KANKAKEE, Illinois — A 28-year-old Kankakee man is facing 19 criminal counts, including Class X felonies for fentanyl delivery and for possessing a machine gun as a felon, after Illinois State Police officers raided three houses in the city on Wednesday morning and recovered more than 1,400 fentanyl pills and several firearms, the state police announced on Thursday, November 5.
Source: Illinois State Police
The Illinois State Police (ISP) Kankakee Area Metropolitan Enforcement Group — known as KAMEG — arrested Dequan Pope, 28, of Kankakee, following what the agency called an extensive narcotics investigation in the Kankakee area. Local radio station WGFA also reported the arrest in its November 5 local news coverage.
The raid: three properties, seven agencies, about 10 a.m. on Wednesday
On Wednesday, November 4, at approximately 10 a.m., KAMEG officers executed search warrants at three different properties in Kankakee: one in the 600 block of Country Club Drive, one in the 600 block of North Entrance Avenue, and one in the 300 block of South Rosewood, the state police said. Pope was arrested on scene.
The operation was not a single-agency action. Assisting KAMEG were the Kendall County Police Assistance Team, the DuPage Metropolitan Enforcement Group, ISP Troop 5, ISP Air Operations, ISP SWAT, and the Kankakee City Police Department — seven agencies in all, including air support and a SWAT team, for a three-address warrant service in a city of roughly 27,000 people about 60 miles south of Chicago on the I-57 corridor.
The 19 counts, charge by charge
The case was presented to the Kankakee County State's Attorney's Office, which filed the following charges, according to the state police: one count of possession of fentanyl with intent to deliver, 100 to 400 grams, a Class X felony; four counts of unlawful delivery of fentanyl, 15 to 100 grams, each a Class X felony; five counts of unlawful delivery of fentanyl, 1 to 15 grams, each a Class 1 felony; and two counts of unlawful delivery of MDMA, 1 to 15 grams, each a Class 1 felony.
The weapons and violence counts complete the list: three counts of felon in possession of a firearm, each a Class 2 felony; two counts of felon in possession of a machine gun, each a Class X felony; one count of armed violence, a Class X felony; and one count of armed habitual criminal, also a Class X felony. In Illinois, Class X is the most serious felony category below murder, and several of the counts filed against Pope carry that label.
Pope is being held at the Jerome Combs Detention Center in Kankakee pending his first court appearance, the state police said. The charges are not evidence against the defendant, and Pope is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Background: the third big KAMEG fentanyl-and-guns case in Kankakee this year
Wednesday's raid is the latest in a series of large KAMEG operations in the same small city. On June 5, 2026, KAMEG officers arrested Douglas P. Moore, 58, of Kankakee, after a search of a home in the 1900 block of East Oak Street recovered almost 200 grams of methamphetamine, more than 50 grams of crack cocaine, nearly 100 fentanyl pills, more than a dozen grams of heroin and a firearm, according to an earlier state police release. Six days later, on June 11, KAMEG arrested Rogelio Alvarado-Alarcon, 38, in searches of three properties — in Pembroke Township, in Kankakee and in Chicago — that recovered about 200 grams of cocaine, 75 grams of methamphetamine pressed pills, 6,000 grams of cannabis, four firearms, ammunition and cash.
The pattern across all three operations is the same one state police say they are targeting across Illinois: pressed fentanyl pills moving together with firearms, in quantities far beyond personal use. The 1,400 pills recovered on Wednesday are, by count, the largest single pill seizure in the three Kankakee operations the state police have announced this year.
For the Punjabi diaspora and trucking families who travel and work along I-57 — the freight corridor that runs from Chicago through Kankakee toward Memphis — the case is a local one: a state-police task force working three residential streets in a corridor city, and a county jail holding a 28-year-old who now faces some of the heaviest charges Illinois law allows. KAMEG asks anyone with non-emergency information about drug dealing or gang problems in the area to call (815) 933-1710. No further information is available, the state police said, and what happens next is Pope's first appearance in Kankakee County court.