Charged in a global fentanyl ring is the head of the California police union.

Joanne Marian Segovia, the head of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, has been accused of importing and reselling deadly synthetic opioids from suppliers in half a dozen countries to customers all over the US. She allegedly spent nearly a decade of her tenure as executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association trafficking in the deadly drugs, using police resources to move pills and powders around the country. The Department of Homeland Security found Segovia's name and address on the phone of an international drug smuggling suspect and subsequently intercepted five shipments to her between July 2019 and January 2023, netting over a kilogram of controlled substances, including thousands of pills of the synthetic opioids tramadol and tapentadol. Segovia faces up to 20 years in prison for attempting to unlawfully import valerylfentanyl, a Schedule I synthetic fentanyl analogue. The most important details in this text are related to a woman who was arrested for allegedly placing packages containing valerylfentanyl, which she claimed to work for the police department.

She was released without bond and ordered to refrain from travel outside Northern California. She could be fined up to $250,000 and served at least three years’ supervised release. Fentanyl overdoses, which killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2021, are the "single greatest challenge we face as a country," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday. Customs and Border Protection seized a record 15,000 pounds of fentanyl last year and is reportedly set to double that amount this year.