The Dallas Morning News
By Maggie Prosser
10:49 AM on Nov 20, 2023 CST

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday it created a new unit focused on prosecuting fentanyl and other narcotics cases.

The creation of the Narcotics Unit comes amid soaring overdoses statewide and on the heels of new state legislation that allows prosecutors to charge people with stiffer sentences, up to murder, if they’re involved in the distribution of fentanyl.

“If you deal fentanyl in Tarrant County, we are coming after you,” District Attorney Phil Sorrells said in a news release. Sorrells, a Republican, was elected top-prosecutor last November.

“We are tired of the death and destruction caused by illegal drugs,” he said. “We will hold people accountable.”

The district attorney’s office is expected to receive about 8,500 drug cases — including methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine — this year, the news release said.

The new unit, staffed with three experienced narcotics prosecutors, may also decide to bring murder charges against someone who makes, sells or delivers fentanyl that causes someone’s death, in line with a tough-on-crime approach adopted by the state legislature in House Bill 6. No such cases have been filed in Tarrant County, according to the news release.

According to preliminary state health department data, nearly 60 people from Tarrant County have died from fentanyl so far this year. Last year, the toll reached more than 170. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has become the most powerful, dangerous and pervasive drug on North Texas streets, reporting from The Dallas Morning News has shown.

“We are going to get the people who sell this poison off the streets,” Sorrells said. “We will do everything we can to keep our community safe.”