Rio Grande Task Force ‘Moving 100 MPH’ To Follow Drug Crimes Up The Chain

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – It was a hot morning in late June when the squawk came over the police radio.

“Where has everybody gone?” the voice said.

“Do you have something?” replied Sgt. Josh Workman.

Just a few blocks away, some other agents of the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Rio Grande Task Force — in the middle of one of its “suppression” operations — certainly did have something at a “routine” traffic stop, though at the time they still didn’t know how circumstances would change in a matter of minutes.

“We watched a guy do a hand-to-hand with, like, a guy walking through the parking lot,” one agent briefed Workman as he arrived on scene. “Walked around the corner over by, like, the pizza place, came back, got back in this car, was in there for like 15 seconds and got back out, but we’ve dealt with him before.”

Moments later, yelling erupted around the front of the stopped SUV.

“Spit it out!” shouted Agent Ronny Corona, as his hand and another agent’s hand gripped at the throat of the driver.

The agents bent the driver over the hood of the vehicle as they said he appeared to try to swallow a baggie.

Fearing a potential medical emergency as a result of swallowing a possible illegal substance, the agents applied pressure to get the man to spit.

“You’ll die if you swallow it!” another agent told the man.

“Spit it out!” Corona shouted again. “I already know it’s there, OK?”

“I don’t have anything!” the man garbled as he appeared to clench his jaw.

Just over a minute later, the man spit out a yellow baggie onto the hood of the vehicle.

“Did you swallow any?” Corona asked the man as he acknowledged that he did not. “At the end, it’s for your safety, man!”

Why This Stop Happened

Traffic stops initiated by the Rio Grande Task Force may not always be that intense, but they are frequently as fruitful.

“Inside the yellow packaging it appears to be crack,” said Workman when the situation had de-escalated significantly.

The man, identified as 31-year-old Brandon Bramlette, was seated on the curb with his hands cuffed behind his back.

“A probable cause search of the vehicle was then conducted, which we found more heroin, more drug paraphernalia,” Workman said. “We try to collect information from the street level, run with the information that we have, and just try to work all the way up the chain until the information stops.”

Bramlette was arrested for possession and ultimately pleaded guilty to Class A misdemeanor possession or use of a controlled substance.

Rio Grande Task Force

The task force was established by the Utah Department of Public Safety’s State Bureau of Investigation in the months after Operation Rio Grande was launched in 2017.

The 11-member team was tasked with making a dent in the Rio Grande neighborhood’s drug trade above street-level, by following the chain of dealers up to key players who live outside the area.

“We had to focus on targeting the individuals who were actually supplying the narcotics to the dealers on the street who were then selling it, in turn, to the people down there,” said Lt. Ellis Alexander. “We’ve had cases up north in Weber County, Davis County, all over the Salt Lake Valley — just about every town in this county we’ve conducted investigations and worked cases, executed search warrants.”

An Adult Probation & Parole officer is attached to the unit to more easily track the status of any parolees and fugitives the agents encounter.

“You start running into stolen property and firearms and just all sorts of different crimes that are all kind of tied to drugs,” Alexander said.

Since the group’s inception, the unit said it has made nearly 700 physical custody arrests as of Sept. 1, including well over 500 arrests of suspected drug dealers.

Also as of that date, the unit had seized 58 lbs. of meth, more than 17 lbs. of heroin and nearly seven pounds of cocaine to go along with more than 2,100 pills.

“The numbers are very impressive,” Alexander said. “We’re not the biggest in the state, but we definitely hope we’re making an impact.”

Two independent law enforcement sources, whose departments also tackle drug crimes with task forces, told KSL the group’s reported numbers were, in fact, significant given their mission and their ground-up style of investigations.

“We’ve already seized more heroin and methamphetamine this year than we did in 2017 and 2018, mainly because we’ve moved up the chain and we’re hitting higher-level dealers,” Alexander said.

Though it was difficult to find numerical, “apples-to-apples,” comparisons at Salt Lake City Police Department because of the task force’s roving style of police work, the unit’s creation coincides with a dramatic decrease in drug abuse offenses in the Rio Grande neighborhood.

In 2016 and 2017, the number of recorded drug offenses in the area were listed as 8,071 and 8,148, per Salt Lake City police. In 2018, the number dipped to 5,082.

As of Aug. 31, only 2,522 drug offenses had been logged in the neighborhood in 2019.

While a police spokesman noted that a share of the drug problems had simply shifted elsewhere, the spokesman said the task force was helping to make a difference as law enforcement works to subtract drug crime from the Rio Grande neighborhood.

Not-So-Routine Traffic Stop

On June 26, Bramlette made the traffic stop far from routine for agents, who feared a potential medical emergency or worse for the driver.

“Luckily he wasn’t able to swallow those substances and we were able to get it before he digested it,” Workman said.

Their job, however, suddenly became far easier and more linear as they took the information and evidence they collected up the chain.

That’s because the SUV’s owner, identified as 56-year-old Michael Houston, literally walked right up to them.

“Can I help you?” Workman questioned out loud as his head did a double-take to the side.

“Well, that’s my car!” Houston replied.

“Do you know who was driving it?” Workman asked.

“Brandon,” Houston shrugged.

“So you let him drive it?” Workman questioned, to which Houston nodded. “Well, Brandon’s going to jail.”

“What did he do?” Houston asked.

“Guess,” Workman replied.

After Houston shrugged, Workman told Houston that Bramlette had drugs on him and that he should sit and wait as agents continued to investigate.

Workman afterward acknowledged that agents had already recognized Houston and had prior dealings with him.

“The vehicle comes back to another individual who has been arrested multiple times for drug distribution, who’s also on probation with AP&P,” Workman said.

According to Workman, the AP&P officer developed reasonable suspicion to search Houston’s listed residence half a block up the road.

“During the search of the apartment with AP&P, agents located what looked like distribution quantities of crack cocaine, multiple digital scales believed to be used for distribution,” Workman said. “Not sure why (Houston) decided to come down, especially if he’s conducting criminal activity. It doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to come and approach the police, but we’ll take what we can get.”

Houston was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree felony possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

Regardless of whether any given investigation becomes easy or difficult, Alexander said he hopes the task force continues to make a difference in Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande neighborhood and beyond.

“Since we started, we haven’t taken our foot off the gas and we’re just going 100-miles-per-hour,” Alexander said. “It’s great.”