There’s no knowing what motivated the confidential Hartfordian informant to come forward and tip off police.

Whatever their motivation was, it was the right thing to do. Their information led to the discovery and confiscation of over 15,000 bags of fentanyl, one of the most dangerous drugs on the market right now. They helped prevent a deadly poison from getting out onto the streets, and likely saved thousands of lives in doing so.

Sure, snitches might get stitches, but that’s a small price to pay in a case like this.

In the weeks leading up to the massive bust, this informant told area police about a young man who was running a drug trafficking operation out of his house. They identified the man’s address, described his Toyota SUV and explained where the drugs were stashed.  

That was enough for the fuzz to take action.

So police moved in to run some surveillance. They sat on the home, waiting, watching, and when the guy’s SUV took off to a suspected drug deal, they tailed it. After the deal, they apprehended the customer, who had just bought drugs, and found 25 bags of fentanyl on him…

Instantly they knew they were on to something big.

Police quickly got a state search warrant and moved in on the suspect’s home, at the corner of Roxbury Street and Fairfield Avenue in Hartford. Within, they discovered the goods: over 15,000 bags of fentanyl, $7,116 in cash and a 9mm handgun with ammunition.

The suspect, Jonathan Rivera, was promptly arrested, taken in to custody and is expected to face a detention hearing in federal court in the very near future.

And good riddance. Fentanyl is some nasty, awful shit. Anyone caught peddling that poison deserves to be locked up for attempted murder, for a long time.

Just to give you an idea for how dangerous this stuff is: fentanyl is involved in more overdoses than both prescription painkillers and street heroine. Sure, some crazy bastards will intentionally seek it out, but most people who consume fentanyl do so on accident. Some dealers have been known to cut their heroine with fentanyl in order to make it seem more potent. Others have used it to counterfeit prescription opioids or sedatives that they then go selling to unwitting customers.

The problem with that? Fentanyl is 50-100 times more chemically potent than morphine. And when combined with heroine, it’s lethality increases even more… Often, when people snort, shoot or otherwise consume fentanyl accidentally, they end up overdosing — and many of them die.

So, when police stop a huge amount of that stuff from making it onto the street, it’s one of the few drug busts that everyone should actually celebrate. This isn’t cannabis or mushrooms or LSD, this isn’t cocaine or even black tar heroin — this is fentanyl. The less of that stuff we have cut into the drug scene of America, the better off we’ll be.

Whoever that confidential informant was, they’re an American hero. And they may never be truly recognized for the lives they saved.