America’s ‘heroin city’ turning itself around
RUTLAND: This city in the northeastern state of Vermont is fed up with heroin. Take Tom VanEps. He and his neighbors used to just watch, disgusted, as dealers worked Baxter Street, their buyers sometimes littering the ground with used syringes. Now, he said, they confront the dealers and the junkies.
“We’ll make them throw their crap right down that storm drain right there, because that hurts them more than anything,” VanEps said recently, sitting on his front steps in the hard-hit neighborhood. “We’ve all got kids. We don’t want them walking down the street with bare feet and get a needle in their foot.”
Authorities credit a variety of police actions, drug treatment programs, social services, new businesses and jobs, and perhaps most of all - community determination with reducing crime and restoring a sense of hope to this place that has become the poster child for the heroin epidemic sweeping America. Rutland, population 16,500, is winning national recognition for its efforts. The city’s police this month will give a presentation at the Chicago conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, chosen after a competitive process, about how a small city confronts addiction.
Crimes are down
Crimes including burglaries, vehicle theft and noise complaints are way down, in some cases as much as half, since 2012. A drug treatment center that opened in 2013 is helping more than 400 patients. Since 2011, 92 babies have been born to women in recovery - a promising sign that means 92 fewer babies born addicted to opiates. No one claims the challenge has been conquered. While many crimes are down, actual drug crimes remain steady.
“One thing this does demonstrate to us, especially when you look at the drug problem, is that those type of crimes, your property crimes, burglaries, larcenies, shoplifting, are usually the type of crimes that are driven by drug addiction,” said acting Police Chief David Covell. In the 19th century, Rutland was a major economic engine of Vermont, where rail lines converged to carry the marble quarried from surrounding communities to the country and the world. It was only three decades ago that competition began closing the quarries; more recently, Rutland lost its title as Vermont’s secondlargest city.
Many people moved to the country, and what had once been neat single-family homes were divided into apartment houses, many owned by absentee landlords, fertile ground for drug dealers. And when authorities clamped down on the abuse of prescription opioids such as oxycodone, heroin filled the void.
Rutland began building a reputation as “heroin city” in spring 2013, when the police chief at the time, James Baker, held a news conference at which he called the rise of drug addiction “mind-boggling” and said it “rips the social fabric of these neighborhoods apart.” The following January, Gov Peter Shumlin garnered national headlines when he devoted his entire State of the State speech to confronting heroin and other opiates.
Snowballing for years
Journalists descended on Rutland, eager to tell the story of drug-fueled ugliness in a part of the country long idealized as rustic, idyllic. An illustration of a lumberjack type sitting on a stump and shooting up accompanied a Rolling Stone article titled “The New Face of Heroin.” Though authorities and politicians brought publicity, the problem with drugs - not just heroin - had been snowballing for years, and the city had already begun to confront it. Locals say Rutland hit bottom in 2012, when 17-year-old Carly Ferro, a star athlete with a bright future, was hit and killed by a car while leaving her job. The driver, now in prison, had been huffing chemicals to get high.
At the end of 2012, the city created Project Vision, an organization that brings together a variety of groups and individuals - churches, police, social workers, substance abuse experts, businesses and others - so each can do its part in fighting the drug problem. Now, police often bring social workers along on calls. While police handle the crime, the social workers address the underlying reason for the call, be it drugs, domestic violence or some other ill.
Statewide, Vermont has expanded access to drug treatment, reduced waiting lists for treatment, made available the overdose-reversal drug Narcan, and expanded diversion programs for some people arrested on drug charges. “When you feel the most hopeless is when you don’t have a plan,” said Joe Kraus, chairman of Project Vision, which operates with no budget but now includes more than 100 entities united to fight opiates. “We all came together, we put together plans, we’re working together, and every day we’re making progress.”