http://www.vermontjournal.com/?q=content/police-and-select-board-respond-outcry
Police and Select Board Respond To Outcry
Submitted by VT Journal on Wed, 08/15/2012 - 9:58am
By
Cindy Johnson
SPRINGFIELD, VT -In the wake of last month’s Springfield Select Board meeting, where close to 100 citizens attended to express concern over a violent incident in the downtown, Springfield Police and the Select Board have taken new actions over the last month aimed at curbing the drug and gang related violence problems in Springfield. In addition to weekly meetings between the police and the Board since the July meeting, the Board has met with the Town’s attorney to consult about Vermont Statue 4252 which relates to penalties for dispensing or selling regulated drugs in a dwelling under which “(a) No person shall knowingly permit a dwelling, building, or structure owned by or under the control of the person to be used for the purpose of illegally dispensing or selling a regulated drug. (b) A landlord shall be in violation of subsection (a) of this section only if the landlord knew at the time he or she signed the lease agreement that the tenant intended to use the dwelling, building, or structure for the purpose of illegally dispensing or selling a regulated drug. (c) A person who violates this section shall be imprisoned not more than two years or fined not more than $1,000.00 or both.” Since the burden of proof under which the town can enforce this statute is less stringent than that applied to law enforcement, the town may be able to compel landlords renting to known drug offenders to not renew offenders’ leases and/or evict said offenders. Letters are being drafted to some local landlords informing them that drug activity has been occurring at their properties such that further action may be taken to compel landlords to act. Police asked town residents concerned over crime to keep records in a log book of times, dates, license numbers, and other details of suspicious incidents that can be passed along to police, and be willing to testify in court.
State representative Alice Emmons spoke concerning gang related crime and actions taken among lawmakers in Montpelier to form gang task forces, saying that gangs are on the rise in rural states where these groups feel they can operate under the radar of rural law enforcement. Springfield Police Chief Johnston, though he could not comment on any pending investigations, did confirm that some gang recruiting is being done in Springfield. Action has been taken to keep police on foot patrol, where Chief Johnston is requiring that officers email a reason if they are unable to walk a beat. The SPD has recently hired a new officer and is in the process of adding a second. One individual has been arrested and a search warrant was issued for one residence where a weapon was confiscated as a result of last month’s incident.
An interview on SAPA-TV’s Puggie’s Corner was also held by the SPD. Some SPD officers have received training for gang related crime and have attended a drug conference. A 35 page (front and back) report was delivered by the SPD to the Board detailing 509 calls made to the police during the month of July. Details of 7 of those incidents were forwarded to the Eagle Times for publication. The Board discussed changes to the report with Board member David Yesman asking for more information concerning follow-ups on arrests and legal actions taken, and Board member Peter MacGillivray asked that cases that were unrelated to citizens’ concerns be omitted. It was proposed that future reports from the SPD focus on foot patrol incidents, fights, drugs, arrests, juveniles, domestics, burglaries, DUI, and gang activity. It was agreed the report remain in its entirety and be revisited at the next Board meeting, where the issue of gang and drug violence was added as a specific agenda item.
Approximately 75 concerned citizens and town leaders attended the meeting that was held at the high school to accommodate the crowd. Note was made by several of the citizens who spoke with appreciation for the increased police presence in the downtown. Chief Johnston reported that two local businesses, Penguin Mart and The Magic Mushroom, selling bath salts and incense that are known to be used as drug inhalants, have been approached by the SPD. Neither business owner was present to speak to police, however, police were informed by clerks that the questionable items would not be removed from store shelves until chemical tests confirm their harmful effects since these items are labeled for external use only. Some mention was made that these businesses might be compelled to remove said items if citizens expressed concern directly to owners and/or indirectly in the form of boycotts of said businesses by town residents. A forum on drug related crime will be held by the Springfield Prevention Coalition in the meeting room at the police station next Tuesday, August 21 from 9-12 noon.
In an earlier public hearing, testimony from representatives of Springfield Trails and Greenways (STAG) was heard concerning two applications for grant money from VTrans to explore the feasibility of extending the Town’s bike path into North Springfield. The grant proposal requires the town to be a co-applicant and assume administration responsibilities for the grant, but requires no additional capital outlay from taxpayers. Both grants require a 10% local match in funds. A current account of $48,000 exists earmarked for STAG, that has been funded through fines and donations made to keep the pump station at its current location. The feasibility study is for informational purposes only and requires that no commitment be made by the town to pursue the building of the path. The Board approved the grant requests unanimously at the subsequent meeting. STAG, an organization of approximately 20 active members, has a Facebook page and is currently looking for additional volunteers.
A new tobacco vendor’s license was denied in a vote of 2 to 2 with one abstention to the Family Dollar on River Street after testimony from Ethan McNaughton and Laura Cody McNaughton, a Prevention Consultant at Vermont Department of Health, urged the Board to deny the application arguing that limiting the number of locations that sells cigarettes has been proven to curb smoking among children. Of particular concern for Ethan McNaughton was that Family Dollar sold toys for children. Board members Peter MacGillirvay and Stephanie Gibson cast the two nay votes.
Clueless chatter as usual. Alice needs to go plain and simple. She helped create these problems along with Shumlin. She is head of the Corrections committee who have worked with Shumlin to release inmates early. Every step leads to a lined pocket somewhere in this town. I am so tired of it!
ReplyDeleteDisagree it appears that the Selectboard was responding to a resolution that Peter MacGilvary referred during the meeting. I don't think the article quite got the discussion regarding landlords quite right. I believe what the board did was authorize putting specific landlords who had tenants who were arrested for drug or firearms on notice of the law which provides for criminal penalties. What several speakers also urged the board to do was investigate nuisance lawsuits with the Town Attorney. The nuisance lawsuits are the ones which have a lower level of evidence required and are not encumbered with some of the preconditions that apply to criminal lawsuits. I believe that was what they were trying to drive home to the boardmembers, but I could be wrong it was a little difficult to hear in there. Plus, it is my understanding that the two merchants have in fact responded by removing the offending merchandise from their shelves. The article says that the Selectboard has been meeting on a weekly basis, I don't see how that could possibly be true or accurate. It looked more to me like the Selectboard Chair and perhaps the Town Manager had been meeting with the Police Chief on a weekly basis and was trying to avoid having Selectboard members like MacGilvary introduce the resolution for passage -- but I could be wrong on that. Its not always clear when the Chairman uses the word Selectboard whether he is talking about the Selectboard or himself, as he seems at times to think that he is the Selectboard -- but that is just the view of a spectator observing from the outside.
Delete@ Axlerod...
DeleteIt is too bad the body of knowledge your intelect revolves around is so "inside the system"
you only muddy the water and seem to offer zero real alternative while perpetuating the problem.
Aethelred or Axlerod or whatever your name is, you are muddying the water with details. It is much better to keep the populace confused that way we won't get bothered with these pesky nuisance suits that the Selectboard could bring and we can safely bump the case up to the State Attorney for inaction instead. Those young whippersnappers at the meeting, well a couple didn't look too young, are going to disrupt the system. You see we have all of these not for profits who do an exceedingly good job of talking things to death, so if we can just refer this to their committees and forums then the Town can avoid investing any money into disrupting the status quo. If they succeed in talking the Selectboard into actually doing something it would disrupt the black market and then what would that do to all of these agencies which survive because we have all these substances being sold in the community, well it would just be terrible look at all the unemployed persons that would generate. Its a darn good thing that that Mr. Chuck Gregory changed his position on marijuana at the meeting as well, at least I think he changed his position -- it was a bit confusing as he stated both the grounds for decriminalizing marijuana and criminalizing marijuana, but at the very least he got everyone sufficiently confused that nobody paid further attention to him. Not that it takes too much to get Mr. Knoras confused. And I think the Chairman deserves a lot of credit, why he became a one man Selectboard and therefore avoided the need to even consider passing the proposed resolution that Mr. MacGilvary had in front of him. Course everything they did do came from that nasty resolution, but at least he managed to preserve the notion that the Selectboard never acts on anything at board meetings unless they absolutely have to. I especially like it when that young man explained to them that somebody was using the Park Street School playground for drugtrafficking after dark -- they asked him to tell them precisely when after dark it was going to be used for that. Very efficient, you see that way the Chief of Police could work into his schedule when to go do surveilance at Park Street. It also cut down on the paperwork since the drugtraffickers would be sure not to be there at whatever time was announced, its a very clever Chief of Police we have there. Course the meeting sort of morphed into a prolonged advertising session for the not for profits to sign up people to come to their T group sessions, I mean forums and planning sessions. I think if we continue to have those for the next 5 years that we may actually not have to worry about the problem because the gang members should have managed to kill each other off by then. And that Town Manager he surely is a piece of work, why he just made me proud how he conducted that investigation as to whether the State was keeping the spirit of their agreement, you know he went and asked the DOC whether they were releasing prisoners arrested elsewhere from jail into Springfield and they cleared that right up for him and said no. Then the man fromt the State he clarified that as well that no siree they weren't releasing them straight from the jail. Glad we got that settled. And we only have 134 parolees living in Town and only 90 some of them are on intensive monitoring due to violent tendencies, its very comforting that they are right on top of all those homegrown violent people. Not sure where all that stuff came from the police reporting that the shooter and the assailant were from New Jersey, nope all our troublemakers are homegrown. Kind of makes you proud fits in with all those buy local movement folks you know.
Deletehey Boss, uh... you missed somebody. the dog.
DeleteMy Hone and I were wondering about that dog as well. We fully intended to go to that select board meeting, but my daughter had brought over this incense that she had gotten at one of the local establishments and we had kicked back and were having a few brew in our apartment breathing that wonderful incense. Then all of a sudden the TV done sprouted legs and started running around the room and we of course had to tackle it and tie it down because if it had escaped we wouldn't have had anything to watch Glenn Beck on. When we got that handled we decided it was time to go to the meeting, but the door was kind of out of kilter or something and didn't look real safe to go through so we decided maybe we had overexerted ourselves and just needed to go to bed, which would have been fine had we been able to find the bedroom.
DeleteThen we woke up about 3:00 am and looked on the TV and that woman from the coalition for something was just finishing up with her request that the board members come to her meeting, and we figured the meeting must be about over so we didn't come.
The next morning my Hone got this stupid idea that if he fed the cat some of that incense it might help it with those hairballs it gags on so he put some in with its food and said "Here kitty, kitty". Course the tabby ran right over and ate it all up...but then it began to behave very peculiar and finally made a mad dash for the open and window and dove out.
Now given we live on the eighth floor that didn't work out so well for tabby. We kind of scraped her remains off the sidewalk and put them in a cigar box. My Hone was kind of angry about the whole thing and went down to the establishment to complain, but the lady said they had taken them off the shelves as a matter of community cooperation. Well Hone wasn't very pleasant and used some colorful language which I later told him he should apologize for it. But we got to watch the whole meeting on a SAPA disc.
Not sure exactly how Shumlin can be said to have created this problem. Would agree that Alice doesn't seem to be adding much to the community. Want to explain how you think Shumlin helped create this problem?
DeleteMr. Boss Hogg, Will you marry me? You are right on target, and very humorous. It was difficult to hear the speakers, even with a microphone. There's a cold drink machine in the cafeteria that cycles and is awfully loud. On top of that, there was an echo in the room. Oh well, the Talking Head non profits chittering about meetings, the Police Chief attempting to justify, blah blah. Blah, Blah, that's my mantra. What's with the dog?
DeleteThey seem to have some kind of limit on the length of these comments. Didn't get to explain about the funeral we had for poor tabby. Since she loved children we decided to bury her out back of Park Street School just behind that playground area. We weren't sure whether that was quite legal, so we decided to do that after dark. Discovered all these young people there playing this game involving needles and such, looked like they were having a lot of fun.
DeleteAnyway they helped us put tabby in the ground and then seemed to want us to play their game. My Hone indicated that we needed to get home to watch Fox News and their mood seemed to change a little. But we climbed in the car and drove off, they gave us a 36 gun salute which I thought was very touching given tabby had just been buried. But my Hone thought that perhaps it wasn't a salute and they were shooting at us just because a few of the bullets seemed to be bouncing off the tarmaack. He hasn't been thinking quite straight since the incense incident.
I got to thinking that the select board could just get those young men to volunteer to guard and monitor the playground after dark. I bet if that coalition lady asked them they would agree to do that and then the police wouldn't need to bother.
When my daughter was down getting her donuts and incense she had a chat with one of the local law men and they explained a new program they have. They call it operation curbside. They distribute handcuffs to the citizens and then the citizens when they spot drugtraffickers can just go catch them and cuff them and put them out by the curbside to be collected like they used to with the garbage. Then the police can just come at a scheduled time to pick them up at the curbside. Seemed like a very convenient program to me.
And perhaps we could organize neighborhoods to pick up the shell casings that those litterers are leaving about. Didn't seem like Mr. MacGilvary knew quite what to say to that helpful man who had been out picking up the brass litter. And here he had been so helpful. I guess the police were too busy trying to find that gun that shot 9 mm bullets to go look over there by that house.
It is Shumlin who pushed to let out the inmates earlier than their term to be rehabilitated on the outside.
ReplyDeleteAs should be obvious from my posts, I am a Shumlin supporter. But I have a growing suspicion that the recent outbreak in violence in Springfield is linked in some manner to the prison. The word going round in the community is that the prisoners families move to Springfield during the incarceration period. The prisoners are sent to rehab centers located in other parts of the State, and then when the rehab centers release them they are released to the communities where their families are now located. The paragraph that MacGilvary read from the resolution called for an investigation as to whether the State was keeping the “spirit” of its agreement not to release prisoners into Springfield who had originally not been residents of Springfield at the time of their arrest. The prison officials appear to have been going to great lengths to keep the “letter” of this agreement, for awhile a motel over in Ascutney was a favorite place to house recently released prisoners. But to move all this from the suspicion stage to the fact stage, we would need to have someone launch an investigation as to where parolees are living say 6 or 9 months after they have been released either from prison or the rehab centers. Unfortunately, the Town Administration does not appear to be competent enough to ask the right questions and they take whatever the officials say as the whole truth. If in fact Shumlin’s administration is gaming the system, then I agree they should be held accountable. If on the other hand, the only change they implemented was to try and keep small time marijuana users from extended expensive incarceration then I would say, no this isn’t Shumlin’s fault. I agree that Alice Emmons is probably not savvy enough to ask the right questions or to expend any time investigating the issue herself, she just likes to report on what other committees are doing.
DeleteYou are absolutely right Anonymous 11:37. We need to keep those non-violent young men who get busted for marijuana in jail longer. That way they can pick up the networking skills and friendships that will be with them for life. Besides life is pretty good in there as I understand it. The new local boys sometimes have trouble adjusting to the food as it can be a little constipating, but they have networks in there that provide them with constant enemas to loosen things up a little. And when they decide they don't want any more enemas they have these social clubs they can join that provide support groups after they get out on parole. They help them into the network so they can market their goods and services after jail, sets them up with a pattern for life. They let those young men out too soon and they might remain constipated and wouldn't have gained the sophistication that they get from rooming with people from the city areas. Gives them a certain polish and swagger, even a different vocabulary after they graduate from prison. No we need to keep them in long enough so they can provide those associations. Then they will have the marketing skills when they get out to pay for those fine courses that are provided for a fee by those private organizations which helps out the local employment as well.
DeleteSeems that there's a whole lotta non-profittin' goin' on in Springfield?
ReplyDeleteAm beginning to suspect that may be part of the problem, as the Selectboard doesn't appear to be able to actually govern it just listens and asks the non-profits to report back. The result is a bunch of time being diverted from actually action to babbling.
DeleteNow don't go maligning those not for profits, although some of them are a bit on the windy side at select board meetings. Nevertheless, they provide an important input so that the select board does not wind up spending money on foolish things that would disrupt the local economy and cause landlords to do background checks before renting out rooms. What we need are a few more not for profits, then the select board could quit governing altogether which is fine idea. Some of my friends in the Tea Party think perhaps we could just do without government at all, which seems to me like a very innovative idea that perhaps we should take out for a spin and see how it works. We already know our inactive Town government works pretty well.
DeleteThis blogspot sucks, it is a negative waste of time. Those writing on here should go get a job and stop complaining and whining. Please.... This is not your revolution people.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely as I was saying to my daughter as we went to pick up her ADC check all those negative people out there should go and get a job. I bet not a single one of those young whippersnappers at the meeting has a job. I bet they just sit around in their subsidized housing all day and ponder how wonderful Springfield used to be.
DeleteOhh anon 4:26, don't get your panties in a twist. Keep your pad on sticky side down.
DeleteI have a job, in fact 2 of them. I LOVE to come on here and complain. I work the 3rd shift and it gets me by sometimes just reading and complainin'
Like I always say, if you don't like it leave. Just because you don't like what people have to say it doesn't mean others might like it.
Anyways where else can the good folks of Springfield go to complain anonymously? I have only seen one REAL name on here anyways, everyone else hides, like me.
This is our job, what do you mean?
Deleteyup it is a waste of time..funny how nobody knew about the abuse at the schools until it hit the blog and the all of a sudden EVERYBODY was on here to find out what was going on...so much of a waste of time that the administration of the schools were also reading it in their panic on how to handle their own PR nightmare...if it is such a waste why are you here lol
ReplyDeleteWell I am on here because our TV hasn't been working so well since my Hone and I tackled it and tied it down, and my Hone he doesn't seem to be functioning quite right since that incense either. And poor Tabby out in the cigar box just breaks my heart. But sure am glad they took the doors off the special play room they put my grandson in, he likes to have the teachers play chase me down the halls now. I think it is good exercise for him as he was starting to look a little like my daughter before she started on that diet and got down to her slim 250 lbs. I think another year of home schooling and those younger kids of hers will be ready for that special school for kids with gifted behavior there at Gateway. She hasn't been able to find a man to stay with her though so she has been thinking about volunteering up there at the prison, she heard they needed people to function as mules. Not exactly sure what that means or entails, but she says that it pays real well and they said that maybe they could use her to comfort those newbies instead of the enemas. Not sure exactly how that works, but they said she would qualify if they put a bag over her head. Didn't quite understand that part.
DeleteJulian.
DeleteThank you for your inspiration.
Well Master thank you, my daughter says that I inspired her to become as she is. Its these strong family values that made the difference.
DeleteThere is a lot of mindless negativity on this blogsite, but it is also a forum which ocasionally makes valid points and gets things out in the open to be debated either in straight dialogue or satiric sarcasm. I am willing to put up with the pointless negativity -- negativity which suggests no alternatives -- in order to listen to the facts and policies being debated. The existenc of the debate is a sign of a healthy community which has not been cowed into silence. The type which shows up at Selectboard meetings and refuses to be brushed off.
DeleteThanks for your comments Alpin.......now go have another beer.
DeleteNever touch the stuff, I drink liberal kool-aid instead.
DeleteSomeone has to tell the truth SOMEWHERE. And the less this blog is moderated. The more the truth gets out. I don't believe it to be a waste of time, the truth shall set you free and WE ALL HAVE TO WRITE MORE ON THIS BLOG, NOT LESS !!
ReplyDelete