In South Florida, the Broward Sheriff’s Office is breaking up a special investigative unit dedicated to busting pharmacies and shops that sell prescription medication legally, even as those locations increase in number and overdoses from drugs like Oxycontin continue to skyrocket. Two of the unit’s detectives will go to a new U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-led prescription drug task force with representatives from law enforcement agencies throughout Florida.

The now defunct unit’s other detective will continue to work prescription drug cases as part of the sheriff’s normal narcotics squad. Sheriff’s office officials say the reorganization should help beef up enforcement efforts targeting illegal pain pill sale and abuse.

Others aren’t so sure, including the woman who used to head up the special Broward County Unit. She describes the decision as “shocking.” The unit has “been pretty much disbanded,” Sgt. Lisa McElhaney said at a meeting of the United Way’s Prescription Medication Abuse Task Force, a national organization of police, health-care officials, regulators and others trying to fight prescription drug abuse.

For the last several years, McElhaney has led the effort to conduct inspection reports of clinics that provide an easy supply of narcotic painkillers to addicts and dealers who flock to the area from as far away as Kentucky and other states. In April, at the urging of McElhaney and others, Florida legislators adopted a bill requiring doctors and pharmacists who dispense pain pills to report their sales to a state database within 15 days.

The idea is that it will help in identifying people who obtain vast quantities of pills. But while it will take more than a year to set up the system, experts said, new pain pill clinics pop up every week. “It’s not like this problem is gone. This problem has intensified,” said Warren County, Ohio, Drug Task Force Commander John J. Burke, who sees waves of Oxycodone pills coming to his area from Broward County. “Dismantling the unit,” he said, “will be devastating to us.”

“We have no one, essentially, to turn to to work cases,” he said. Like many other law enforcement officials who have reported a strained relationship while working with the DEA, Burke says it’s just a case of local law enforcement and federal agents having very different goals. Burke told the Florida Sun Sentinel that the DEA does not have the same focus or priorities as local law enforcement, he said.

Local officials that stand to be affected the most by the unit being eliminated were beyond disappointed. Steven Arnst, mayor of Oakland Park, said he had not been told about the BSO unit’s disbanding and was dismayed by it. The city has 16 pain clinics within its borders, and problems with crime and disturbances at some of them. “I think it’s a huge, huge mistake,” Arnst said.

“The BSO investigators have been really going above and beyond what you would expect. It’s not that I don’t trust the DEA, but I trust the Broward Sheriff implicitly because they are the ones in the local area and they know all the local players and the local businesses that need to be watched.”

The DEA did not respond to phone calls from the Sun Sentinel requesting comment for this story.

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