New county chief detective executes 6 major operations in first 6 weeks
Butler residents may have noticed an uptick in Drug Task Force raids since a new county chief detective filled the role in June.
Chief Detective Doug Brink said since he began June 15, his office has completed about five drug raids and one heavy saturation detail in conjunction with state police’s Troop D vice unit, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of the Attorney General, where Brink spent 22 years as a narcotics agent.
“You’re going to start seeing more activity in the area just because of every (agency) coming together,” Brink told residents.
Brink subscribes to the “broken window theory” a criminology study conducted in 1982. He explained if residents and perpetrators walk passed a broken window, the residents feel discouraged and the perpetrators feel empowered to keep breaking windows.
If the broken windows are replaced, residents feel safe.
However, if the windows are not replaced, more broken windows will follow. Broken window after broken window makes a place look uncared for, Brink said.
“People want to go downtown,” Brink said. “They want to visit these places and some of them don’t feel safe. Let’s clean it up. Let’s get moving here.”
Brink was born in Butler in 1973 and attended McQuistion Elementary School. He recalled going with his mom as a child to Natili North and Cummings Coffee before he graduated from Butler Senior High School in 1991.
“We didn’t have a drug problem in high school,” Brink said. “You didn’t hear of it. We would walk downtown and it was not a problem … didn’t even think twice about it.”
Brink added he remembers going to the Penn Theater when it cost 50 cents per movie. Since then, he’s enjoyed seeing businesses, such as the Chop Shop and Hop Car Brewing, quickly fill empty storefronts.
“They very easily could have packed up when things went south, but they didn’t,” Brink said. “These people are putting their heart and soul and all their blood, sweat and tears into building Butler and making it clean.
“I owe it to them,” he added.
Brink was retired as a narcotics agent supervisor for the attorney general’s office for only 10 days when he began working for the Butler County Detectives April 20.
“There’s not much I can tell him or teach him that he doesn’t already know,” former Chief Detective Tim Fennell said of Brink. “He’s all ready to go.”
Brink shadowed Fennell until his retirement June 12, but Brink had worked with Fennell on previous drug operations in the county.
“Tim had already hired some of the greatest cops in Butler County,” Brink said. “Any one of them detectives out there could take over this operation. They’re all very capable, highly intelligent — just great, great officers.”
And if Brink needs extra assistance, he said he still has those AG’s office connections and plans to use them when necessary.
“As far as all the agencies here go, I know that if I’m doing something, I have to make one or two phone calls and I will have multiple agencies here,” he said.
Brink said he began forming those connections as far back as growing up in Butler. He was inspired as a child to go into law enforcement when he met a corporal in the state police vice unit.
“Even from a small child, I don’t know if it was my upbringing, but I always … I wanted to attack drugs,” Brink said.
He said he saw how drugs destroyed families, mothers grieving children who had overdosed and wanted to continue making the community impact he saw the vice unit corporal make.
“It’s good because younger guys see what those guys are doing and say, ‘I want to do that,’” Brink said.
Similar to inspiring the next generation of detectives, he also aims to inspire the community to report drug activity when they see it. He said every tip called into the county drug tip line is investigated.
“I get phone calls on the drug tip line every day,” Brink said. “These complaints are not unheard. They’re not falling on deaf ears.”
Staying in tune with the community and what agencies in neighboring communities do is how mistakes are avoided, Brink said.
If he has a legal question, he said he’s grateful to have District Attorney Richard Goldinger — who he played sports and attended church with as a child — right next door.
Brink said he doesn’t want a guilty person to walk away unpunished because an officer didn’t follow procedure and it’s called out in court.
“There are rules in place,” Brink said. “We do things a certain way because of mistakes made in the past.”
Brink said he spent most of his time in the early 2000s with the attorney general’s office tracking and dismantling meth labs. He saw the labs move into Pennsylvania from the Midwest and gave presentations in the community to raise awareness.
“We were going from no (meth) labs in Pennsylvania at all to … We did 306 in one year,” Brink said.
He recalled investigating the Feb. 3, 2018, explosion around 6 a.m. on Germaine Road in Butler Township. In that incident, William Burke, of Winfield Township, and Brittany Rudolph, of Saxonburg, started a fire at a residence that led to the explosion.
“I took over and ended up charging them with operating a meth lab,” Brink said.
He said while the two were trying to escape the fire, they threw some of their materials into the nearby weeds. Those materials contained enough evidence to charge them.
Meth labs became scarce around 2020 when Mexican cartels began funneling it into the United States at cheaper rates, Brink said.
“We’re trying to stay one step ahead of what they’re doing out on the streets,” Brink said.
When meth started to wane, fentanyl took its place.
According to Brink, much of the fentanyl in the United States came from Chinese cartels. He said the Chinese cartels didn’t have a route into the United States, so they sold it to the Mexican cartels.
“You don’t see much heroin anymore. It’s all fentanyl,” Brink said.
Brink added most of the drugs in Butler County are coming from Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit and sometimes Philadelphia. He said he’s picked up on drug traffickers’ habits throughout his career.
“They always make a mistake or two,” Brink said. “That’s what we’re banking on.”
Brink explained most drug traffickers use rental cars and vehicles with concealed compartments. Traffickers from Philadelphia don’t often use the Pennsylvania Turnpike anymore after being caught by state police’s Troop T over the years. They instead zigzag from town to town until they get to their destination, meet with their local distributor then leave town.
“This Youngstown connection right now, it’s a different dichotomy than what the Philadelphia crew was,” Brink said.
He said traffickers from Youngstown tend to stay in Butler longer and cause gun violence. Brink plans to address expanding another task force on drug-related gun violence in conjunction with the attorney general’s office to tackle the situation.
“They’re keeping guns to protect themselves and their product,” Brink said.
Regardless, Brink still thinks of traffickers as real people. He recalled one person he put in jail 10 to 20 years ago who sends him a Christmas card every year. Brink said that person told him they likely would have died from a drug overdose or related violence if they weren’t arrested.
“They still have some respect for the way I did my job and they still have respect for how I treated them,” Brink said. “Every one of them knows they’re going to get caught.”
