Officers surrounded dozens of homes and vehicles across Johnson County on Thursday, looking for the men and women accused of selling methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine.
The SWAT teams, detectives and officers were armed with 120 felony arrest warrants, built through a year of investigations to identify drug dealers, solidify criminal cases against them and get drugs off the streets.
They found a woman sleeping in an SUV parked in a driveway outside a home on Yandes Street in Franklin. She was wanted on a felony drug dealing charge.
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Down the street, 14 people were inside a home when officers arrived to make an arrest. The toilet was running and a safe was open with drugs inside, likely because suspects had been flushing drugs as officers came in the door, police said. Officers found baggies of methamphetamine, syringes and other evidence of drug dealing.
The largest drug raid in state and county history unfolded in the neighborhoods of Johnson County, designed to send a message that drug dealing will not be tolerated here and to cripple drug distribution. Getting drugs and drug dealers off the streets cleans up neighborhoods and prevents crime, such as vehicle break-ins, robberies and shootings, police said. The cases had been investigated by Franklin police, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and Greenwood police.
Click here to see the names and charges of the suspects.
As the teams of 100 police officers concluded the day, 73 of the 120 suspects had been arrested. The others are still being pursued. At least nine additional suspects had been arrested after evidence was uncovered during the arrests, Prosecutor Brad Cooper said.
“We said if you’re going to deal drugs in Johnson County, the law enforcement in this community is going to go after you, find you, identify you and arrest you,” Cooper said. “And then we’ve been doing that for the past year.”
Among the suspects was a disabled man who uses a walker who had been known to sell drugs out of a window in his home, like a drive-thru for drug dealing, Cooper said.
When another suspect was arrested, he was already wearing shoes from the Johnson County jail acquired during a previous arrest.
Most of the warrants were for suspects in the Franklin area, but cases were scattered throughout the county. Police went to a motel in Whiteland, the Cumberland Trace subdivision off Westview Drive in Franklin and homes throughout Greenwood. Some suspects were already in jail or prison here or elsewhere on other charges.
Meth is king in Johnson County, and the majority of the charges were for dealing the drug which has become cheaper and easier to get, police said.
The meth isn’t made here, and no meth labs have been found in Johnson County for years. Rather, meth and heroin comes from Mexico and distributed out of Indianapolis, Cooper said.
The raid started about 7 a.m. as teams of officers went to homes to start searching for suspects. At Hurricane and Samuel streets in Franklin, officers surrounded a home looking for a man wanted on a felony charge of dealing methamphetamine with a gun.
He was arrested in the front yard of his home, and officers launched a further investigation to find more drugs in the home.
Neighbors came outside to investigate why their streets were full of police vehicles and officers. Vans from the Johnson County jail circled the streets, picking up suspects as another team arrested another suspect. Residents called Sheriff Doug Cox as they saw the arrests being made, and thanked him for getting dealers out of the neighborhoods, he said.
By 8:30 a.m., officers reported that they had arrested 33 of the 120. By 10:45 a.m., they had located nearly 50 suspects. Sixty-one had been arrested by 1 p.m. By 4 p.m., 70 suspects had been taken to the Johnson County jail. As the day continued, suspects became harder to find because word of the raid had spread.
At 870 Yandes St. in Franklin, the Franklin and county SWAT team had assembled 14 people outside a home. They huddled on the front porch and steps as investigators rushed to get a warrant to search the home. Police had gone to the home to arrest a woman, but found evidence of drugs.
On Lochry Road, police arrested a man and woman and saw more drugs inside the home, calling for more investigation.
In rural Franklin, they busted down the door of an outbuilding looking for a man reported to be living inside. He wasn’t located, but police kept searching.
For Franklin police and city leaders, the effort was personal. Residents had been calling the police department and the mayor to report suspected drug activity and ask that their neighborhoods be cleaned up.
The neighborhoods along Hurricane, Young, Yandes, Ohio and Adams streets had been invaded by drug dealers and became a hot-spot for criminal activity, police said. The situation had become much worse in the past year, with an increase in thefts, destruction and drug-related criminal activity, Franklin Police Chief Kirby Cochran said.
Homeowners who have been in the neighborhoods for decades saw it happening and complained to the police and mayor. Cochran and Deputy Chief Chris Tennell recently walked the neighborhood, forcing squatters to leave and talking to residents.
The raid on Thursday was evidence that the city had heard the residents and taken the steps to make a change.
Police moved in on homes just blocks apart at the same time, converging on backyards, front porches and sheds.
While going from target to target, officers scoured the streets, looking for a vehicle that a top suspect and another woman were known to be living in.
The arrests will now be followed by targeted patrols to keep other dealers from moving back in, Cochran said.
Police are asking residents to continue to report suspected drug activity and said they have the most success when residents leave as much information as possible, including their own names if at all possible. They also ask residents to remain patient with investigators because of the time it takes to investigate and build strong criminal cases, Cochran said.
“We’re willing to spend whatever money it takes to get these drugs off our streets, keep our kids protected from drugs,” Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett said, noting the resources involved in investigating cases and coordinating the sweep. “I’m really proud of our police department and all the agencies involved.”
Cooper praised the aggressive approach taken by narcotics investigators in Greenwood and Franklin police departments and the sheriff’s office, calling the arrests a monument to their work during the past year. He said it is critical that it continue.
“We need to get the drug dealers and the poison off the streets,” Cooper said. His office has sent about 1,500 low-level drug possession cases to the Greenwood City Recovery Court for treatment.
“Those people would never have been in recovery, and possibly been dead, if they had not been arrested by law enforcement,” Cooper said.
But the community will have no tolerance for drug dealers facing felony charges. They should be sent to prison, he said.
The effort involved the U.S. Marshals, Indiana State Police, Edinburgh, Prince’s Lakes, Bargersville and New Whiteland police and the Morgan and Marion County sheriff’s offices.
