JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced a new initiative on Monday, February 7. Operation Overdrive is aimed at combatting the rising rates of drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths plaguing American communities.
Last fall, DEA initiated a data-driven approach using national crime statistics and CDC data to identify hot spots of drug-related violence and overdose deaths across the country, in order to devote its law enforcement resources to where they will have the most impact: the communities where criminal drug networks are causing the most harm.
Operation Overdrive, which launched February 1, 2022. The DEA has mapped the threats and initiated enforcement operations against those networks in 34 locations across 23 states in the initial phase of Operation Overdrive. One of the locations is Jackson, Mississippi.
“DEA’s objective is clear,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “DEA will bring all it has to bear to make our communities safer and healthier, and to reverse the devastating trends of drug related violence and overdoses plaguing our Nation. The gravity of these threats requires a data driven approach to pinpoint the most dangerous networks threatening our communities, and leveraging our strongest levers across federal, state, and local partners to bring them down.”
Operation Overdrive Phase I locations:
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- Bronx, New York
- Buffalo, New York
- Camden, New Jersey
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Chicago, Illinois
- Cincinnati, Ohio
- Cleveland, Ohio
- Columbia, South Carolina
- Dayton, Ohio
- Detroit, Michigan
- Flint, Michigan
- Indianapolis, Indiana
- Jackson, Mississippi
- Kansas City, Missouri
- Little Rock, Arkansas
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Miami Gardens, Florida
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Newark, New Jersey
- Oakland, California
- Peoria, Illinois
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Pine Bluff, Arkansas
- San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Richmond, Virginia
- San Bernardino, California
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Tulsa, Oklahoma
- Washington, D.C.
- Wilmington, Delaware