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Police in Southeastern Connecticut Call for More Federal Help to Combat Heroin Epidemic

Harriet Jones
/
WNPR
Senator Chris Murphy listens to members of the Regional Community Enhancement Task Force

Senator Chris Murphy spent Monday taking a deep dive into Connecticut's heroin and opioid addiction crisis, what he called a "day in the life."

At one of Murphy's stops, he sat with the members of a new law enforcement task force that’s been formed in southeastern Connecticut in response to the heroin crisis. And there was some fairly grim news for the senator as he sought the view from street level enforcement in the day-to-day fight against the addiction epidemic.

“This tainted heroin that we’re after, the users are seeking it out,” said Sgt. Nick Parham of Groton Town Police. He was referring to the fentanyl-laced heroin that’s caused a massive spike in overdose cases in southeastern Connecticut.

Parham said it's not a case of a bad batch: it’s here to stay. “That’s what gets them closest to that first high that they experienced,” he said.

This body, the Southeastern Connecticut Regional Community Enhancement Task Force, was formed seven weeks ago in response to that overdose crisis, centered at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in late January.

While there’s been an attempt to understand addiction as a disease, and move away from the criminalization of users, Brett Mahoney, Chief of Waterford Police reminded the room that this is not a victimless crime. "People are dying of heroin, I understand that," he said. "But before they started dying from this quote bad batch of heroin, all of us here had to deal with all the ripple effects of this." 

Credit Harriet Jones
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Harriet Jones
Chief of Waterford Police Brett Mahoney makes a point

Mahoney said the whole community pays a price for drug addiction. "Everybody pays higher taxes," he said. "You pay higher at retail, because they’re stealing constantly. My mother -- her house got burglarized five times when I was kid -- that’s probably why I’m a cop now. The human trafficking element, the prostitution element, that I know Groton sees a lot, Norwich, New London. They’re victimizing themselves to feed their drug addiction."

Addicts are now often being funneled to diversionary programs, and their drug possession treated as a misdemeanor.

State’s attorney Michael Kennedy said he believes there’s a consequence to that approach. "More people are using these drugs, because they’re aware that the prosecution of those drugs has been statutorily stepped down," he said.

And he had this perspective on what’s happening now on the streets of Norwich, New London, and other small cities in Connecticut. "In the 20 years that I’ve been prosecuting cases, I’ve never seen quantities of heroin being seized by local people, like these guys have been doing," he told Murphy.

Credit Harriet Jones
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Harriet Jones
Detectives from several forces attending the meeting

In the face of that reality, the Chief of Groton Police Louis Fusaro, said budgets are being squeezed. "Stipends have been reduced. Asset forfeiture is no longer available," Fusaro said. "Those are monies that we use for enforcement efforts. So it just comes at a very difficult time. All the officers that you see here, and detectives that are involved in this are coming out of our existing staffing, our existing budget."

Task force members told Murphy they’d like to see more federal dollars being committed to the problem, and more on-the-ground help from agencies like the DEA and ATF.

Harriet Jones is Managing Editor for Connecticut Public Radio, overseeing the coverage of daily stories from our busy newsroom.

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