The Keene Sentinel’s Danielle Rivard has authored a detailed feature story focusing on how drug addiction and an inhumane system is destroying lives. Don’t miss it.
The only thing it’s missing is a real solution to drug addiction, which can’t really start until drugs are decriminalized. Once that happens, prices will drop, so fewer robberies and burglaries will occur. Additionally, addicts won’t be afraid to get help for fear of criminal charges. Finally, responsible recreational users will not face the destruction of their lives at the hands of the legal system, and will be less likely to enter the depression/drugs death spiral so common of people whose previously productive lives are torn apart by “the state”.
Here’s the text of the Sentinel piece:
William W. Lee Jr. was drunk and high on cocaine in April when, wearing a black face mask and jacket, he pointed a gun at a customer in the checkout line at Price Chopper in Keene and demanded her wallet.
Too stunned to act, she didn’t comply. So Lee pressed the gun into the cashier’s back and demanded all the money from the register.
His plan complete, he fled outside to a friend’s motorcycle, covered the license plate with a shirt, and sped away from the store’s parking lot. After leading police on a chase, he abandoned the bike on the side of Route 9 and took off into nearby woods on foot.
Two months later, officers from four area police departments and the U.S. Marshal’s Service surrounded his mother’s Winchester home and arrested him.
Today, Lee, 34, of Winchester, talks about the night of the robbery from inside the N.H. State Prison in Concord, where he’s serving five years for the crimes.
Dressed in a forest green Department of Corrections jumpsuit, Lee, bald, 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, slouches over a small table as he tells his story.
He says he needed the money he stole to get more drugs, like cocaine and alcohol, and to pay back people he owed money for drugs.
It’s not the first time he’s been sent to jail or prison — he was on parole when he robbed the supermarket.
He’s been drinking since his teens, but this time he hopes things will be different. He asked the judge at his sentencing hearing in January for help with his addiction.
“I can’t do it on my own,” he said.
After he serves his sentence, he’ll be released to a long-term residential treatment program in New York, because there’s no longer that type of program in New Hampshire. He says he hopes it will help him break the cycle of substance abuse that’s always been his downfall.
Lee is one of many addicts who’ve struggled in Cheshire County. And the problem isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, last year the county had the highest number of drug cases in the state investigated by the N.H. Attorney General’s Drug Task Force.
And the community feels the effects.
There are addicts chasing the high, like Lee, who will do anything to get it.
The community members who feel less safe because of the increased crime.
The police who try to nab the criminals, and the jails that fill up with addicted inmates.
With limited treatment options, this cycle can keep repeating itself.
What’s the answer to stop this? A new drug court and more individualized treatment could help, law enforcement and treatment professionals say.
He got dressed and went
In 2012, the Drug Task Force investigated 199 cases in Cheshire County, which yielded 50 arrests, compared to 27 arrests in 2011, according to statistics from multiple law enforcement agencies compiled by county officials.
The drugs included buprenorphine, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, marijuana, OxyContin, Percocet and other prescription medications, according to the agency’s commander, Scott Sweet. Of those arrests, 84 percent were in Keene.
Keene police statistics from 2012 show that more than 50 percent of the department’s arrests correlated with the use of alcohol, narcotics and other types of drugs. (That can include arrests for underage drinking and open containers.)
Local residents who’ve been addicted to drugs say they’re not hard to get.
“If you want it bad enough you can find it anywhere; it doesn’t matter where you are. With any addict, they seek it out and they’re going to find it, even if they may have to travel somewhere. No place is sheltered from drugs,” said Shana D. Squires, 24, of Swanzey, a recovering heroin addict who is serving time in the Cheshire County jail. Squires ended up behind bars again for violating her probation by using heroin.
And the presence of these drugs couples with the behaviors that come along with addiction, like crime.
“We’ve seen a lot of these property crimes being committed as a result of people trying to feed their addictions,” said Keene Police Chief Kenneth J. Meola. “Burglaries and robberies, that’s what we’ve experienced in the past. A lot of them have been fueled by people with drug addictions and they’re committing those crimes to help pay for their drug of choice,” Meola said.
Keene police are still investigating two robberies, one of them armed, that occurred a week apart in December and January outside Lindy’s Diner and at Campus Convenience in Keene, where the male suspect took off with cash. When asked if they’re related to drugs, Meola said, “We can speculate that most likely they are.”
Lee robbed the Keene supermarket so he could get money for his next hit.
He had been up for two days using cocaine when a plan came to him at his friend’s home, laid out like a map in his mind. He’d owed money to people for so long that he needed to catch up on repaying them. He suddenly thought to himself, “Hey, I’m gonna go rob Price Chopper.”
He got dressed and went.
At the time, he believed the armed robbery was justified because the supermarket had insurance, and in his mind he knew he wasn’t going to hurt anyone with the gun, even though it appeared that way.
“I didn’t feel a thing at the time, that these people were terrified. The next day I felt all kinds of stuff. I was in shock that I went through with it; I couldn’t even believe it,” Lee said from prison.
The memory of the robbery is “real hazy” to Lee. “I don’t even remember details. Like, I know what I had done, but I don’t. It’s almost like it’s something you remember watching in a movie,” he said.
Lee has been in and out of jail and prison since he was 18. His criminal history is full of probation violations for drinking, violating curfews and thefts.
He says he’s had no guidance or support each time he was released from jail. He’s a hard worker, he says, but he can’t hold a job for a long period of time because he always ends up looking for an escape when the going gets rough.
When he lost his job driving for an area trash-hauling company, he hit the bottle again and turned to drugs — anything to help him not think about his problems. Shortly after that, he robbed the Price Chopper.
Squires has been an addict for more than six years, she said. She was initially on probation for attempting to possess cocaine with intent to sell it in Keene in July 2011, according to court documents.
She also attempted to buy drugs on Winchester Street in Keene from an undercover detective with the Drug Task Force, and took part in a residential burglary, passed checks that were stolen from another residential burglary, and used a fake identity during a Massachusetts drug bust, according to court documents.
The drug bust in 2011 in Deerfield, Mass., involved the arrest of Squires’ brother, Daniel M. Lavalley, who was charged with possession of heroin and possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute. Lavalley landed there shortly after robbing a bank on Court Street in Keene, for which he was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison last year.
‘Look what you just did’
Lee worries about his behavior when he drinks and uses drugs. He said the drugs make him into a different person.
“I just know I can’t keep going the way I was. It’s bad to say it like this, but I’m glad I got caught. What if I made the choice to shoot somebody and run someone over, I don’t know. You never know when you’re at that point, what you are going to make for a choice, because look what you just did.”
And some community members feel unsafe.
“It’s depressing and it’s taking over the community,” said Lorri Rodier, 37, of Winchester. “These addicts are not going to get better by themselves,” she said.
“There needs to be less (stigma) so addicts feel more comfortable asking for help,” Rodier said. “If you’ve already robbed everything from your family and stolen things from friends, you don’t have anyone you can reach out to.”
Police say they can only do so much.
“It’s really how you deal with subjects afterwards that I think is probably more important, as far as what do we do with people now who have a drug addiction who have committed a crime and are looking at going to jail,” said Meola, the Keene chief. “Simply sending them to jail doesn’t necessarily cure that addiction.”
Treatment, he said, seems to be the best option for dealing with addiction and the crimes that can come with it.
Meola has been part of a team of law enforcement and county officials and treatment professionals that’s helping develop a drug court for the county, which aims to use alternative sentencing methods to help rehabilitate non-violent addicted criminals.
Statistics show 82 percent of inmates at the Cheshire County jail in 2012 had some type of substance abuse disorder or problem when they arrived, according to the jail’s case manager and social worker, Douglas Iosue.
And 78 percent of those inmates’ crimes related to their substance abuse problem, according to Iosue.
It costs about $32,000 a year to incarcerate an inmate at the county jail, according to county officials. And national statistics show that it costs about $8,000 for intensive community supervision and treatment such as a drug court.
On a national level, about 80 percent of criminal behavior is related to drugs and alcohol and 75 percent of those incarcerated are there because of a drug- or alcohol-related crime, according to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
‘People don’t have to cope when they’re high’
Lee’s mother was an alcoholic, his father wasn’t around much, so Lee and his older sister bounced between the care of their grandmother and their mother’s friends through the years, he said.
Lee’s grandmother died when he was a young teen. That’s when he started drinking. When Lee was 18 his sister, who he was close to, died in a car crash. A year after her death, his father died in an accident, too. Lee was already serving time in prison for setting vehicle fires with another man, and went to his father’s funeral in shackles.
When Lee got out, he had nowhere stable or steady to go, he says. He couldn’t stay at his mother’s for too long because he would be influenced by her drinking. He couldn’t stay with friends because every time they drank, he drank.
Lee’s mother died last summer, shortly after he was charged in the Price Chopper robbery.
Once he starts drinking, he can’t stop, he said. It’s his way of numbing himself from the sadness of losing his loved ones and a way of escaping his unstable life because he can’t cope, he said.
“Drugs helped me maintain and to survive the day or the week or whatever the situation might be. I use to try to escape, really, and I end up making bad choices,” Lee said.
Mental health professionals say there are many factors that can spawn addiction, but they depend on the person. In Lee’s case, his emotional state and inability to cope with his problems, along with his mother’s drinking and hanging out with friends who drink could all be factors.
Other factors include an addict’s genetic history. A person who has a family member with a history of addiction is four times more likely to become an addict, said Amelie Gooding, director of Phoenix House in Keene, a substance abuse treatment facility.
Post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and attention deficit disorder can also contribute to addiction, she said.
“People don’t have to cope when they’re high,” Gooding said.
The less addicts deal with their problems, the less likely they will ever be able to deal with them, she said, and this can cause them to become overwhelmed with feelings when the numbness wears off.
Addiction sets in when people lose the ability to control their cravings, Gooding said. And there’s a common misunderstanding that addicts can control themselves, she said.
“Addicts have a disease,” she said. “It’s a medical disease, a chronic relapsing condition that can be fatal.”
Because drugs are more readily available and much stronger today than they were 25 years ago, especially heroin, people are getting addicted quicker and at a younger age, Gooding said.
Squires said she started using drugs when she was 12 because all her friends were doing it.
Eventually, her need for drugs destroyed her life.
She saw the toll being a heroin addict took on her brother’s life, but decided to proceed anyway when her friend offered her some. She thought to herself, “Hey, I’ve tried everything else, why not this?”
And Squires fell in love with the high.
“I can’t compare it to anything I ever felt before. It’s really sick, but it’s one of the best feelings I ever felt,” Squires said in a meeting room inside the Cheshire County jail. “I’ve done a lot of unforgivable things and it’s ruined a lot of my relationships.”
In addition to jail time, Squires’ addiction caused her to lose custody of her two young children, ages 5 and 6.
“It became something I needed, not something I wanted,” she said. And if Squires didn’t get her fix, then her body raged with withdrawal symptoms.
“Your whole body aches. It’s like the flu times 10. Everything hurts and your body is screaming to make it stop.” She needed her next hit just to function normally.
And no matter how hard she tried to get clean, she always caved, just like Lee.
The challenge in seeking treatment
Lee has participated in all the education programs he’s supposed to do while in prison, he says. But when he gets out he says he can’t push himself enough to apply the things he learned because there’s no one to tell him what to do, or how to do it. Ultimately he feels he’s being set up for failure.
Gooding said the downfall of incarcerating people with addictions is that it’s teaching them how to be dependent on a system inside jail or prison, instead of teaching them how to develop the skills for themselves.
The solution to breaking the cycle, Gooding said, is individualized treatment.
“Research has shown over and over that the longer someone is involved in some sort of a recovery group process, the more chance they have of staying clean in their recovery,” she said.
But there’s a problem with treatment in the state. It’s not always easy for addicts to get it because of financial barriers, like a lack of medical insurance, and wait lists for treatment programs, Gooding said.
Some of the top reasons people don’t seek treatment in New Hampshire are because they’re not ready to stop using, there’s a lack of health coverage and/or cost, it’s perceived to have a negative effect on people’s jobs and on other people’s opinions of them, according to statistics from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2007-10. They are compiled in the state’s new five-year strategy plan to reduce substance use released Friday.
The wait list exists because there’s always been more demand for treatment beds than there are beds available, she said. Today, the 23 people in the county on the list will have to wait about two months, Gooding said.
In July, one way the state tried to address the issue was by cutting all the long-term 12- to 18-month residential treatment beds, which in Cheshire County were at the Dublin Phoenix House, and converting them to 28-day residential treatment beds along with transitional living beds, so more people would get treatment a year, she said.
The transitional living program introduces more real-world responsibility to residents, like waking up on their own and maintaining a job on their own, she said.
Currently there are 12.5 state-funded 28-day residential treatment slots, 10 three-month transitional living beds and 12 private insurance-funded treatment beds in the county, between the Keene and Dublin Phoenix Houses, according to Gooding. Phoenix House is the only state-funded residential substance abuse treatment facility in the county, but there are other state and privately funded outpatient treatment programs, she said.
And with the limited amount of available beds, addicts can relapse and get into trouble while they’re on the wait list, she said.
“It’s hard to say to someone that we decide needs a certain level of care that we’ll put them on a wait list,” Gooding said. But recently, she said, the treatment facility has started those on the wait list with interim services, in which they can go to support groups, substance abuse meetings and have to check in regularly with the Phoenix House staff. Insurance might pay for a group or an individual counseling session, but primarily the state funding pays for the interim services, she said.
Lee completed a year-long residential program at Phoenix House in Dublin about 10 years ago. He did well there because of the program’s structure and the group meetings with other residents trying to get clean, he said. “I felt really comfortable there; I fit right in.”
Years later, shortly before the Price Chopper robbery, Lee said he tried to get back into the residential program because he could feel the drug cravings coming on. At the time, though, because he wasn’t actually using drugs and financial hurdles, he couldn’t get in. So he ended up giving into the urge, and using.
‘They have to be accountable’
Now authorities who deal with addicts who commit crimes are learning more about addiction, the behaviors that come with it and how to better handle their cases so they don’t relapse and or end up committing new crimes. Ultimately the goal is to reduce the cycle of recidivism, create a safer community and save taxpayers money, through individualized treatment and structured supervision.
“When they are deeply addicted, putting them in prison without treatment does nothing to change their behavior when they’re released,” said N.H. Superior Court Chief Justice Tina L. Nadeau during a recent interview.
Nadeau helped pilot a felony-level drug court in Rockingham County, one of several counties in the state that have adopted the alternative sentencing court for non-violent drug offenders.
“I’ve been on the bench for 15 years and what motivated me to start looking at evidence-based sentencing is seeing the people who come back over and over and over again,” she said.
“What’s interesting to me about addiction, and what I continue to learn, is that you can’t order someone to stop using drugs; you have to change their behavior immensely by applying immediate sanctions and rewards. They have to be accountable by coming to court every week instead of having to report to probation once a month,” Nadeau said.
Cheshire County is in the process of establishing a drug court, and some county, law enforcement and court officials have been participating in training.
The drug court’s treatment plans will focus on the needs of each offender, said the county’s grant support specialist Cyndi Desrosiers.
An example of a treatment plan could include a weekly visit to court before a judge, weekly and/or random drug testing, weekly visits with a probation officer, individual and group counseling, life-skills coaching, a curfew, and getting and maintaining a job, Desrosiers said.
National statistics for felony-level drug courts show that graduates of the program are less likely to reoffend.
About 75 percent of drug court graduates remain arrest-free after two years, according to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
Based on evidence from existing drug courts in the state, members of the court’s steering committee, like Meola, and future team members, like Gooding and Iosue, think the court will help break the addiction cycle in Cheshire County. They’ve met many times to work on developing the program so they could apply for a federal grant this month to fund it.
For his part, Lee says he does well with structure. The moment he doesn’t have a schedule, he becomes lost and gets into trouble.
“I don’t get out of jail thinking, ‘Let’s see what I can get away with this weekend’; I don’t think that. It doesn’t happen like that. It always happens a different way,” Lee said.
“When I start drinking and using … I can’t choose the right decision. I do bad things to good people, and that’s too bad that I do that, because I don’t want to be that person.”
