A major drug sweep operation in southeast Vermont by the Vermont Drug Task Force has resulted in 15 arrests.
During the Fall of 2018, members of the Vermont Drug Task Force conducted an arrest operation in Windham and Windsor Counties after the region saw an uptick in overdose cases in the 2018. The Vermont Drug Task Force was assisted by the Springfield Police Department and the Brattleboro Police Department.
This enforcement action took place following drug investigations into the distribution of heroin, fentanyl, and crack cocaine in the greater Brattleboro, and Springfield areas.
All 15 defendants are being prosecuted by Windham and Windsor County States Attorney’s offices.
These investigations are ongoing and anyone with information is asked to contact the Vermont Drug Task Force at (802)722-4600 or submit a tip anonymously via www.VTIPS.info.
Those arrested include:
ACCUSED: Davion Fluker
AGE: 23
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Newark New Jersey
VIOLATION: Sale of Cocaine x2
ACCUSED: Joshua Sargent
AGE: 32
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Enfield, NH
VIOLATION: Sale of Fentanyl
ACCUSED: Brandon Heist
AGE: 21
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Springfield, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Fentanyl
ACCUSED: Terence Carr
AGE: 45
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Springfield, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Heroin, Sale of Fentanyl
ACCUSED: William Dalling
AGE: 61
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Charlestown, NH
VIOLATION: Sale of Fentanyl
ACCUSED: Corey Jackson
AGE: 31
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Fentanyl x3
ACCUSED: Dalton Kissell
AGE: 28
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Heroin, Sale of Fentanyl
ACCUSED: Jocelyn Pond
AGE: 29
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Fentanyl
ACCUSED: Rachael Gauthier
AGE: 48
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Heroin, Sale of Fentanyl x2
ACCUSED: Beth Davis
AGE: 41
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Regulated Drug (Prescription)
ACCUSED: Sarah Cassell
AGE: 31
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Cocaine
ACCUSED: Justine Pond
AGE: 29
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Fentanyl x2
ACCUSED: Peter Garrett
AGE: 31
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Cocaine
ACCUSED: Michelle Carrasquillo
AGE: 36
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Regulated Drug (Prescription) x4
ACCUSED: Daniel Horton
AGE: 34
CITY, STATE OF RESIDENCE: Brattleboro, VT
VIOLATION: Sale of Regulated Drug (Prescription) X3
Just more posturing by a legal system that seeks to justify its wasteful spending while the revolving door of our toothless courts spits this garbage back out on to the streets so the scenario can be repeated yet again -- all to the taxpayers detriment. Such a worthless charade.
ReplyDelete1:49 - I wish I knew how to fix it. In many cases it's easy to say the courts should be tougher, but that's expensive too, and there isn't enough jail space to get tough on all drug offenders. There is no simple or easy answer; a real fix would probably entail a society that's different from the one we have in one or more basic ways.
ReplyDeleteThe addiction is just the symptom, not the real problem. Here's a comic book treatment about the decades-long "rat park" study, which would teach us a lot:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/
Many countries have effectively curtailed opiate trafficking and the resulting spider web of addicts. Ask yourself, how do the thousands of unemployed addicts in VT support their addiction vs. the cost of a jail cell or death squad?
ReplyDeleteWhat's your source for the "thousands"?
ReplyDeleteFor decades now, we have had drug task forces at the Fed and State level focus on on trying to get the big suppliers via these sweeps. The result has been to keep the Cartels somewhat in check in America, but the impact on the opioid epidemic ha been minimal as the problem has just grown. The current Town policy of referring all drug tips to the State drug task force, which can take up to 2 years before a bust occurs is not working. It does not drive the drug trafficking out of town as there is an endless supply of dealers which are attracted to the population of addicts. Until we can get the using addicts out of the neighborhoods into a more isolate and surveilled and monitored area (not necessarily incarcerated), then we will not see major perceptible improvement of the situation. We have already seen that this works by the noticeable drop in overt drug trafficking downtown when the Town implemented foot patrols, surveillance cameras, shut down the Woolson Block, and the reduction of chaos on Union Street with the demolition of former drug dens. But we are not going to see such policies implemented, until the neighborhoods have an effective advocate at the table. Currently the State policy echo chambers only have effective advocates for the addicts, the families of addicts, and the rehabilitation industry.
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand the need for increased law enforcement locally, and I am in favor of eliminating the slum rentals, (aka drug dens) what you're suggesting sounds like internment camps for drug addicts. I don't think I need to explain how wrong that is. Targeting the owners of the slum rentals and "half-way houses" is the only real solution. Heavy fines, confiscation, and maybe prison time for the most egregious violators, should solve the problem. Drug test all applicants for public housing. If addicts have nowhere to stay, they'll go somewhere else.
DeleteGeorge, again your point is well made and your absence in Montpelier pains the community. Another advantage of segregating addicts is crime control. A hard core addict's addiction can reach $200/day.* Since most lack legitimate employment the only alternatives are, creating new addicts to resell to, theft and prostitution. Springfield is rapidly becoming Vermont's own Holyoak.
Delete*Heroin.Net. “The Street Cost of Heroin”. http://heroin.net/about/how-much-does-heroin-cost/#streetcost
Anonymous, while the Town and government can exert some control over using addicts via probation terms and release terms worked out with the Court system, it is very difficult to implement local control over the irresponsible landlords -- to the extent possible we have at the local level legislated such controls, although enforcement still lags. However, there are limits there as to what can be done regarding landlords at the local level. While I agree, the primary policy should be to destroy addict habitat -- at some point, given State policies one has to start thinking in terms of some form of housing which is not incarceration, but does not turn the neighborhoods into slums. What Anonym 12:18 proposes turns into a game of whack a mole, if addicts evicted in one location and then one of our many locally tax funded social service agencies finding them a dwelling somewhere else in town. At this point, there needs to be a somewhere else that isn't in the neighborhoods. I have been accused also of trying to create "leper colonies" -- one most remember that leprosy colonies were created because of a contagious disease before they had an effective cure. Using addicts are now considered to have a form of disease, I am just suggesting that the disease is contagious, and their ability to infect the community should be curtailed. That sounds harsh to many, but the alternative is actually harsh to neighborhoods. And to the extent it sounds harsh, it may well motivate using addicts to "go somewhere else."
DeleteGeorge, I used to think you had more sense than that. Addicts may be a nuisance, but they are still citizens. What you are suggesting is blatantly unconstitutional. No town in its right mind would even consider it. Drug addiction is not contagious, in the traditional sense. The "leper colony" defense doesn't apply. The only legal way to get them out of neighborhoods is to target the people who are letting them live there. Are you just too Republican to hold businesses accountable?
Delete@3:32 ... You couldn't be more correct. George's suggestion would be very unconstitutional.
DeleteI believe the phrase was "using addicts" -- most are on parole or diversion, frequently they have housing conditions. Many dispute the classification of drug addiction as a disease, I do not. But I do believe they are a danger to themselves and others, and although not contagious in the classical sense -- it is obviously contagious that is why they refer to it as the opioid epidemic. There is nothing blatantly unconstitutional about the concept of isolating the housing of using addicts who are in the judicial system either because of convictions or because a diversion system after arrest. What I am saying is that there is only so much local authorities can do given a failed system at the State level -- the blight ordinance which I was instrumental in getting passed, and the enforcement of the nuisance ordinances which I pushed while on the Selectboard were all aimed at irresponsible landlords. But there is only so much one can do -- while I was on the Ordinance Committee we considered a "Drug Den Ordinance" but eventually backed off as it appeared that the State might have a pre-emptive, but basically unenforced State statute which vested enforcement in the State Department of Health. We lobbied the State for more authority, but go nowhere. Probably the drug den ordinance needs to be revisited, but while our State Representative wrings her hands about the need for transitional housing and probably will fumble it back into the poor neighborhoods of towns like Springfield -- I proposed an actual project. A project that I should add actually has quite a bit of covert support, and unquestionably there is a need. But we prefer to demonize specific landlords while ignoring that they are getting using addicts dumped on their doorsteps by various Social Service Agencies who are quite willing then to step back and let them take the blame when things go sideways -- which they do with appalling frequency. We medicate and then set them loose on the neighborhoods and have at least managed to drive the black market price of suboxone way, way down because there is so much of it floating around Springfield. I am not a Republican. But I do believe in facing reality and trying to figure out solutions -- I have yet to hear solutions from elsewhere that we can afford to implement locally.
DeleteAnybody have any opinions on that "Rat Park" science experiment?
ReplyDeleteNobody clicked it.....nobody cares what you think.
DeleteYou've shown your colors....commie red.
Flawed experiment, but results are interesting. Alexander oversimplified, but he was undoubtedly right to the extent that environment is in fact part of the usage and addiction pictures. How do you propose we change the societal environment to lessen drug usage?
DeleteFirst, eliminate the profit motive. You know what that means: put the cartels out of business by legalizing and keep for-profit and not-for-profit corporations out of the market. The only entity that can be trusted to produce, distribute and market without the profit motivation is the government. Pay producers, but regulate them to a fare-thee-well. Pay all employees so well that they will do much worse skimming off the product at any point in the system and thereby losing their job.
DeleteSecond, no advertising. John Oliver did a show about how Purdue Pharmaceuticals basically created America's opioid epidemic by falsely advertising (to its extremely great profit) the harmlessness of its opioid products (it was also helped by Congress authorizing "fast track" approval of new drugs). Doctors will know where to send their patients for pain relief; addicts will get the word on the street. But if Purdue has a hand in it, your kids will learn from TV that all the cool adults use opioids, all the time.
People who think that making opioids available to the general public under those conditions will create a nation of addicts will be right-- unless we shift out of the mode of savage capitalism that has marked us since the 70's. So, we should be working on that at the same time-- and we can do it.
RE: "Addicts may be a nuisance, but they are still citizens."
ReplyDeleteMore so, they are convicted felons. Felons that willfully destroy lives as certain as any mass shooter. The system of coddling addicts is not working. I praise George for speaking an honest truth and sorry your personal attachment to an addict clouds your judgement.
Boy, it doesn't take long for the torches and pitchforks to come out! I guess that's what "keeping it local" means. It's not my "attachment to an addict;" it's my attachment to the Constitution, and the principles it embodies. Conservatives would do well to actually read that document, and ALL its amendments. A dope dealer moved in next door to me a while back. The local police were no help whatsoever. It was pressure exerted on their landlord that got rid of them. THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT! Treating slumlords with kidde gloves is the problem with this town!
DeleteNot all addicts are felons. You're painting with a very wide brush.
DeleteI don't have a problem with putting pressure on landlords, and tried to come up with as many ways as possible to do it. But, it has turned into a game of whack a mole. You are going to have drug trafficking wherever you have a market. The market is the using addict community. As fast as we drive them out of one area, another area in town becomes infected. You have agencies specifically saying that they are serving people who are no longer eligible for public or assisted housing, have you stopped to consider exactly what that might mean? Its not that they have a job, its because they have been kicked out of public housing and broken the rules of assisted housing. No not all addicts are felons, and not all addicts are "using addicts" -- but most using addicts are in fact known to the police, and they have either been arrested, being investigated and will eventually be arrested, or are in diversion. Most have a short shelf life if they keep using -- but they can cause havoc until they eventually successfully overdose. I have no been labeled a Conservative and a Liberal which more or less establishes that people like to use those instead of arguments.
DeleteI understand what you're saying, George. I still think the slumlords are the real problem. A local ordinance holding landlords legally responsible for the actions of their tenants would work. You punish the landlords, not the addicts. That'll avoid charges of discrimination. Your solution is illegal, and will never happen. The ACLU would eat you for breakfast. That's it.
DeleteWe incarcerate people; the surveillance and monitoring George proposes is less draconian than that. Too many people free to choose in fact choose to use, and thereby harm themselves and others. Housing is a side issue, not the basic one.
DeleteFreedoms that are abused are in many cases by law curtailed, and rightly so, but the law seemingly doesn't support George's suggestion. I wish it did. Like I said, a fix will require changing some of the norms, and if removing users' privacy will help them quit, then why not?
There are legal means by which society can confine people against their will. My point is that if someone has not been deemed a danger to themselves or others by a judge, nor been convicted of a crime, forcing that person to reside somewhere against their will is extremely illegal, and wildly unconstitutional. So nice to know how little you value our system of justice and rule of law, Phil, not go mention our freedoms as Americans. I could just as easily argue that all conservatives should be jailed, since being conservative is a predictor of mass shooters. Nah, maybe we could just put cameras in your homes and take your guns away. Sound like a plan?
Delete9:16 - Limit the discussion to people convicted of drug crimes, either dealing or possession. Then offer judges the option being suggested, which they don't have now, something other than jail or release. It would be akin to monitoring already done in some cases, but more stringent (if I understand what George wrote.)
ReplyDeleteThe constitution has been undermined and distorted since the day it was framed, by all three self-interested power-hungry branches of government. I don't see any comparable violence being done to it by limiting criminals' behavior in the manner suggested.
I'm not conservative on many issues. (Nor Libertarian - is that where you're coming from?) My "conservative" instincts would be to change as little as possible in fixing something. However, for this I can imagine no simple easy fix - yet a fix is surely needed. George's suggestion might entail a lot more public expense than the current catch and release thing, but that might be outweighed by private and indirect factors, like the health of neighborhoods, fewer addicts, etc.
This conversation never was limited to criminals. That's the problem. Being a "threat to yourself or others" carries with it only the POTENTIAL for criminality. Not only does simply being a drug user not meet the legal threshold for civil commitment, what George is proposing doesn't meet the standard for what civil commitment requires. Creating quasi-mental health/prison ghettos for people who MIGHT pose a threat to the community, is a slippery slope that will lead to the de facto incarceration of "undesirables" who may have done nothing wrong. This is exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews, at first. Then there are the Constitutional issues. Right to privacy, freedom from unreasonable searches and seisures, freedom of association, etc. "Steering" addicts to specific housing complexes violates the Fair Housing Act. There are ways to get drug addicts and criminals out of neighborhoods without creating a surveillance state, and trampling the Constitution. Simply deprive them of safe haven, by holding slumlords responsible for the condition of their properties, and the actions of their tenants. They'll be more careful who they rent to, if it costs them enough. The social service agencies may bear some of the resposibility, but it's the slumlords that give them a place to stay.
DeleteI don't have a problem necessarily in limiting it to convicts as that will address about 70% of the problem currently. However, let's get something clear. The State in its wisdom has emphasized a diversion program which is aimed at avoiding incarceration and avoiding convictions. The diversion program, however, does mandate rehab and places restrictions on the arrested addicts including frequently residence restrictions, etc. When the re-emphasized program was introduced as a solution to the huge backlog of cases and the maxing out of the prisons, and the cost of incarceration. A cogent question was asked at the public Town Hall hurrah boys public information session. It was asked by the locally demonized operator of the so-called "sober houses" and it was directly on point. "How is this going to work when we do not have facilities to handle the current load of addicts and you are going to push more individuals into this system which does not exist?" The response was draw-dropping, "We know that we do not have enough facilities, we believe that this program will throw a spotlight on the fact that we do not have enough facilities." I was listening to this Town Hall on the radio as I drove home, and began to wonder if the channel had just switched to an Saturday Night Live skit. In essence the State was saying it was going to behave like a traffic controller who directs traffic into a train wreck, instead of away from a train wreck. Now if you feel, that there is something un-Constitutional about what the State is already doing in it diversion program -- okay, then at least fix the problem with regards to the using addicts which have convictions that the State isn't incarcerating. No one ever suggested just randomly rounding up addicts by the way, my suggestion was always about addicts who were already in the system and were continually relapsing because they were still using.
Delete