Inmate leads officers to heroin

CRANSTON, R.I. (WPRI) -- A minimum security corrections inmate's grandstanding -- or enterprising nature -- led the Special Investigations Unit of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections to find a bag of heroin at a litter crew site. The drug -- four grams -- had a prison value of $2,000, and it's been confiscated, keeping it out of the hands of a drug user or dealer.

The inmate had boasted to others last week that he'd found heroin at his litter crew site, and that he was ready to sell it to them. The DOC's Tracey Zeckhausen said in a news release Friday that the Special Investigators found out about it and started looking into the crew's work sites.

Wednesday, they checked a site on Garfield Avenue in Cranston, next to Rt. 10, but turned up nothing. It was Thursday, near the overpass on Park Ave., where K-9 investigator Robbie found a blue rubber glove, with a little plastic bag inside full of brown powder. "He hit on it within minutes," said Special Investigator Joe Forgue in the release. The bag had been inside the glove to protect it from the elements.

The prisoner couldn't take it back with him to the lockup, Zeckhausen told WPRI.com, as he'd be strip-searched upon return.

No criminal charges are being filed, since no prisoner had it in their actual possession.

"Normally when drugs are found by a litter crew, they have been thrown from a vehicle being chased by police or they are deliberately delivered to inmates on the crew," Zeckhausen said in the release, but Forgue was quoted as saying there was no evidence it'd been delivered.

"We got lucky," Forgue said.