By day, Dill Avenue is a relatively quiet street: a few residents walk their dogs or ride a bike and mostly keep to themselves. It wasn't always this way. Fulton County officials have seized a "notorious drug house" with the plan to renovate it and eventually sell it to a low-income family. For the past six years, the house at 730 Dill Avenue, located in the Capitol View community, has been the site of drug use and violent crime, including a stabbing and a killing, according to online police records. Atlanta police have received numerous complaints about the derelict property, some of which resulted in nine search warrants. [continues 78 words]
The sun was setting on Coal Harbour last week when the Vancouver police marine squad took special notice of a charter boat called the Magic Charm. Aboard the vessel were dozens of young men, some of whom were linked to the Red Scorpion gang. Several had chest tattoos reading "My brother's keeper." The anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit was called in to check the party boat crowd when it docked beside the Westin Bayshore around 9 p.m. on July 25. It was another tense interaction between the police and some of those involved in the [continues 617 words]
Cambridge mayor says group will offer solutions, but will take 'whole community to solve this problem' CAMBRIDGE - Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig says he's creating a city task force to find solutions to the fentanyl crisis plaguing his city. The city initiative has been in the works for three months, said Craig, and is not a "knee-jerk" reaction to recent comments made by Cambridge coroner Dr. Hank Nykamp. Nykamp, a coroner since 1985, said Cambridge is becoming the drug capital of Ontario with "drug houses" and "crystal meth factories." [continues 630 words]
Drug use, disposed syringes a concern in downtown Galt CAMBRIDGE - Robin Thomas often holds her pet Chihuahua in her arms when she takes him for a walk on the trail along the Grand River behind her condo building. She's afraid her dog will step on used syringes that litter the brush near the trail. Thomas lives at The Grand Condominium at Waterscape on Water Street. She moved there almost two years because she wanted to live in downtown Galt and was attracted to the view of the river from her balcony. [continues 922 words]
CAMBRIDGE - Cambridge coroner Dr. Hank Nykamp is tired of political rhetoric and inaction as the local fentanyl crisis deepens. The longtime city doctor has been a Cambridge coroner since 1985. He has seen the best and worst of the city during his career. He loves this city, but believes more must be done to stem the growing number of opioid overdose cases crossing his examination table. "Five years ago it was oxycodone. Now it's fentanyl and carfentanil, which is even more powerful and used to knock out elephants," he said. "Something needs to be done and we can't wait on the politicians." [continues 836 words]
Police chief updates SACPA audience "Catch and release" may work with fish conservation, but it's no answer to the issues of drug addiction. That's the word from Rob Davis, Chief of the Lethbridge Police Service. He says repeatedly arresting people addicted to alcohol or drugs and then releasing them - with no assistance offered - is very expensive and it solves nothing. "That's what we were doing," and so were police services across the nation. But Lethbridge has a myriad of social service agencies, he told a Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs audience Thursday, and now police officers make an effort to connect repeat customers with an appropriate service agency as they're released. [continues 374 words]
Several young children were found living in drug houses on the city's westside, while five people face charges under Alberta's Drug Endangered Children's Act after ALERT recently seized nearly $100,000 worth of drugs and cash. ALERT's organized crime and drug unit in Lethbridge, along with Lethbridge Police Service members, executed four search warrants on vehicles and homes in west Lethbridge late last week to conclude an investigation that began in late 2016. [continues 307 words]
Patrol group hopes similar fate awaits other notorious buildings There have been many sombre walks through North Central for White Pony Lodge members in recent times, but on Thursday the neighbourhood patrol group was celebrating as a notorious local building was torn down. With the city sending in a contractor to demolish the multi-unit dwelling at 1454 Angus St., Jan Morier and Shawna Oochoo met at the site and embraced as the longtime drug den was reduced to nothing. "The number of times we have come to this property to try and clean it up? It's all worthwhile now to see that finally it's going to be cleaned up for good," Morier said. [continues 328 words]
New support group focuses on drug addiction PARIS - Debbie McGregor was so at her wits end trying, but failing, to help a family member conquer her drug addiction without any support that she decided to take her own initiative. "I went through the Rambo stage, kicking in the doors of drug houses and pulling her out - until I realized that doesn't work," said McGregor. "Then I went looking for resources and support and finally came to the realization there weren't any." [continues 351 words]
TRENTON - Ed Forchion wants to film a reality show chronicling the impact of the country's so-called War on Drugs on his life. He has a couple titles in mind: "The War on NJ Weedman." Or perhaps even better, "Marijuana Martyr." Forchion pointed to prosecutors' desire in a drug case in Trenton that could land him in prison for years to protect the identity of a confidential informant who allegedly purchased weed from him several times at his downtown city business. [continues 814 words]
Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader Gayton McKenzie, pictured, has announced a plan he says is supported by his political party to rid gang-afflicted communities of drug dealers. On his Facebook account, he yesterday asked members of these communities to inbox him the addresses of drug houses and "lolly lounges" in their areas, because the PA needed to verify that they were, indeed, selling drugs. He wrote: "We shall send kids to buy drugs in order to be a hundred percent sure that your accusation is accurate. We shall verify every house before we strike. [continues 337 words]
Ron Stasynec is fed up with the almost daily incidents at what he believes is a drug house in his North Cowichan neighbourhood. The situation has gotten so bad that Stasynec is even considering selling his home and moving from the community. Stasynec claims cars start dropping by the house in the early afternoons to buy drugs from dealers, and the frequency of cars and people increase in the evenings. He said there's lots of noise at the house almost all the time, and his home and some of his neighbours' houses and properties have been vandalized by people connected to the problem dwelling. [continues 582 words]
We feel for Ron Stasynec. After hearing from both local government and the RCMP on the significant challenges involved in trying to shut down drug houses in our Cowichan Valley communities, we can't help but sympathize with the neighbours of these problem dwellings. Because one thing is clear, getting rid of these unwanted neighbours is no easy, quick or straightforward matter. At first glance it seems bizarre that the RCMP would suggest that North Cowichan, or any other municipality's bylaws, would be a way to shut down a crack house. Isn't that what our criminal code is for? [continues 255 words]
Aimee Dunkle believes her 20-year-old son's death - from an overdose of heroin - could have been avoided. Not if he had gone to rehab. The Tesoro High School graduate had been several times. But rather if he or his friends had carried naloxone, the fast-acting, easy-to-administer antidote that at about $25 a dose snaps back to life someone overdosing on opioids, a class of drugs that includes heroin and prescription painkillers. Naloxone has been around for decades, but despite an explosion of opioid abuse in Orange County 1,171 deaths since 2011, according to coroner data officials here have been slow to embrace it. Under California law, when Ben Dunkle died in 2012, naloxone was only available with a prescription or through community and public health distribution programs and there were none in Orange County. Dunkle said she didn't even know the antidote existed. [continues 1239 words]
SINCE the official beginning of the drug war in 1971, the law-enforcement community in the United States has spent just over $1 trillion. Tens of thousands of citizens have died, sacrificed on the altar of this modern prohibition. Millions have suffered from a drug arrest, which haunts them forever - and the difference on the streets? Federal research shows drugs are cheaper, stronger and more "readily available" to America's youth. As a street cop and detective in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, I had a ringside seat to this unfolding social disaster. [continues 639 words]
Nanaimo Serves As Model for Cleaning Up Drug Houses When Ladysmith officials reached the end of their rope on controlling nuisance properties this summer, they turned to Nanaimo for ideas. They weren't the first. A number of B.C. cities have approached Nanaimo for advice on how to clean up drug houses and nuisance properties, thanks to a groundbreaking city bylaw developed nearly 10 years ago that is being held up as a model for other communities. Nanaimo city staff were getting overwhelmed with complaints about drug houses in various neighbourhoods and needed a unique solution. [continues 675 words]
Pre-dawn police raids on suspected drug houses make for dramatic television. Too often in real life, however, these SWAT-like raids turn out to be mistakes, or, to put it more diplomatically, not exactly what the police had in mind. The News Journal published a disturbing article about a lawsuit this week that raises questions about the police strategy when it comes to fighting the war on drugs. Delawareans should look at closely at the articles implications. The article reports on a lawsuit filed by Rehoboth Beach couple against the Delaware State Police over their treatment during a drug raid on a Claymont house they were staying in. The wife is a quadriplegic. Her husband is a disabled veteran. They were not the subjects of the police raid, but they claim they were terrorized and mishandled by the police raiders. [continues 369 words]
He practiced with baby carrots, swallowing them whole, easing them down his throat with yogurt. Later came the heroin pellets, each loaded with 14 grams of powder, machine-wrapped in wax paper and thick latex. Long gone were the days of swallowing hand-knotted, drug-filled condoms. The Mexican drug trafficking organizations were always perfecting their craft. On this trip, Gerardo A. Vargas would swallow 71 pellets - a full kilo, just over two pounds, enough for as many as 30,000 hits at $10 a pop on American streets. And so before he set off on his 3,900-mile journey from Uruapan, Mexico, Vargas was given the rules: No soda, because it could erode the pellets' wrapping. No orange juice, either. Drink only water. He was told which airports to avoid, which places to go, his every move orchestrated by his handler in Mexico. [continues 2599 words]
The small community of Apollo - with a population of just over 1,600 - has a big drug problem that it's trying to shake. Local officials say the Armstrong County borough in the Kiskiminetas River valley has been plagued by a culture of drug use in recent years. As a result, it has seen an increase in drug-overdose deaths, a pair of drive-by shootings, an increase in robberies and a state police raid in February that uncovered a large-scale heroin ring. [continues 675 words]
HARRISBURG - Retired Maj. Neill Franklin oversaw more than a dozen drug task forces that used civil asset forfeiture laws to seize millions in property. But by the late 1990s even Franklin, who worked for the Maryland State Police, began to think something was wrong with the system. Franklin was reviewing paperwork from a case on the Eastern Shore. Police had seized a man's car, and it was suspected the car was used in drug deals. But the owner was never charged with a crime. [continues 1081 words]