If you read crime fiction or watch cop shows on TV, you’re no doubt familiar with the so-called “bigger fish“ approach to shutting down a smuggling operation.
The idea is simple: Law enforcement permits smaller shipments of contraband–– booze, cigarettes, guns, and nowadays of course, drugs–– to slip through their defenses and reach the streets. By doing so, they hope to lure higher-level criminals and much larger shipments into the open, where the drugs can be seized in great quantities, and hopefully, the smuggling network shut down for good.
Law enforcement claims the strategy works— that they do in fact capture more illegal drugs (and more important smugglers) than if they had grabbed hold of every small shipment that passed.
I have no idea if that’s true. I do know that in an era of wildly potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, this approach has to increase the risk of additional fatalities, from drugs they could have prevented from reaching the streets, but decided not to.
Now a whistleblower has emerged, a former DEA special agent who claims the whole “bigger fish“ strategy is a fraud, and is actually responsible for thousands of additional deaths.
Staggering amounts of fentanyl hit streets as DEA watched and took no action, records show
DEA officials and prosecutors continue to defend it. And just last year, the DEA did record the largest single fentanyl bust in its history, in the city of Albuquerque.
“The bigger fish are worth catching,” one official claimed, “and that will save more lives.”
That’s getting harder to accept, given the whistleblower’s claim that “…agents…permitted the delivery of at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills.”
Oddly enough, the DEA’s own protocol in 2017 instructed the agents to “seize or otherwise prevent the distribution of fentanyl as soon as practical,” regardless of whether it interfered with a larger investigation.
But then in 2024 the DEA revised the rules to allow investigators to “…exercise discretion in determining whether to take action to prevent the trafficking of fentanyl.” They were to balance any risks to the public against “the benefits to be achieved through preserving the investigation.”
I’d hate to think that one of the “benefits” from preserving those investigations was a chance for glory, free publicity and career advancement for the investigators.
Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, with New Mexico’s governor demanding an explanation from the federal authorities. Who knew what, and when did they know it?
Stay tuned.
