‘Operation Clean Sweep’ disrupted flow of drugs from Kensington to the suburbs, AG says
Attorney General Dave Sunday said the initiative, overseen with district attorneys and investigators from four counties, resulted in 102 arrests in recent weeks.
State Attorney General Dave Sunday, flanked by prosecutors and investigators from four counties, said Monday that a collaborative law-enforcement effort had disrupted major fentanyl distribution networks that had spread the powerful drug from Kensington to Philadelphia’s collar counties.
Dubbed “Operation Clean Sweep,” the initiative, run with Pennsylvania State Police, Philadelphia police, and district attorneys from Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties, resulted in the arrests of 102 people in a pair of five-day operations, the most recent of which ended Friday, he said.
Most of those apprehended, he said, were drug traffickers connected to groups that distribute drugs across the region. Some of those charged were people in addiction who were diverted to treatment, Sunday said.
“Fentanyl and other deadly poisons are not exclusive to any intersection, street, block, or county,” the attorney general said. “Drugs and the violence that stem from the organizations that peddle them are not a city issue. It is a Commonwealth issue.”
The arrests came during traffic stops at strategic locations near Philadelphia’s borders with its suburban neighbors, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele.
Steele declined to provide specifics but said investigators shared information across jurisdictions, tracked the drugs from the source in Kensington, and followed the dealers as they moved out of the city.
The traffic stops netted more than $365,000 worth of illegal drugs, including heroin, fentanyl, suboxone, and psilocybin mushrooms, he said.
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Steele, in detailing the arrests, said the partnership was formed because drug trafficking is not just “a Philadelphia problem.”
“It’s a problem for every one of us in Southeast Pennsylvania, and for our law enforcement community to combat,” he said. “It’s a problem that we all share, since some of our residents are the ones who are going in and out of Philadelphia to get those drugs, to sell them on the street, to sell them to our residents, and to drive on our streets under the influence of these drugs.”
The efforts announced Monday dovetail from other initiatives that Sunday has recently touted. Last week, he held a news conference in Center City to announce that 50 million doses of fentanyl had been seized in a year in Pennsylvania, more than half of it recovered in the southeastern corner of the state.
The prosecutors who gathered Monday in Norristown said that in addition to charging drug suppliers, they were steering people in addiction into treatment.
Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, who said his brother died after years of drug addiction, said the effort is a “force multiplier” for law enforcement to address the issue holistically.
“I can tell you that this is a lot different than the war on drugs,” he said. “These synthetic opioids are so powerful — fentanyl alone is up to 100% more potent than morphine is.
“Collaboration really is a force multiplier in law enforcement, and we are so proud to have a partner in all the people who are standing with us.”