Brewer takes drug battle to Internet Police sign on to N.Y. site that gathers tips on dealers

BREWER – The city’s police force added a new weapon to its anti-drug arsenal last week when it became the first in Maine and one of a handful in New England to sign on with a program designed to forward the public’s tips about drug dealing and related activity to law enforcement officials.

Detective Sgt. Perry Antone said he came across Dads and Mad Moms Against Drug Dealers while doing some work-related research on the Internet. The group also accepts tips from people who call on its toll-free hotline.

The organization, founded by a Tioga Center, N.Y., businessman who lost his son to an OxyContin-Ecstasy overdose last year, accepts anonymous tips over the Internet to help law enforcement get drug dealers off the streets. It offers cash rewards ranging from $100 to $1,500 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Antone said he consulted law enforcement officials from New York before committing the Brewer department to the program. He learned that the program is effective and that founder Steven Steiner Sr. and his organization have received some credible tips. To date, according to the Web site, the program has received nearly 500 tips. The tips so far have resulted in 12 arrests and one conviction.

After checking out the organization, Antone asked founder Steven Steiner Sr. to add Brewer to the list of cooperating law enforcement agencies. Though most tips have come from the Steiners’ home state, Antone said that Steiner told him that he is working to make his program nationwide.

“This is a great intelligence tool,” Antone said of the tip site. He said the anonymity offered by the program might yield tips from people who might otherwise remain silent out of fear. There is no cost to the city for participating, he said.

According to the Web site, Steiner formed the organization after his 19-year-old son, Stevie Steiner, died last January from an overdose after partying during Super Bowl weekend. On the Saturday before the game, the younger Steiner and others at a party took Ecstasy and snorted OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller also known by its generic name oxycodone.

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, gave Steiner’s program a $50,000 grant to launch its Internet site and related efforts.

On the Web site, established last May, people can leave anonymous tips about drug traffickers, kingpins, manufacturers and others dealing with nearly 30 different kinds of drugs. The group also fields tips about school violence and terrorism.

In addition to the tips forum, the Web site features Stevie Steiner’s yearbook picture, taken before he dropped out to work full time as an electrician, and his father’s Top 10 memories of his son. The site also has a link to graphic crime-scene photographs of Stevie Steiner’s bloated body. A caption accompanying the photos reads, “This is what the drug dealers are really selling you.”

The Web site’s operator uses the ZIP Code, included in the tip form, to forward the information to the appropriate law enforcement agency, Antone noted. Information also is available to police through a secure area on the Web site that can only be accessed by law enforcement officials using a series of passwords. Until more Maine police agencies are involved, Antone has agreed to ensure that tips involving drug activity in other Penobscot County communities are channeled to the proper police departments.

For more information or to leave a tip, contact Dads and Mad Moms Against Drug Dealers at 1 (866) DAMMADD. The organization’s Web site is: www.dammadd.org.