East Texas residents calling in drug related crimes

HENDERSON COUNTY — In the past two months, the Henderson County Sheriff’s Department has arrested 50 people for drug related charges, many of them have led to arrests made by residents. According to our news partner KETK, recent arrests have involved lengthy investigations that have led to warrants.

Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse spoke about how most of his recent arrests have initially been search warrants allowing them to enter their homes. “Most of them have been through investigations where we’ve gotten some information and been able to get a search warrant and go and actually search a house,” Hillhouse said.

Hillhouse has been the sheriff since 2016 and his main focus has been on getting drugs off the street. He has asked residents to call in credible tips to his office, local law enforcement and Crimestoppers, recently those tips have resulted in arrests.

“They filter information into me and then I’ll filter it over to our investigators, so it’s been really successful early this year, working with the community and then taking these investigations that are leading to arrest,” Hillhouse said.

Hillhouse acknowledged that drugs have always been the number one problem in his county, but its not the only crime committed as a result. Hillhouse stated that many people in the jail have a drug charge and also other crimes like, theft and assault.

“I would say, probably 80 to 85% of the people that are locked up in the Henderson County Jail have some type of substance abuse issue. They may be in jail for burglary, but they committed the burglary to try to support their substance abuse habit,” Hillhouse said. As of Feb. 11, 145 people had been booked in the county jail on a drug charge.

“We had 87 people booked into the jail over this past weekend and with those 87, as we went over, we could see that the majority of them were somehow connected to drugs,” Public Information officer with the Smith County Sheriff’s Office Larry Christian said.

Christian said most of their arrests involve methamphetamines while claiming that the increased level of drug related crime comes from the boarder crisis.

“Why is it more prevalent in this country maybe now than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago? A lot of it is because of the porous border that we’ve had over the last several years,” Christian said.

Christian said meth is not the only drug that causes concern in the county but fentanyl is also a major problem in the community and his killing young people across the country.
“Drugs were free flowing into this country. The sheriff’s mentioned it many times, the fentanyl problem that we have here, fentanyl is killing our children. It’s killing our teenagers, our young people at an alarming rate across the country,” Christian said.

Hillhouse acknowledged that fentanyl it’s a problem across the state and nation including in Henderson and is growing worse.

“It’s just getting worse and worse, seeing more and more fentanyl is what scares me,” Hillhouse said.

Both sheriff’s offices said they will continue to work hard to get these criminals and drugs off the streets.

Hillhouse encourages people to continue to call in tips to his office. He added, “if you see something, please say something.”