This month’s meeting of the Monroe County Coalition for Drug-Free Communities primarily featured a presentation from a member of the Illinois National Guard whose work over the past two years has had him focused on fighting drugs in communities around Southwestern Illinois.

Sgt. Sean Johnson-Berghoefer noted he’s been with the Illinois National Guard for 13 years, seeing three activations including hurricane preparation in 2017, flood response in 2019 and civil disturbance in 2021.

In the past two years, he’s worked with the Counterdrug Task Force within the guard, mainly working as an investigative case support analyst and conducting drug demand reduction outreach.

This current work has him assigned to the Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Southwestern Illinois, where he’s supported roughly 200 cases.

Recently, he’s also been actively involved with Partnership for Drug-Free Communities, a similar organization to the Monroe County coalition serving Madison and St. Clair counties.

As part of his mission, Berghoefer explained that he works with a number of federal, state and local agencies to reduce the supply and demand for illicit drugs.

In working with both law enforcement and community organizations, he supports drug interdiction and eradication efforts, provides criminal analysis and case support, and helps conduct education and prevention initiatives.

He further spoke on his involvement with coalitions such as the one in St. Clair County, providing expertise on drug trends and threats, offering data analysis to guide prevention efforts and working alongside these groups to establish strategic plans.

“I work in narcotics agencies every day. I see ongoing drug trends, what’s currently happening now. It’s always changing, but we can get that analysis,” Berghoefer said. “We get the data weekly, monthly, every day. And we can be that outreach education for school and youth programs.”

The work of Berghoefer and his agency, as he said, has resulted in substantial amounts of drug money and illicit substances removed from communities as well as greater relationships among hundreds of coalitions.

He offered further detail on the kind of information he looks to collect, noting how he works with Chestnut Health Systems in particular to gather data on overdose cases.

An additional area of focus for him is drug trends and fads among youth. He pointed to vaping as a major focus, remarking on how they are now often disguised, looking similar to highlighters, for example.

Berghoefer fielded a number of questions from members of the coalition, particularly speaking with Monica Kirkpatrick, the coalition’s executive director, on gathering information on youth drug trends via survey.

Kirkpatrick touched on coalition efforts in recent months to acquire the support and participation of local school districts regarding a newly developed survey meant to replace the Illinois Youth Survey, which districts in Monroe County stopped participating in several years ago.

She went on to discuss other local efforts with Berghoefer, noting how Columbia School Resource Officer Tyler McWhorter recently conducted a study on Columbia retailers to see how they market vapes and such products to youth.

As Kirkpatrick spoke about the coalition’s hopes to continue gathering information about drug and substance use trends throughout the county while working with other groups, Berghoefer spoke on the possibility of bringing his similar efforts further south.

“Monroe County hasn’t been a focus for counter-drug, and that’s kinda what I’m trying to do is broaden our horizons a little bit, kind of move down south because a lot of stats come from Chicago and St. Clair, just bigger counties,” Berghoefer said.

In other discussion at the meeting, Gibault Catholic High School English teacher David Schauer spoke about his efforts at the school, looking to establish an Operation Snowball group like in Columbia in the near future – hopefully incorporating the school’s newly-added “house” program to have multiple, small snowball groups.

Discussion also touched on the first retreat at Camp Wartburg scheduled for the spring which will see Operation Snowball students from Monroe County come together with other groups from around the region.