Over the past three years, authorities in Riverside County, California, have seen a significant spike in drug trafficking in what is known as the “single largest drug trafficking distribution center in the United States, built on a web of highways, nondescript suburbia and empty desert,” The Desert Sun and USA Today report. While meth and heroin seizures have skyrocketed since 2013, so has surveillance, according to The Sun and USA Today’s investigation. The number of wiretaps in Riverside County in today exceeds “any other county or federal district by more than three to one,” with nearly 624 wiretaps in 2014 that captured “communications involving more than 44,000 people,” according to the investigation.
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