SPEAR sees fentanyl as major driver of crime in Garfield County and beyond
Nearly 300,000 fentanyl pills seized, nearly three dozen firearms recovered and over 200 arrests made are just some of what the multi-agency Special Problem Enforcement and Response (SPEAR) Task Force have accomplished in less than two years.
SPEAR combines the workforce of multiple agencies to assist local law enforcement with major crimes investigations across Garfield County.
Headquartered in Garfield County, SPEAR is managed by the Ninth Judicial District Attorney, a Board of Directors and team commander, and funded by asset seizures, participating agencies and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas federal program.
The Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, Rifle Police Department, United States Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Homeland Security Investigations, the United States Postal Inspection Service and U.S. Marshals Service are all part of SPEAR, which also partners with the Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Bureau of Investigations.
“We have so many different resources to go after criminals. Maybe people are mailing drugs in the mail, postal inspectors can help us do that. Homeland security, a lot of that is custom stuff, people dealing in artifacts or transporting guns across lines across the country,” Garfield County Sheriff and SPEAR Board Chairman Lou Vallario said. “It’s effective because we have a good, solid group of manpower and the resources from both local people and state and federal people.”
SPEAR, initiated in 2022, replaced the TRIDENT (drugs) and TAG (gangs) task forces in January 2023.
“As the laws changed, specifically with more permissiveness of drugs and the lowering of the penalties and all that, we were seeing less effectiveness in the drug enforcement world,” Vallario said. “So we combined both of those teams, sort of a force multiplier, and created SPEAR.”
The multi-jurisdictional force pursues cases based on an Intelligence Lead Policing (ILP) model — the task force’s analyst crunches numbers to identify the major crimes, criminals and locations that the unit should focus on.
“We rely on the guys on the street saying, Hey, I noticed this, I saw this guy’s a problem or we’re seeing this new drug, whatever it might be,” Vallario said. “Then our analysts will crunch that and say, okay, this is now something that SPEAR needs to be looking at.”
From January 2023 to October 2024, SPEAR responded to 1,325 incidents, opened 273 new cases, made 205 arrests and recovered 35 firearms and 32 stolen cars, according to data from the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
SPEAR also confiscated 290,900 fentanyl pills, 2.8 ounces of fentanyl powder and .5 ounces of fentanyl liquid, as well as 38.5 pounds of meth, 5.9 pounds of cocaine, .75 ounces of crack cocaine and 1.75 pounds of heroin.
“Illegal drugs still sort of drive the criminal issues in our community, everywhere really, I would say in the country,” Vallario said. “Fentanyl is the biggest drug of choice right now… it’s almost always evolving as to what’s the latest greatest drug the drug dealers can get out there on the streets and make money, so right now, fentanyl is the number one issue.”
In what Vallario considers one of SPEAR’s most successful incidents to date, the task force confiscated approximately 222,360 OxyContin pills believed to contain fentanyl during a traffic stop in September.
“You’re talking over $2 million worth of drugs that we took off the street, not to mention how many lives we could have saved by that,” Vallario said. “We’ve had others in the past where we’ve arrested people that are career criminals and constantly committing crimes and eventually we managed to get them arrested and locked up in prison.”
Fentanyl is currently the most commonly used illegal drug in the county, according to Vallario, who added that “if we were to look at 100 drug cases, more than half of those, probably 75% of those, are fentanyl related.”
Rifle saw a 22% decrease in major crimes, with major drug crime cases decreasing by 45% from 2022 to 2023, according to the Rifle Police Department’s annual report.
“We’ll go anywhere, anywhere we’re welcomed, anywhere we’re wanted, anywhere we see major crimes,” Vallario said. “(Chief Debra Funston) is definitely proud to say that they’re seeing a considerable decrease in major crimes in Rifle. And I credit that to Spear.”
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