Crime & Safety

Suburban Scourge: Fighting Heroin Locally

The second in a series about the drug once contained in low-income city neighborhoods that has found its way into towns across the region, and how communities are fighting its grip.

With the rise in heroin use and trafficking in Essex County,District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett has spent years building strategies to combat the drug.

“I have been talking about the dangers of heroin and OxyContin since 2003 when we made a concerted effort to educate schools, police, parents and young people about heroin,” Blodgett said. Since 2003, Blodgett has implemented policies to fight the black market opiate trade, including a policy requiring all potential plea agreements with defendants charged with heroin trafficking or distribution be reviewed by himself or his senior staff to prevent heroin dealers from evading prosecution.

But the key battle strategy is seen at the community level – on the streets, in schools, at home – and local law enforcement departments have had to adapt their battle plans accordingly.

Find out what's happening in Andoverwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In the Trenches


Last year, state police seized a pound of heroin from a minivan on I-495 driven by a Lawrence resident. Last week, a man was charged with possession of heroin in local hotel room.

In September, a man was charged with possession after police said he passed out in his car high on heroin. And just a few days before that, police charged another man with heroin possession while serving a warrant at a local home. And just a few weeks before that, there were two separate heroin arrests in Andover on the same day.

Find out what's happening in Andoverwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The drug is believed to be coming into town from nearby Lawrence and Lowell, with users buying drugs in those cities and often stopping in North Andover for a fix before heading out of the area via 495. And in some cases, the drugs are bought by locals and remain in town.

"We see Lawrence had unfortunate budget issues, where they put a lot of specialized units into patrol," Andover Police Detective Greg Scott said.
"The real street level stuff was kind of able to flourish. People come down from New Hampshire and surrounding cities and towns, they flock to the city, pick up and before they do so they stop at a parking lot. Now it's just a fix."

Andover hasn't seen quite the spike in heroin activity as other nearby communities, but Andover Police aren't taking any chances. Like neighboring North Andover, Andover has taken a "Broken Windows" approach -- the idea that police should focus on solving small crimes in addition to big ones, because if a window is broken, people will break another window, then they maybe break into the building and cause damage, or light fires.

With a heroin epidemic, that practice can be crucial.

"If your heroin is $50 a day or pill addiction is $200 a day, you're going to need money," Scott said. "It's hard to sustain work, hard to keep a job. There's a direct relationship between property theft, house breaks, car breaks. A lot of those crimes are perpetrated to facilitate a drug habit."

Incidentally, the social scientist who wrote the “Broken Windows Theory” lived in North Andover before he died last year.

Community Eyes

The Andover Police Department has a certain amount of officers on at a time. And in a geographically vast town neighboring two cities known for drug activity, that makes it difficult to fight crime with patrols alone.

"We can't be everywhere in the neighborhoods," Scott said. "So we really urge people to be our eyes and our ears. Call when you see something."

And with that information, police are able to adapt patrols and other methods to fit trends in certain areas.

Later this month, Andover Police will host a Drug Awareness Night at Town Hall with Andover Youth Services, educating the public about trends in local drug use.

"We do not stick our head in the sand and say, 'we don't have this problem and we're not going to have these problems,'" Scott said.

In the next part of this series, we will examine how communities are confronting the root of the heroin scourge -- addiction.

Read the rest our three-part series "Suburban Scourge":
Part 1: Essex County Battles Heroin's Tide
Part 3: Addiction and Gateway Pill


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