Sheriff seeks to commit more departmental resources to county’s war on drugs in withdrawal from regional task force

It is a simple matter of trying to more effectively impact the local war on drug abuse, with no animosity or a disconnect from cooperative efforts across county, or even task force, lines implied, Warren County Sheriff Mark Butler told Royal Examiner of the pending February 1 withdrawal of the department from the Northwestern Regional Drug Task Force.

“If you do the same thing over and over and get the same result and keep doing it expecting a different result, you know what they say,” Butler observed with a laugh. That “same result” since taking office two years ago were rising drug overdoses at the point of the county’s expansive hard drug problem.

Butler said his department will devote more personnel directly to interdiction efforts than the five officers previously tied to task force operations. “There is no animosity with the task force. We are just circling our wagons and focusing on giving Warren County our best effort. We have 26 guys and plan to use them in our interdiction effort. And we are still in touch with other agencies,” Butler said, pointing to surrounding county sheriff’s departments. Among those is Fauquier County directly to our east, which the sheriff noted is in a different regional task force, Blue Ridge, than the Northwestern his department and the Town of Front Royal have been in over the years.

Hey, let’s give it a try, Warren County Sheriff Mark Butler says of move away from regional drug task force to bringing more departmental resources directly to bare on fighting county drug problem. Royal Examiner File Photo

Front Royal’s Town Police will continue their efforts within the Northwestern Regional Drug and Gang Task Force. Minus Warren County, in addition to the Town of Front Royal, the Northwestern Regional Drug and Gang Task Force includes law enforcement agencies from Page, Shenandoah, Frederick and Clarke Counties, the City of Winchester, and Towns of Strasburg and Luray.

Sheriff Butler’s belief is that with such a widespread focus, sometimes details of the problem in specific jurisdictions can be lost or perhaps left too long to fester. But were long-term statistics to indicate a reversal of the recent trend toward beneficial results from increased departmental attention over the second half of 2020, the decision can always be revisited.

However, the sheriff said since an altered, more expansive focus began being put into effect within his department, overdoses have decreased and street arrests have increased over the past two quarters. Statistics are still being assembled on the altered impact over the past year, he noted. That effort began in last year’s second quarter with the arrival of Lt. Snyder. The sheriff pointed to Snyder’s 27 years of experience and the consequent formation of a drug enforcement unit within the WCSO.

The decision was not a financial one, Sheriff Butler said. Current jurisdictional contributions amount to just over $10,000 annually. Butler reiterated that the decision reached internally was to expand and refocus his department’s resources on the rising and sometimes fatal drug problem inside our county borders.

However, Sheriff Butler reiterated that the decision did not mean cutting his department off from its neighboring jurisdictions, or even task force efforts. He said he maintains regular contact with several nearby county sheriffs, adding, “And I can assure you if the Task Force calls and says it needs extra bodies, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office will assist.

“We will keep the lines of communications open. The only way to combat this is by working together,” Sheriff Butler said – just not solely within task force parameters he believes.