Feds Offer Atlanta Heroin Dealers A Way Out

Over a dozen suspected heroin dealers were invited to the Lindsay Street Baptist Church in the troubled English Avenue neighborhood to hear a message from Atlanta police and the U.S. Attorney’s Office - we want to help you turn your lives around.

An undercover investigation revealed the identities of 19 suspected drug dealers, all of whom received a letter from Atlanta Police Chief George Turner and acting U.S. Attorney John Horn, WSB-TV said. The letter offered the dealers a chance to hear from law enforcement and to meet with community activists and outreach services that can help them get clean and find a new way to make a living.

Both Turner and Horn spoke during the meeting, making it abundantly clear to each suspected dealer that authorities have more than enough hard evidence to put each of them away for a very long time, WSB-TV says ; if the suspected dealers stay on the wrong side of the law, they will find themselves in a federal prison cell.

Law enforcement is using a carrot-and-stick approach to clean up the open-air drug market in English Avenue; there have been several sting operations held in recent weeks which arrested both suspected buyers and dealers, but the suspected dealers at the meeting were offered a second chance to avoid a similar fate.

None of the suspected dealers found themselves in handcuffs at the end of the meeting, a promise kept by authorities which the suspected dealers told WSB-TV that they appreciated.