just think it's so dangerous. Well, let's give people a taste of what we're talking about here. We're going to show you my most recent drug house surveillance. Actually, I started out on this story with a focus of I got some complaints from some moms of overdose victims saying, you know, we see the press conferences on TV that prosecutors vow to start prosecuting drug overdose deaths, prosecuting the dealer. And I got looking into this and finding that that was not happening in this particular house that we focus on mostly in this story is a good example of where somebody died and where nothing was done on its watch. The photos failed to foreshadow the finish Sunday. I started crying and I cried till Tuesday. I mean, it's just. Jittered. The text to mom reveals so much more. Somewhere I lost my fight. I'm trying to find it again. I just needed to get away from me. But I was always there. She really tried. She she tried to get better from nurse on college scholarship to patient at treatment centers. Tommy Little Pop was one of two drug overdose deaths the same night at the Greenwood Red Carpet in. Police told her mother that her boyfriend continued doing drugs for days. Next to Tommy's decomposing body. So she was cremated, you know, without me ever thinner. Kathy Lowe begged police to file homicide charges against the repeat offending dealer who could be traced through Tommy's phone. He kept trying to tell me that there was no such charge in Indiana for doing a controlled substance, a controlled substance that results in a death and then got mad at me because I said, well, yes, there is a Indiana code. Thirty five, forty two dash one, dash one point five. And he got mad and he started screaming at me that my daughter was just a drug addict, that he didn't have to do nothing for me, and he certainly didn't have to do nothing for her. Same kind of story for the mother of Robert Gibson, who died of a drug overdose, too afraid to do an interview. She insists the people who sold her son the fatal dose are still dealing drugs at 27th and Slavitt in Louisville. She says she couldn't get police to do anything about it. So she called me. I went undercover and recorded as many as 10 people per hour on bikes or on foot going in. Spending a few minutes inside, then coming out and cars pulling up, waiting for this man to come out. Something happens through the window and then cars take off over and over. One of the people living here is Robert Smothers, charged in 2013 with trafficking marijuana and possessing cocaine. 2015, trafficking heroin and engaging in an organized criminal syndicate. Twenty seventeen trafficking methamphetamine. And in twenty eighteen sentenced to two and a half years in prison. I'm John Bull with Wave three. Do you know Robert Gibson? I went back to the house with a visible camera. This time I will be honest with you, OK? Robbie was my friend, looks like to me a bunch of drug addicts. I love Robert. Anything, OK? And it hurt me bad, OK? He didn't get his drugs here. Ain't nobody gonna want to come here, get the drugs, because, you know, we we do drugs. We don't we don't sell. You do drugs. You don't sell drugs. Yes. What drugs do you guys do? It doesn't matter. It's none of your business. You said you do drugs. I'm just saying the question is what we do. I've also been watching the house here undercover, just watching and up to 10 people an hour coming and going, swimming a couple of minutes. This is that wrong to Hezbollah and people? It don't matter if we got a hundred people a day coming to our house. Turns out my camera wasn't the only one on this home. This lady had a camera face in our house because we've been harassed. What happened? The drug dealings going on here, too? Well, you know, drug dealing goes on, you know, everywhere in Portland. It appears to be a good time to sell drugs in Louisville. Data from LAPD shows a steady decline in all drug trafficking arrests since twenty eighteen. Cocaine, heroin, meth trafficking, arrests all plummeting each year. In fact, there hasn't been a first offense, heroin dealing arrest for years. Have you ever thought about how the heroin and stuff gets down here? Because I've never run in a house. And someone said I'm making a batch of heroin today. OK, but we've got plenty of it down here. The problem is, is I have to be able to show that it was your particular drug that precipitated that particular death. This is the man in charge of the DEA is Louisville division overseeing operations in three states. He says from April 2020 to April of 2021, there were 188 drug overdose deaths just in Louisville, an average of one every two days. He insists they are prosecuting overdose deaths as homicides since 2017. The DEA is heroin investigation team has reviewed four hundred thirty five overdose cases, initiating 27 investigations and prosecuting 46 people, many of them. Unfortunately, just the evidence isn't there. I mean, that's what it comes down to. These are criminal investigations and federal prosecutions. You have to have the evidence. It takes time to get it. And sometimes, no matter what you do, it just isn't there. Back at 27th and Sloven, they think police and prosecutors have their priorities messed up. They told her drug dealers they give them life and then the child molesters and all that, they get probation. You're allowed to write, but they don't sell drugs. Well, it's some think that's an incredible interview. They literally said we do drugs, we don't sell drugs. And the reason why I selected that story in this topic for this podcast is because just Monday, my original tipster on the story told me there's been another drug overdose at 311 North 27th, which is the home in this story. And I checked with the coroner's office, and sure enough, there was another drug overdose there at that home that resulted in death this week. OK, so, you know, we've lost so many people to drug overdoses. It leads to so much crime. Why is this happening? Who's who's what's you know what I think I've been doing stories about for the past year on brazen activity and in police even visiting and not doing anything about it. And I didn't put two and two together until you saw at the end of that report that open records request about were asked for all of the drug dealing arrests in all the categories for the last several years. It's gone down to nothing. It's like LAPD gave up the fight of arresting drug dealers. And I mean, to not have a first offense, heroin dealing arrest in the city for years is amazing to me, especially when we're battling such a big drug problem here with heroin specifically in particular. So we heard the person from the DEA. He's got a big area. You said three states. Right. So are the resources even there and all? We could say the same thing for LAPD. It's just I see I see his point because it's it is a difficult prove. One of the questions I asked him was, I want to be a devil's advocate here. And how do you how do you prosecute and convict a drug dealer for selling a drug to someone who came to you wanting it? You know what I'm saying? Like it's a person with an addiction coming and wanting it and paying the proper price according to their deal and going away with it, even though it's illegal and it's illegal to use as well. Right. Even possession of heroin is a felony, but it just seems a little bit off to me. And, you know, I come from the addiction perspective. I suffer from the disease of addiction. But he said, you know, we we it's still a crime to do it. We we pursue the cases when we can. But it's hard to put the case together with the phones and all that. However, the first mom you heard in that story, the police in her jurisdiction, didn't even know that there was the ability to prosecute. Imagine the pain of that mother to lose a child, and then also to know that or to think that there's nothing there's no recourse, there's no justice for her. You know, I feel so sad for her. But to your point, that it's really difficult to maybe prosecute these cases, are prosecutors even willing to take them? Because, you know, we have and this is what I've heard from a lot of the officers here, that increasingly it's become difficult to get prosecutors to prosecute a case if there's not enough evidence there. They're not even going to charge it. Well, that's why the feds what was a 40 some 46 cases in the last few years. I mean, they're they're trying, but they can't keep up with I mean, look at the odd numbers. I mean, it would be impossible there. What are we averaging one every three days or one every two days? I think in just in Jefferson County right now. Overdose deaths. That's incredible. So did you take this information to LAPD? I know you have in other stories where. Yes, I've taken this issue, the LAPD. And the two biggest reasons they have told me that they that the numbers are are off. Is that the people are just turned out. I mean, people are just turned right back out on the streets. But the justice system blame angle and then that the resources are so depleted in the stories you've done and there aren't even enough guys. Remember the old days they used to have the night mobile unit. Right. Right. And they're just having trouble patrolling the streets with the proper numbers is what they've told us. Yeah. And what they're trying to do now, they have what's called the criminal interdiction unit, and they're trying to do what's called like intelligent or use the intelligence that they gather to go after bigger drug dealers. But you had a story, I remember, where, you know, you had that video of the man that was OD'ing on the sidewalk there. And then police walked. Walked by. Right. Went right up to the street and somehow got him in the house. And then they just took off on their way. Right. So where do you think in five years after, you know, having covered this for so many years, where do you think in five years we're going to be? Is it going to be worse? Is it going to be. Well, I think some big decisions have to be made about the war on drugs, you know what I mean? They have to make some decisions on how hard they're going to go after it or are they just going to lay off and wave the white flag like Louisville appears to have done? Mm hmm. Well, one last question. You know that that mom there said that the prosecutor was like, you know, there is no such law. And to your point about how difficult it is to sometimes prosecute these cases. The person you if the drug dealers, not with the person, how can they prove that they do it largely through text messages. They get the phones and they get it largely through text messages. In the case of the Indiana case, they're up in the Greenwood Motel. They had two people die on the same night and they knew the drug dealer and they had just popped the drug dealer earlier. And he and he, of course, got out all the things police are telling us about this. So it's just it's just a mess. I mean, I will stay on top of it. I'm working on another one right now, and I've got two more lined up. I just get constant complaints from people about these drug houses flourishing and you know what it does to the neighborhood. I mean, people are scared. Their kids can't play out in the yard. People get shot this way. The last couple I've done there are homicide memorials right along the street, right in front of the house, because people die in these drug deals. And sometimes we hear of, you know, people will also call us and say there's needles at the park where children are playing. And, you know, you can't even you can't even trust that your child is playing on a playground, not only because of the violence that's around there, because of needles. I showed that. I showed that I followed. I was doing an investigation of the mobile needle exchanges and the one over by Wyandot Park. And I followed all the users with their needles over to the park and filmed them all doing their heroin. And then they leave and all the picnic tables and the ground below. There were probably 14, 15 syringes right out there in the park. How high or how low of a priority do you think that this issue is for both the courts and for police? Well, I think it's a lot lower right now with the homicide situation going on. You know, even though it's linked to homicides. So, I mean, stay tuned. We'll see. All right. Well, that's John Ball with his investigations. Thank you for doing those kinds of stories, because I could imagine, you know, there's people so many good people that live in these neighborhoods and they feel trapped. Yeah, I get nice notes from the people because usually the conduct does change after they've been outed on TV. However, as we just pointed out, 311 North 27 just had another overdose death right at the home. So we'll see about that. But I get nice notes from people and it makes my day because that's that's what I'm here to do, to try to help people out. Yeah. And I'm sure that you get that. Oh, no, there's drama. Yes. But now I have bodyguards with me. All right. Well, thank you so much. Stay tuned. We'll have much more in our series of podcasts about our investigations. So stay tuned. See.