Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jul 2005
Source: Sentinel And Enterprise, The (MA)
Copyright: 2005 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Mid-States Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://sentinelandenterprise.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2498
Author: J.J. Huggins

RESIDENTS - DRUG PROBLEM GETTING WORSE

Many local residents say drug trafficking and drug-related crime
interfere with their daily lives and harm the communities they live
in.

Leominster resident Thomas Burke, 64, said a robber recently broke
into his Hilltop Gardens apartment and stole "a couple hundred bucks"
in cash he had been saving.

"It's a little scary," Burke said during a recent interview.

Burke, along with other residents, pointed to several buildings where
drugs are bought and sold in North Central Massachusetts.

"It's known," he said.

Burke accepts the local drug problem as a fact of life in this
region.

"I'm not saying I'm looking the other way, I just avoid it," he
said.

Dave Staskawicz, 43, of Lunenburg, said criminals have broken into his
friend's Fitchburg business multiple times.

"It all has to be drug-related; they're only taking a couple hundred
dollars at a time," he said while pushing a shopping cart full of
groceries outside of Market Basket in Fitchburg.

Staskawicz said drugs are as much of an issue in North Central
Massachusetts as they are in bigger cities.

"It's basically the same. I grew up in Boston, and it was all around
me," he said.

Staskawicz said drug addiction happens to people of all ages,
including people his age who smoke marijuana and snort cocaine.

"I know guys that are 40 years old that are still doing drugs. It's
like, smarten up," he said.

A different time

Bruno Chalifour, a French Canadian immigrant and Leominster resident
for 45 years, remembers a time when the streets of Fitchburg and
Leominster seemed safer and friendlier.

"It was better 25 years ago," he said while standing in a snowy
parking lot off John Fitch Highway in Fitchburg. "There's a lot more
violence than there used to be. I don't know if it's the drugs or if
society changed."

World War II veteran and lifelong area resident Bob Baldini said he is
angry to see how much crime and drugs have increased in his hometown
of Fitchburg.

Baldini sees drug users on the streets on a regular
basis.

"I've seen young kids in the parking lot (at a local mall) smoking
marijuana. They don't try to hide it, because there is no big penalty
when they're caught," Baldini said during an interview at the
Leominster Senior Center.

Paying the price

Baldini said he feels like he has to pay the penalty for the crime
drug addicts bring to the area.

"We're the victims," he said.

Baldini grew up in Fitchburg and left in the 1940s when he joined the
Navy and fought in World War II.

He moved to Leominster in 1953, and he still lives there today,
spending afternoons at the Senior Center socializing with friends.

Baldini said he worries he might get caught in the crossfire of one of
the drug-related shootings that he reads about.

"Of course it bothers me," he said. "I'm afraid I'm going to get
involved."

Rehabilitation centers

Fitchburg resident Anne Dean, 64, believes convicted drug users should
be forced to spend more time in rehabilitation centers.

"What Fitchburg needs is three locked drug rehab facilities. ... We
have enough abandoned buildings. Hell, we could put them all on Main
Street," Dean said. Drug addicts "should be there for at least six
months. A 30-day rehab does nothing. The day they get out, they get
high again."

Dean, who works as a substitute teacher in the Fitchburg school
system, regularly sees drug addicts walking the streets near her High
Street home.

She did say Fitchburg police have stepped up their presence in her
High Street neighborhood in the past two years.

"I see a lot of enforcement on my street," she said while sitting at a
table at the Fitchburg Senior Center. "We see stakeouts, we see the
police nearby, we see the raids. I don't think it'll ever be
completely eradicated, but I do think they'll be able to keep a lid on
it."

Some residents said the city needs more money for the police
department to increase the number of officers on the streets.

"I think it's getting a little better, but we need more policemen,"
said Dennis Darcy, who has lived in Fitchburg for 55 years.

Keith McCloud, 36, of Leominster, said police can continue to arrest
drug users, but they will not be able to stop drugs from coming into
the city.

"I really don't think there's much they can do. As long as there are
drugs coming into the city, and the country, there will be drug
dealers. I think (police officers) have one of the toughest jobs. As
soon as you shut one (drug) house down, you have three more opening,"
he said.

Worse in Fitchburg?

McCloud has lived in both Fitchburg and Leominster, and he said he
notices a larger drug problem in Fitchburg.

"I think it's worse in Fitchburg," he said. "It seems like it's more
in the open."

Robert Lane, a senior citizen who grew up in Fitchburg and now lives
in Lunenburg, said Leominster is doing better economically than
Fitchurg, which may be the reason Fitchburg has more drugs.

"Leominster has a lot of property. ... Fitchburg doesn't have that
industrial land left," Lane said. "I feel like it's worse with the way
Main Street is, with all the empty businesses."

Lane said the Gardner Visiting Nursing Association's downtown location
brings drug addicts to Main Street in Fitchburg.

"It makes it hard for people to feel safe knowing they're around," he
said.

McCloud, who was sitting across from Lane when he made that statement,
said he patronized one such clinic until he kicked his drug habit
about a year ago.

"My thing is, a drug is a drug. If I'm trying to get off drugs, how
are you going to give me another drug, just because its regulated by
the state ... a lot of people are going to use that as an excuse. ...
It's not a guarantee, it's just a Band-Aid," McCloud said.

Although Lane said Leominster seems better off than Fitchburg, he
prefers the security he enjoys living in a small town like Lunenburg.

"I feel safer in Lunenburg," he said. "I just don't see as many people
walking the street or standing around."

Don Laaksonen, a lifelong Fitchburg resident, said the drug problem
began "when all the agencies came to town."

Those agencies, he said, include "wherever they get their money and
food from."

He said that began about a little over a decade ago.

Laaksonen grew up on Marshall Street, but he now lives on Townsend
Street, a fairly suburban section of Fitchburg near John Fitch Highway.

He described the observation he made during a recent trip to his old
street, "It looks like Hell's Kitchen."

Laaksonen, a retired Coca Cola employee, said burglars broke into his
house 12 years ago and stole his wife's jewelry. He said things have
not changed much since then.

"It hasn't gotten any better," Laaksonen said.

Larry Baker of Lunenburg, a member of the Eastwood Club in Fitchburg,
said the drug problem has gotten worse as the economy has struggled.

"Don't forget, we have a labor problem right now. There are not any
jobs out there," Baker, an electrician, said. "There's no money to be
made. It's all going overseas."

Drug dealing in the area became more visible as the region's economy
deteriorated, he said.

"Before, everything used to be done at night. Now, it's right in the
daytime," Baker said.

Fitchburg has seen many of its local businesses leave downtown in the
past several years. Plywood now covers the windows of several Main
Street storefronts.

"Very seldom do I go downtown (Fitchburg)," Baker said. "I have no
reason to go there."

Many residents said large shopping centers and corporate chain stores,
which operate on the outskirts of the city where they are easily
accessed by the highway, have replaced Fitchburg's once-vibrant downtown.

"All the malls are taking over. People don't go downtown anymore,"
Baker said.

Phyllis McGourn, a senior citizen who has lived in Fitchburg her
entire life, remembers an era when downtown was the place to go.

"You used to have to push your way up the street," she said. McGourn
described how, when she was a child, Main Street was a place to shop
and socialize.

She said she always felt safe there and in her "upper Cleghorn"
home.

"We never had shootings or stabbings," she said.

Her friend, Lillian Louney, who lives in Fitchburg's Waites Corner
neighborhood, reminisced with McGourn during an interview at the
Fitchburg Senior Center.

"You could go to bed with the doors unlocked ... when we were kids,"
Louney said.

Now, neither woman spends much time on Main Street.

"You don't come downtown anymore. There's no stores," McGourn said. "I
never go out at night."

The seniors are also wary of criminals lurking in the shadows. They
spent a few minutes discussing different techniques they use to carry
their handbags to protect them from purse snatchers.

"You've got to be on your guard all the time," said Dorris LaQuire,
another senior citizen.

"We didn't used to have to do things like that," LaQuire said. "Bring
back the old days."
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MAP posted-by: Derek