Pubdate: Wed, 25 May 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Brian MacQuarrie

BESIEGED IN SALEM, COUPLE SOUNDS ALARM ON DRUG TRADE JUST OUTSIDE

SALEM - Every night, Shawn Meenan places a 12-foot piece of lumber 
against the main door of his third-floor condo, bracing it tight 
against intruders.

His girlfriend, Rachel Shellabarger, places a second board against 
another door. In a cubbyhole, a video monitor for a $1,700 
surveillance system shows all activity outside the building - every 
car that pulls up, every three-minute visit, every mysterious packet 
that flutters from neighboring windows to people waiting below.

The couple bought the two-bedroom condo in January 2015 for its water 
views and affordable price. But instead of a fresh start, they say 
they feel under siege in a place where drugs are sold openly.

The pair consider themselves overlooked collateral damage in the 
Massachusetts opioid epidemic. While the toll of the crisis on 
addicts and their families has been a central focus, the dangers and 
fear faced by others living amid the drug trade have received much 
less attention.

"I have never felt so out-of-control helpless," said Shellabarger, 
who manages the sleep center and neurodiagnostic labs at North Shore 
Medical Center. "I don't know how much longer I can go on."

Meenan, a former Pennsylvania state trooper, said that he has seen at 
least 50 suspected drug deals since March and that he has video of 
most of them.

Meenan and Shellabarger say they have not been physically threatened, 
but their car has been vandalized twice and they feel unsafe.

Salem police insist that the neighborhood - called the Point - is no 
more dangerous than others and that they have responded by adding 
special surveillance in the area. But the couple say their repeated 
complaints to police, and to the other owners and condo trustees, 
have gone unheeded.

"We feel abandoned, absolutely," Meenan said.

Added Shellabarger: "We're at a point of no return here. Our lives 
revolve around which door we're going to go out and who we have to go past."

Across the city, Salem recorded 123 overdoses and 15 related 
fatalities in 2015, police said, and the pace this year is roughly 
the same. In the Point, there were 26 overdoses in 2015, and five of 
them this year. Authorities last week did not break down the number 
of drug fatalities in the neighborhood.

Although police downplayed safety concerns, a 27-year-old man was 
shot dead in March within blocks of Meenan's and Shellabarger's 
condo. In April, another gunman fired at police nearby. Both 
shootings were drug-related, according to Salem police Captain Conrad 
Prosniewski.

Meenan drives Shellabarger to and from work. She never leaves the 
condo alone. And the pair check the video monitor before they go out, 
looking for activity near either of the ground-level entrances.

"It's nerve-racking. You never know what you're walking into," he 
said in a recent interview at the condo.

'We're at a point of no return here. Our lives revolve around which 
door we're going to go out and who we have to go past.'

The couple - Meenan is 52; Shellabarger, 47 - live in the city's 
densest neighborhood, which is where waves of earlier immigrants 
settled. Much of the housing, which includes many multifamily units, 
has seen better days, but Mayor Kim Driscoll said she is working 
closely with residents to revitalize the Point.

Meenan and Shellabarger, who are each divorced and have a total of 
three adult children who live elsewhere, said they do not have the 
financial means to leave at this time. So, they take each day as it 
comes, managing the stresses.

To chronicle that life, the pair have created a website where they 
post videos of suspicious activity.

In one posting, from 4 p.m. on March 12, the camera shows a small boy 
chasing an errant football that has been thrown into the building's 
parking lot.

As the boy picks up the football, a man walks into the field of view. 
The boy looks up, and a small white packet - which appears to 
resemble the kind used for heroin - floats down to the asphalt. The 
child scurries away, and the man retrieves the package.

Salem police have been given that video, Meenan said. "This was 
gift-wrapped evidence," he added with a shrug of his shoulders.

"For them not to get the resources to make this happen, to make us 
safe, is mind-boggling," Shellabarger said.

As a result, the couple said, they have stopped calling police. 
Instead, they rely on their instincts and defenses such as the 
surveillance system.

Prosniewski, the Salem police captain, rejected the couple's 
complaints that police have ignored their calls for action, which 
have included videos of suspected drug deals, times and dates of 
suspicious transactions, and lists of names and license plate numbers.

"What they're giving us is good information, but it's not enough to 
arrest someone," he said. "Believe me when I tell you our detectives 
are extremely aggressive."

Between April 9 and May 7, Prosniewski said, police watched the 
building on nine occasions in four-hour shifts each time. Nothing 
came of that surveillance, he said.

The captain said he believes that the couple's concerns have merit, 
but he stressed that police cannot watch the building 24 hours a day. 
Salem, like nearly everywhere else in Massachusetts, is grappling 
with an opioid problem that does not confine itself to individual 
neighborhoods.

"We have given that area an awful lot of attention," Prosniewski 
said. "Ninety-five percent of the people there are very, very nice 
people and want to see the area cleaned up."

He was adamant that the Point does not have an outsize share of drug 
dealing in this historic city of 43,000 people.

"Drug activity? Yeah, there's drug activity," he said. "Is it a 
dangerous place? No."

Prosniewski said police will continue to investigate crime in the 
Point, just as the department does everywhere else in the city.

In the meantime, Meenan and Shellabarger said they will remain 
vigilant and keep to guarded routines. An important reason for 
staying put, at least temporarily, is that Shellabarger enjoys her work.

Still, she worries that unrelenting anxiety will exacerbate the 
effects of her multiple sclerosis.

"I can't live like this for another year," Shellabarger said. "We 
either have to get some relief or get out."

On the wall off their kitchen is a 1996 letter of commendation from 
the Pennsylvania State Police. Meenan's curiosity during a routine 
traffic stop led to the discovery of a kidnapped man, bleeding and 
badly beaten, in the vehicle's trunk.

Twenty years later, he wonders where to turn.

"I was going to hang an American flag upside-down out the window," 
Meenan said of an official signal of distress. "I figured that would 
get some attention."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom