GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A heroin dealer taken down in a broad daylight bust told Target 8 he feels guilty “in a way” for selling a drug that he calls “high risk.”
“Don’t nobody never know (what’s in the heroin),” Harry Anthony Childress III admitted.
“Won’t nobody never know until a lab tell you. Even if you do it, you will not know what’s up in there,” Childress told Target 8 the afternoon of his arrest by the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team in mid-April. “That’s the thing. The risk, the chance (you take) touching that stuff. It’s high risk.”
The 22-year-old talked to Target 8 in an interview room at the Kent County Sheriff’s Department.
“I never know what I’m getting,” Childress said of the heroin he sells.
Childress said he does not use drugs himself, but called the money he makes from selling it “addicting.”
“Sometimes you have to risk your freedom so you can have something,” he said.
Childress, whose Facebook page lists his hometown as Grand Rapids and his job as “construction,” told Target 8 that he came from a stable, two-parent household but didn’t have a lot growing up.
“I’m still that same person that came out of my mama that was willing to do right under her rules. I never, ever, was this type of person until I got a little older,” he said.
He started getting in criminal trouble at age 17, later racking up felony convictions for weapons, stolen property and drugs. The soon-to-be father said his felony record makes it nearly impossible for him to get a good-paying, legitimate job.
Childress refused to say how he first got into dealing drugs.
“It ain’t really kind of like the life I chose. It kind of chose me,” he said. “I just been through some things in life that nobody understand, you know? I’m no harm to the city.”
DRUG DEALER’S ADVICE TO POTENTIAL USERS: ‘IT WILL F*** YOUR LIFE OVER’
When asked how he can sleep at night knowing that’s he’s putting a potentially deadly drug in people’s hands, Childress paused for several seconds.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m lost on that one. I don’t have the answer,” he said. “It’s just a way to make money. People don’t look at it as to killing somebody. I don’t want to kill nobody.”
Childress said he “feels sorry” for parents who lose kids to drugs:
“I wouldn’t know what to do if my son or daughter was on drugs because it’s hard to get off drugs. They would do anything for drugs.”
But he also said if he doesn’t sell drugs, someone else will.
Even so, he had advice for anyone who is at risk of getting caught up in the world of drug trafficking, especially potential users.
“Don’t do it. Leave it alone. Don’t join it. It will f*** your life over for the rest of your life, and you will hurt a lot of family members. Also yourself,” he said.
Childress had a clear message, too, for anyone who’s drawn to drug dealing as a potential source of income.
“I’m going to tell you this now — don’t go that direction. That’s not the right direction. You will get caught,” he said.
Childress spoke from experience.
TARGET 8 RIDES ALONG WITH DRUG ENFORCMENT TEAM
Target 8’s cameras caught Childress peddling heroin in southern Kent County, unaware that he was being watched by the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team.
“The element of surprise is our best friend in this line of work,” Kent County Sheriff's Department Lt. Al Roetman said.
Roetman oversees KANET, a multijurisdictional drug team composed of detectives from five law enforcement agencies including the sheriff’s department, East Grand Rapids, Grandville, Walker and Wyoming.
“Our number one priority right now is heroin,” Roetman said. “It’s the biggest thing that’s plaguing our communities right now, whether you live in a big city or you live in a rural setting. It’s all over the place.”
As far as Roetman could remember, KANET had never allowed media to document one of its operations before.
By necessity, the members of KANET do not seek the limelight, instead working anonymously and undercover as they fight to rid our neighborhoods of illegal narcotics.
However, as the opioid crisis continues to grow, devastating families and communities along the way, the Kent County Sheriff’s Department decided to allow Target 8 to ride with KANET.
“Nobody’s safe from it,” Roetman said of the opioid epidemic. “It doesn’t matter what demographic, what social class, where you grew up, where you work, it’s impacting everybody.”
On a Monday morning in mid-April, the battlefield for West Michigan’s war on heroin happened to be a massive apartment complex in Gaines Township, about 10 miles south of Grand Rapids. While Childress and the buyer had used the same location for previous drug deals, there’s no evidence that either has a connection to the complex.
“Our team has assembled ahead of time where we believe the buy is going to take place, but it’s fluid and a lot of times the dealer will change locations at the last minute so we have to adjust to that,” Roetman explained.
As they waited for the drug deal to go down, a child toddled by their position in the parking lot of one of the complex’s many buildings. Her mom was taking trash out and the youngster was following behind.
“This little girl’s just walking around outside. She’s in the safety of home. This is where they live,” Roetman said. “They have no idea. We have a known user who is waiting for his dealer to show up to buy heroin within 75 yards of their front door.”
Minutes later, Roetman decided to change positions, moving to another parking lot.
“In case we have to rip out of here, I don’t want to take a chance with these kids being right here,” he said.
For KANET, the public’s safety takes priority. That’s part of the reason the team planned to arrest Childress before the deal even went down.
But it didn’t happen the way they had hoped.
“Hey, I got a visual on it,” Roetman radioed when he spotted Childress. “He pulled right into a parking spot. You can box him in. He can’t get out.”
Childress had a different idea.
When the buyer got into the back seat of Childress’ Mercedes SUV, detectives drove up directly behind it and jumped out to arrest the dealer. But Childress hit the gas, backed up and pushed the detectives’ vehicle out of the way.
Fortunately, no one was injured.
Dashcam video caught the next leg of the chase, showing the SUV careening over a boulder, smashing a sign, racing out of the complex, across Eastern Avenue and into a trailer park.
“He’s fleeing, but, hey, watch yourselves, watch yourselves,” a team member cautioned over the radio.
Roetman said they likely would have called the chase off at that point to protect the public, but Childress ended up ditching his vehicle anyway when it ran into a utility box in the trailer park.
“He’s running on foot. He’s on foot,” Roetman reported, who spotted a shirtless Childress running across 60th Street just east of Eastern Avenue and into the parking lot of an assisted living facility.
Roetman called it “a classic example” of how the heroin crisis has broad reach, touching all segments of the community.
“You’ve got an assisted living facility, and next thing they know they have a suspect — a heroin dealer — fleeing into the grounds of their facility," he said.
Employees at the center helped direct detectives to Childress, who was lying on the ground between two parked cars.
“We got him, y’all!” the workers shouted jubilantly.
“What happened?” a shirtless Childress asked repeatedly as KANET detectives cuffed him.
DETECTIVES: CHILDRESS' PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND HID DRUGS
Childress initially denied trying to sell heroin to the buyer, but later admitted to it.
“I’m not just the bad guy,” he told Target 8 later. “I’m actually the good guy because I’m the one getting served for this stuff and admitting to this s***, you know?”
But Childress’ girlfriend, who is pregnant with his child, wasn’t admitting to anything.
“I was in the car, but that’s only because this car is mine,” she told Target 8. “I never, never sold drugs ever. I’m not a drug dealer. What he did is his business.”
She might not be a dealer, but detectives showed Target 8 the drugs she tried to hide for her boyfriend.
“It’s in a plastic bag, thankfully,” one detective said. “We don’t really want to touch it because she pulled it out of her vagina. And she’s pregnant.”
“The cops came all out,” explained the girlfriend later to Target 8. “So I just picked it up. But as soon as they asked for it, I gave it up.”
After KANET secured Childress at the sheriff’s department, the team took off to execute a search warrant at his residence.
Childress shares an apartment with his girlfriend across the street from Grand Valley State University’s main campus in Allendale.
“So we’re not on campus property but obviously it’s student housing,” Roetman said. “That’s how close it is to a large university.”
There’s no evidence that the couple attends GVSU or is connected to it in any way.
Once inside the apartment, the team immediately found more suspected heroin, prescription pills, cocaine and nearly $3,000 in cash.
“Today’s a success,” Roetman said. “One less drug dealer is operating in the Kent County greater area. Probably also one less is operating in Ottawa County. He’s been put of business today.”
WAR AGAINST OPIOIDS: ‘ARE WE EVER GOING TO WIN IT?’
But Roetman knows Childress’ arrest is a drop in an overflowing bucket.
“Are we winning the battle? Well, we’re fighting the battle. Are we ever going to win it? It’s going to be a constant battle,” Roetman said. “If you can imagine not having drug teams in your community, if it weren’t being monitored, it’d be everywhere.”
As it is, emergency crews are responding to opioid overdoses in movie theaters, restaurant bathrooms, parking lots and even vehicles stopped in the middle of the road.
It was a near fatal overdose at a Kent County hotel that led the KANET team to Childress.
“(The opioids) are coming in by all means,” Roetman said, referring to the increased trafficking of heroin and other opiate-based drugs to West Michigan. “The cartels are bringing it up. It’s coming up by vehicle, plane, shipping services. Any means they can find a way to get it transported to our communities, they’re finding the way. You see the bindles and stuff, they’re hard to detect if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, heroin, which is derived from opium poppy plants, comes largely from Mexico and Colombia, though it’s also cultivated and processed in southeast and southwest Asia.
DEALER ON DRUG USE: ‘IT AIN’T NEVER GOING TO STOP’
Childress told Target 8 that drug selling and buying will continue in West Michigan whether he’s behind bars or not.
“This world is like a big circle,” he explained. “This stuff right here’s going to keep going round and round like a circle. You can do as much as you can, try and stop as much people as you can from this stuff, but, like I said, it’s a big circle. It ain’t never going to stop. People going to keep doing drugs.”
Childress, however, said he plans to stop dealing drugs once he gets out of jail.
“I’m fixin’ to try to get out of (drug dealing)”, he said. “I got to come back home not doing this. As long as I come back home on the straight street, and stay focused on just working and chilling, I should be OK.”