The story is becoming a broken record. A young male in his twenties moves into the state generally seeking drug buying customers. That person enlists the help of a young woman either in her late teens or early twenties as a girlfriend but more of a person to provide a home base.
From there the visitor feeds the addiction and has the young girl enlist several friends who will sell the product usually to support their own habit. Within a year all are severely addicted except for the dealer and generally someone will die while working for the dealer either via an overdose or violence.
I think all residents of Orleans County would agree enough is enough. It’s time for a strong arm approach to this menace. Forget the idea of having an injection site. They have been proven to never work and just serve as a place for addicts to hang out and ply their trade. Our local state police, county sheriffs and city police forces are smart but under financed and under equipped to handle the wave of drug crime. They are further impeded by soft judges that grant bail the day after they are arrested. Let’s get serious here.
Get more financing for local equipment and manpower for law enforcement. The towns of Orleans County should use more local sheriff and state police patrols of local law enforcement for businesses and law abiding residents 24-7. When a bust happens or an arrest, keep these idiots locked up and impose severe penalties to the maximum level of the written law to contain the problem. No injection sites and more counseling centers and education units. And most of all incarcerate the offenders. Some just do not respond to counseling. They will respond to jail time and while in jail can get cleaned up. There is a bill in the Vermont general assembly to jail a person for 10 years for selling 1000 doses of fentanyl. Now that sounds like a deterrent.
I speak to many individuals in the law enforcement profession regularly. They know who most of these criminals are. They need our help to enforce the capture and corralling of these drug houses which, sadly enough, we have in every town. In some cases all they need is a solid lead and they can do the rest. Law abiding Local citizens need to stand up and report illegal activities when they see them and not look the other way.
And while out of state and region dealers command the most attention there are plenty of local dealers as well in Orleans County and for the most part, neighbors and folks living near them know who they are. They are committing the robbery crimes to maintain their habit through stealing from local folks.
Working together as residents with local law enforcement is the most direct and immediately effective way to curb this scourge. We need to help the local law help us. Now. Before it’s way too late. Thanks for your time.
All very good points Ken.
Has anyone addressed where these criminals are living? Who owns of the property?
And What should their role be In reporting such activities?
This is intended to respond to Ken Wells statement. He is so 100% right on all levels of this article. I lost my niece to this drug corruption of our state a little over two months ago. They shot her, murdered her. Crickets is what we are hearing, on a murder case. Cops seem to know who’s doing this stuff, our Judges don’t seem to care and let them go. As a law abiding resident our hands seem to be tied. It is making my family literally sick and we don’t know what else to do. They say tell us to “tell them what’s going on”, we have, we do, yet nothing is done. One of the people involved got a free get out of jail card to rehab for two weeks while my niece is in an urn. Yes, I am angry, I am upset and sickened. Mr Wells is right, this has to STOP!!
the police do know where many of these drug houses are and never bust them and I agree the judges are too easy on these dealers- “I beieve” the judges are either scared-dirty judges getting paid off or just don’t care and the same with many officers – maybe we can rally at the courthouse when court is in session in some of these cases and demand justice – the most stupid thing the State of VT ever did was get rid of the death penalty-seems a harsh thing but when our children are getting murdered and nothing being done about it I say re-instate the death penalty – fentynal and other drugs kill and so does these peoples murderous actions – If our children can’t walk anymore why should these drug dealers