By Lindy Browning | Contributor, Rocky Mountain Voice
Members of a multi-jurisdictional task force, known as SPEAR (Special Problem Enforcement and Response Task Force), have intercepted 28,500 hydrocodone pills, with a street value of $285,000.
Hydrocodone is an opiate that is classified as a schedule II drug under the Controlled Substance Act.
According to Garfield Sheriff Lou Vallario, SPEAR received an alert from Mesa County law enforcement that a man, suspected by the DEA of multi-state crimes, was on Interstate 70 heading to Garfield County. Members of SPEAR were immediately activated and the suspect vehicle was located at the Bair Ranch rest area off I-70 exit 129 in Glenwood Canyon.
When officers arrived at the Bair Ranch rest area, they found Robert Newman, a resident of California, in a rental car. Newman was a subject of DEA investigations in multiple states, the sheriff says.
Because there was no active arrest warrant for Newman, officers had to apply for a search warrant to search the vehicle. Also, because there was no current arrest warrant out for Newman, officers could not detain him beyond the initial contact and he was released, Vallario says.
When the arrest warrant was received by officers of SPEAR, officers searched the car and located the illegal hydrocodone. After testing the pills and with all evidence verified, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Newman, Vallario says. At the time of this article, he has not been located and apprehended.
Less than a month prior to the Bair Ranch rest area drug seizure, Garfield County Sheriff’s Office deputies, along with investigators from Garfield County SPEAR, contacted a person in a vehicle for a traffic violation on I-70 near Parachute.
During the traffic stop, deputies and investigators located approximately 59.64 pounds of suspected counterfeit OxyContin pills. The estimated street value of the about 225,000 pills is approximately $3 million. Leslie Lopez-Roja, age 20, from Phoenix, Ariz., was arrested, along with two other unidentified people as a result of the incident.
“One in four pills we intercept has a lethal dose of fentanyl,” Vallario said. Continuing, he said, “80 percent of the crimes in Garfield County are related to drugs, including property crime.
SPEAR was formed in 2022 as a replacement of the TRIDENT drug task force, and the TAG, gang task force. “We are proactively policing (through SPEAR) because of that, we are able to be more effective,” Vallario said.
“When the laws changed (in Colorado) and became more permissive concerning drugs and bail laws, lowering the penalties and decriminalizing certain drugs that used to be illegal, we saw that the previous task forces could not be as effective in the drug enforcement area. So we formed a partnership with federal, state and local law enforcement and kind of combined those task forces, and created SPEAR which has been a force multiplier,” said Vallario.
According to Vallario, what makes SPEAR such an effective partnership is the expertise of the member partners. With multiple agency experts working together, they are able to take an intelligence driven analytical approach, much like a major crimes division would.
Not only are they looking at drugs and related issues, but they are looking at gangs and prominent criminals.
“We are seeing hints of Venezuelans that are associated with Tren de Aragua. So far there is no organized TdA activity here,” Vallario said. In the past, there had been active MS-13 gang activities as well as cartel activity associated with the Sereno’s and Nortenos, he says.
SPEAR is headquartered in Garfield County and is managed by the 9th Judicial District attorney, a board of directors and a team commander. It is funded through asset seizure, participating agencies, and the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas federal program.
SPEAR has members from the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office; Rifle Police Department; United States Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Homeland Security Investigations; United States Postal Service; and the U.S. Marshals. Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Bureau of Investigations also partner with SPEAR.