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Deputies seized more than 90,000 deadly doses of fentanyl in East Baton Rouge over the past year
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BATON ROUGE - Following a big arrest of one of the city's most prolific suspected drug dealers, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office announced it took 19 pounds of fentanyl off the streets of Baton Rouge from 2022 until the present day.
"If you filled up Tiger Stadium, you could potentially kill everyone in Tiger Stadium with the amount of fentanyl they seized in 2022," EBRSO spokeswoman Casey Hicks said.
Deputies estimate that 19 pounds of fentanyl could make 90,000 deadly doses.
"It's a deadly drug in very small amounts," Hicks said. "If you take a sugar packet of sweet and low, that's a gram. One-tenth of that can be a deadly dose for someone."
This month, deputies arrested Frank Beauchamp. Beauchamp was well known to EBRSO. They said he was arrested two times before for selling drugs out of two houses on 71st Avenue. Search warrants were executed at a home on Avenue J, and deputies found $27,000 in cash in his bedroom.
Another search warrant was executed at a bank in North Baton Rouge. There they found $120,000 in cash inside a safety deposit box. Some of the bills had matching serial numbers to the cash they used for the drug buys.
"Our narcotics division has been working on this case since 2021, and they have arrested him three times now," Hicks said. "They've worked really hard around the clock not just to target him but other high-level dealers like him."
Despite being out on two different bonds for his arrests, Judge Eboni Johnson Rose set him a third bond for $890,000 for his latest arrest. Some are calling for reforms to a broken system as law enforcement does the work but judges keep turning suspects loose.
"Sheriff Gautreaux along with LSA and our narcotics commander are working with Rep. Debbie Villio to work with the legislature and get harsher penalties for distribution of fentanyl," Hicks said.
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