BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FLORENCE -- Dan Steers is a drug cop. Pretty much always has been.
So the challenges are familiar for the former leader of Cincinnati's Operation Street Corner drug unit as he takes over Northern Kentucky's Drug Strike Force. But the veteran brings a new focus to the strike force, one he says will make the officers more accountable to their community.
He also promises more attention to the kinds of drug problems that directly affect neighborhoods, the street and mid-level dealers.
"There was a time in my career when I thought you should do nothing but chase the big boys," he said. "But now I've seen how much better it can work."
The 49-year-old grandfather has a long history with drug policing in Cincinnati. It began when he was a boy and would listen to his stepfather, who was half of the Cincinnati Police Division's narcotics unit, talk on the telephone about drug cases.
That boy grew up to be a police officer, and was one of the initial officers on the Regional Enforcement Narcotics Unit when it was formed in the early 1970s. As a sergeant, he spent time on a task force with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and spent the last 13 years as Street Corner's commander. He did work in the robbery unit for a while, but came to believe that much of that work was related to drugs, too.
He retired in April from the Cincinnati force after 30 years there. He took over the strike force days later.
As Boone County Police Chief Ace Ammann puts it: "He has been there and done that."
He is among the board of judge-executives and police chiefs who chose Mr. Steers to replace Jim Daley, who left the job to be interim Campbell County jailer.
"I think he's going to be able to lead that unit in a direction that the board thinks it should go," Chief Ammann said.
Kenton County Police Chief Mike Browning, also a board member and whose wife is one of six officers assigned to the unit, said he hopes the strike force will evolve into more of a resource for other departments, possibly training officers from small departments in how to do drug work.
Mr. Steers is considering starting mini-internships to spread his unit's experience to others. He also would like to start targeting pharmaceutical crimes. He hoped to do that by hiring two officers with a federal grant, but the grant application was denied.
Police officers around Northern Kentucky are pleased with what Mr. Steers is saying. They're just waiting to see if it comes true. He understands the skepticism and accepts that until he follows through, he likely won't convince any more departments to assign officers to his unit.
"I may have egg on my face in six months," he said. "I don't know if it'll work or not, but I don't know that it has been tried." To start his new focus on community involvement, he's inviting and welcoming calls to the unit's Florence office -- from anyone with tips about drugs in Northern Kentucky. Not all tips will pan out, and the unit probably won't even have time to check them all, but he promises callers who leave their names will be contacted and informed of the action the strike force was able to do.
Officers hate having to call up that little old lady to tell her they couldn't do anything about the crack house next door. To avoid those calls, he said, they might just try harder.
"I want to hear this phone ringing," he said. "You need that community involvement. We need people to take a stance on what they find not acceptable."
Find him at 525-NARC.
