Three dozen arrested in major drug sweep

Handcuffed and wearing a frown, William C. Chapel Jr. was led past a plastic skeleton and fake cobwebs on his Spruce Avenue porch Halloween morning on his way to jail.

The house was next to a day-care center on one side and a house where a woman fatally shot an alleged home invader last year.

Chapel was one of three dozen people arrested by police, state drug agents and Allegheny County housing police for allegedly selling drugs.

Chapel, 29, was being held in the Allegheny County Jail in lieu of $15,000 cash bond Monday afternoon.

The youngest of the 36 was 15 and the oldest 58. Two suspects were released on their recognizance. Two others were held in lieu of $75,000 bond.

Many of the houses and apartment buildings they inhabited were decorated for Halloween.

"This time we did the tricking," Harrison Police Chief Mike Klein said.

Attorney General Tom Corbett said Harrison police investigations started 10 months ago led to Monday's sweep.

The 36 suspects were arrested by the state attorney general's drug strike force agents and local police in Arnold, Vandergrift and Rostraver Township, all in Westmoreland County; Charleroi in Washington County; and Harrison in Allegheny County, which served as a base for the sweep.

Corbett said officers are still searching for 14 others, including six in Arnold.

Among those arrested were two 17-year-old Natrona boys and a 15-year-old Arnold boy who were turned over to juvenile authorities for allegedly selling drugs.

Police found two of the 36 in the Westmoreland County jail where they are held on other charges.

In Harrison, eight arrests were made in Sheldon Park, an Allegheny County Housing Authority complex, and eight in the Natrona section of the township with the help of Tarentum, Brackenridge and East Deer police, Klein said.

One man, Leroy Grammer of Chestnut Street, Harrison, was arrested in Saxonburg and taken to District Judge Carolyn Bengel in Natrona to be arraigned.

Also, one of the people arrested in a Walnut Street, Natrona, apartment building Monday was wounded in a home invasion last July.

Tiffany Daube, of Walnut Street, was in a different Walnut Street apartment when she was shot in her buttocks. Police said her boyfriend, Thadius Samuels, 20, was critically wounded in that incident. Samuels, who had been arrested last November in a drug sweep, recovered. Daube showed no sign of the injury Monday.

While the 15-year-old Arnold youth was accused of selling heroin, most of the other Alle-Kiski Valley suspects were charged with selling powdered or crack cocaine or marijuana, except for three Vandergrift suspects who were charged with selling unspecified prescription drugs.

Corbett said most of the buys by undercover police and informants ranged from one or two crack rocks up to "eight-balls." An eight-ball is street slang for an eighth of an ounce of crack.

Two men and a woman were charged with selling heroin in New Stanton while a Charleroi man and a woman were charged with selling the pain relief pill OxyContin in Rostraver Township, agents said.

Corbett said Bureau of Narcotics agents have been especially busy working with local police in Arnold. Of the 250 street dealer arrests made by his agents and local police during the past 20 months, 120 were handcuffed in Arnold.

Most smaller departments like Arnold don't have the staff to do many drug investigations and patrol streets. That's where the drug strike force can help, Corbett said.

"This was a concentrated effort targeting open air drug sales in Arnold. We want to send a message: dealers of any kind aren't wanted," Corbett said.

"Working with police and local leaders in Arnold, we have made a dramatic impact on drug sales in that community," Corbett said. "We are now following that same model in other communities up and down the Allegheny that are struggling with similar drug problems."

Arnold Police Chief Joe Doutt said 70 of the 120 arrests happened along just two blocks: the 1400 and 1500 blocks of Fourth Avenue.

"This isn't a bad thing," Arnold Mayor John Campbell told reporters.

"We have zero tolerance for drugs and an aggressive police department that works with AG agents. That's why there were so many arrests. These arrests are making things better," Campbell said.

State drug agents, police and constables started Monday with warrants for 18 people accused of selling drugs in Arnold alone.

The dozen arrested were from New Kensington, Lower Burrell and Pontiac, Mich., as well as Arnold.

By late afternoon Doutt said Arnold police were still looking for six suspects. Harrison officers were searching for five suspects while Vandergrift police were looking for two people.

Rostraver police and agents arrested five of the six people on their warrants, police said.