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STATE OF VERMONT
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY
VERMONT STATE POLICE
PRESS RELEASE
CASE#: 16D100625
TROOPER: Ryan Wood
STATION: Rockingham
CONTACT#: 875 2112
DATE/TIME: 3/16/16 at 0722 hours
LOCATION: Interstate 91 north, near mile marker 46 in Springfield, VT
ACCUSED: Tai Conklin
AGE: 41
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Eden Mills, VT
VIOLATION: Trafficking Heroin, Transporting Heroin into Vermont, Possession of Heroin, Possession of Cocaine.
ACCUSED: Ciree Nash
AGE: 37
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Eden Mills, VT
VIOLATION: Trafficking Heroin, Transporting Heroin into Vermont, Possession of Heroin, Possession of Cocaine.
SUMMARY OF INCIDENT: On 3/16/16, at approximately 0722 hours, Vermont State Police conducted a motor vehicle stop on Interstate 91 northbound, near mile marker 46, in Springfield, Vermont for following too closely. The operator, Tai Conklin, 41 and his wife, Ciree Nash, 37, were found to be in possession of 788 bags of heroin and approximately 1 oz of cocaine. Conklin and Nash were arrested and transported to the Rockingham State Police Barracks for processing. Both Conklin and Nash were issued citations for Trafficking Heroin, Transporting Heroin into Vermont, Possession of Heroin, and Possession of Cocaine. Both were lodged at the Southern State Correctional Facility for lack of $25,000 bail.
COURT ACTION: Y
COURT DATE: 3/22/16
COURT: Windsor
LODGED - LOCATION: SSCF
BAIL: $25,000
Couple charged with heroin trafficking By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT | March 21,2016 Email Article Print Article WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A hospital emergency room worker and her husband could face up to 40 years in prison if convicted after she was allegedly caught “body packing” more than 800 bags of heroin. Ciree Nash, 37, and Tai Conklin, 41, of Eden Mills, pleaded innocent Thursday in White River Junction criminal court to a single felony count each of trafficking heroin. Nash was ordered held for lack of $8,000 bail and her husband was ordered held for lack of $10,000 bail. Vermont State Police Trooper Ryan Wood said it was just coincidence that led him to the large bust. Around 8 p.m. Tuesday, Wood said, he stopped the couple for going almost 90 mph in their Subaru Outback as they headed south down Interstate 91. Wood said they told him they were headed to New York City to visit Conklin’s mother for three days, but the trooper said there was just a pizza box on the backseat and nothing that looked like luggage for a family trip. Wood said he got more suspicious when he saw a large amount of cash in Nash’s wallet as she retrieved her driver’s license. Nash claimed it was less than a thousand dollars, but Wood said when he asked her to count it out she did so deceptively and “miscounted” clumps of bills, telling him it was $750 total. He estimated the actual number to be between $2,000 and $3,000, according to affidavits. After sending the couple on their way with a ticket, Wood wrote that he did a bit more computer research and determined that Nash had been arrested in December on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs after she was “found unconscious in her vehicle with drug paraphernalia in plain sight.” Wood called police in Morrisville and learned that they suspected the couple “were actively distributing large amount of heroin in Lamoille County ... making two trips on a weekly basis to purchase bulk quantities of heroin and returning to Vermont to sell it,” Wood wrote. On Wednesday morning shortly after 7 a.m., Wood wrote, he spotted the couple’s blue Subaru Outback headed back up I-91 in Rockingham and eventually stopped it on a stretch of the highway in Springfield for allegedly following too close behind another vehicle. Wood said that when Nash opened her wallet this time the currency was gone and the couple advised him that they had cut short their visit to New York because “their son, who they had left at home with their three other children, had broken his arm and so they were returning.” “(Nash) admitted she and Conklin suffer from heroin addiction and (said) that they plan on trying to get sober by traveling to Hawaii and giving up heroin,” Wood wrote, adding that after a state police drug dog walked around the vehicle and “alerted” on the front passenger door, the couple allegedly consented to being searched. Troopers said they found a “bundle” of ten bags of heroin hidden inside a condom that was stuffed in Conklin’s pants along with a small glass crack pipe. Nash then allegedly removed a similar package from her own pants and an additional bundle of heroin from her bra, Trooper Wood wrote, adding that an additional pill bottle containing what were believed to be crack rocks was also found on Nash when she was searched again back at the State Police barracks by a female trooper. Wood said that in all the couple had a total of 781 bags of heroin with approximately 25 grams of the brown powder, an amount he noted would be “well in excess of the trafficking limit of 3.5 grams.” Nash has almost no prior criminal record while Conklin, a self-employed carpenter who built the couple’s house, has a prior felony conviction for drunk driving third offense and is on probation for a 2005 felony conviction for larceny from a person. The couple are each facing up to 40 years in prison and/or fines of over $1 million dollars if they were to be convicted of trafficking into the state.
2016-03-16 / Front Page
Couple arrested with 788 bags of heroin
Tai Conklin, 41. — COURTESY OF VERMONT STATE POLICE
Tai Conklin, 41. — COURTESY OF VERMONT STATE POLICECiree Nash, 37. — COURTESY OF VERMONT STATE POLICE
Ciree Nash, 37. — COURTESY OF VERMONT STATE POLICE
SPRINGFIELD — A couple from Eden Mills, Vermont was arrested Wednesday morning after police found them to be in possession of 788 bags of heroin following a traffic stop.
The driver, Tai Conklin, 41, and his wife, Ciree Nash, 37, were pulled over near mile marker 46 on Interstate 91 in Springfield at approximately 7:22 a.m. by state police for following a vehicle too closely.
Police found the couple to be in possession of 788 bags of heroin and approximately 1 oz. of cocaine. The couple were issued citations for trafficking heroin, transporting heroin in Vermont, possession of heroin and possession of cocaine. They are currently being lodged at Southern State Correctional Facility for lack of $25,000 bail.
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| Ciree Nash, 37 Tai Conklin, 41 |
Great job VSP thank you!
ReplyDeleteEden Mills?, proves that heroin reaches even the most remote places in vermont. Good job VtSP.
ReplyDeleteWhy do Liberals think Shumlin is a hero ? He has done nothing to stop addiction. But he loves to give speeches on it.
ReplyDeleteAnd what is your idea on how to stop addiction? Please share it. You might have the answer.
DeleteGlad you asked, 2:47!
DeleteThe April 2016 issue of Harper's has an article by Dan Baum, "Legalize It All," which explains how to stop not addiction, but its growth and the violence associated with it.
At bottom is the fact that when substances are illegal, like alcohol was during Prohibition, it becomes extremely profitable to trade in them and even more profitable to recruit potential addicts.
So, we remove the profitability by legalizing ALL the banned substances, regulating the manufacture (for purity and dosage control, etc.) and controlling the market-- lowering the price to where it simply does not pay to be a mule or even a dealer, but it pays to be an employee. When heroin can be bought for $1 a bag, who's going to want to be a pusher or a mule carrying 788 bags for $5 and risk going to jail for bootlegging? Who's going to pay a pusher $2 for a bag when they can buy it legally for half that?
Now, how many people are going to become addicts when heroin is $1 a bag? Baum reports (p. 26) "The lifetime prevalence of adult drug use in Portugal [which decriminalized "cocaine, heroin and the rest of the drug spectrum'] rose slightly, but problem drug use-- that is, habitual use of hard drugs-- declined after Portugal decriminalized, from 7.6 to 6.8 per 1,000 people [a 10.6% drop]. Compare that with nearby Italy, which didn't. . . rates rose from 6.0 to 8.6 per 1,000 people over the same time span [a 17.6% rise]."
So, it is very probable that legalizing it will reduce addiction-- we won't have businesses or people making more money (as the tobacco companies do) by creating more addicts. And the money we save from the "war on drugs" can then be put to use helping addicts cure themselves. Our experience with both alcohol and tobacco shows that we are not going to end addiction, but we will be able to stop a lot of it, plus we will certainly end the violence associated with the trade.
Baum was the one to whom John Ehrlichmann, Nixon's White House counsel, said, "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." (p. 22)
I really think it's about time we took it into our hands to straighten things out. Springfield has to shake itself free of the shop town mentality and do things for itself rather than waiting for Superman.
@2:47 There is no known cure for opiate addiction. Addicts, (those that don't die) spend the rest of their life craving the next fix. The affliction being so great users will do ANYTHING from theft to prostitution to fund it. Worse yet, are those that recruit new users for which to sell until you have the epidemic we now face.
DeleteUnfortunately the only effective solution is that adopted by most Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Unquestionably harsh, but undeniably effective. Trust me, I've been there. Illegal drugs are almost non existent.
Keep in mind, the majority of heroin enters the United States through an open boarder with Mexico. Building a wall and securing it will undeniably benefit Vermont and every other state. Beyond that, the on-going tragedy of Mexico's drug war would spare impoverished, corrupt, border towns.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/
@6:09, Agree Shumlin is a phony and pathological liar. A philandering politician that lies as easily as he breaths. Go ahead and search YouTube for "Shumlin Liar"
Here's a couple classics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDQ3WLuxjXQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOtyUn_70WY
5:38, what is your source for the claim that there is no "cure"? Abstinence would certainly seem to be a cure, and there are recovering addicts who, like alcoholics, live in a regimen of abstinence.
DeleteChuck, when bath salts were still legal and widely available, how well did that work out? Aware of the cost to administer critical care and hospitalize these uninsured derelicts? You do understand SMCS is financially insolvent because od this element, right?
ReplyDeletePlease explain what you mean by, "shop town mentality?"
8:33, you'll have to provide me with data about the numbers of people consuming and overdosing bath salts and the costs associated, as well as the financials for Springfield Medical Center in regard to a bath salts overdose crisis being responsible for whatever financial situation it faces.
ReplyDelete"Shop town mentality" first came to my attention when a retired veteran of Bryant Grinder (who had also worked at J&L before that) told me how if a supervisor switched membership in the Elks to the Moose or another service organization, all the men under him would do the same. I asked a then-worker at J&L in its last days if that was still the practice. "No," he said, "but we have a name for it." I asked what it was. "Brown-nosing."
There is a natural tendency for people lower on the ladder to imitate the choices of those higher. It's what holds the troop, the pride or the herd together. It might even help hold the shop floor together.
But: Remove the supervisor or remove the shop (as happened with the rape of Precision Valley), and what is left is a bunch of people with no one who is providing them with a standard of imitation. It is natural for them to wait around for someone else to tell them what to do. That's the shop mentality. Springfield's economic progress since the rape of PV has been largely the result of retired Wall Street types coming in and saying, "Hi, I'm going to do this for Springfield," and other Wall Street types (like Unilever) coming in and saying, "Hi, I'm going to take this away." Why shouldn't 'we take charge?
That isn't 'shop town' mentality, it's SOP everywhere. Having a Leader make all the important calls simplifies life. I suppose you could call it the Sharpton Syndrome.
DeleteWell Bob...there you go again. I heard Sharpton is thinking of moving to your neighborhood.
DeleteHey, Ms Anon 11:32, is that right? I wonder if he would buy my place at what the town says it's worth. Oops, sorry, that may be too complicated a concept.
DeleteWhat's complicated about it?
DeleteLet Darwin fix it, make it legal make it free. If you are fit enough to survive you will evolve.
ReplyDeleteGreat Job all right especially when the charges were all dismissed! Unbelievable! I don't know why the police even bother busting people when the court turns around and dismisses the charges. They are free and clear of all charges. Do you think they are going to stop? Why would they? Nothing happened to them not one thing! They have their kids their home their freedom! All charges dismissed!
ReplyDelete