"Suffolk sheriff demands meeting with mayor and law enforcement to review safety outside jail" by Aidan Ryan and John R. Ellement Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff, August 2, 2019
A day after a deputy sheriff was attacked on his way to work at a Boston jail, Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins called for an emergency meeting with city officials, saying the situation along “Methadone Mile” had become untenable.
“The health and safety of our officers, staff and guests coming to the House of Correction is clearly in jeopardy, as is that of the other visitors to the area,” Tompkins said in a statement. “In truth, it has been for some time.”
The attack underscored the problems caused by the high concentration of homeless people and people in the throes of drug addiction near the busy intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.
It's where you go to find smack, and it comes on the heels of a push for safe injection sites with the examples of San Francisco and Baltimore. I did, of course, note the Slow Saturday nature of an article that for once stains the gleaming image the Globe so often pedals and p[olishes regarding Bo$ton ($elf-$erving agendas and all). It's the wealth inequality and all the rest rolled into this stuff.
Janett Colombo, manager of the New Market Pizza & Grill near the jail, said Friday she “would love to have more people coming in” to her restaurant, but she does a lot of delivery service because people don’t want to walk in the area. “I hope they find a solution for this situation, because this is not good for any of us here,” she said.
On Thursday night, police arrested 18 people with connections to Atkinson Street on a variety of charges. Several had outstanding warrants including two Level 3 sex offenders who are now charged with failing to register, according to police and state records.
In a statement Friday, Police Commissioner William Gross said he looks forward to working with officials to “address the importance of mental health, addiction, and homelessness.”
On Friday, dozens of people wandered along the streets in the area, some shooting drugs into their arms in broad daylight. Panhandlers weaved in and out of traffic, and one man sat on the street in visible pain as blood pooled on his forearm. Two people by his side helped him wipe it up and assured him he would be OK.....
It's his support group, and please give:
A panhandler along a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue nicknamed the "Methadone Mile" in Boston. (Keith Bedford/Globe Staff 2016)
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I wonder if Gross is looking forward to this:
"Deaths in police custody underscore dangers for people arrested with drug issues" by Michael Levenson Globe Staff, July 30, 2019
Shayne Stilphen died after he was found unconscious in a police holding cell in the South End on July 14, but the public wasn’t informed about it until his mother, Lynnel Cox, marched into the Suffolk district attorney’s office last week demanding answers.
She wasn't leaving without them.
At least four other people have died in police custody since 2012, Boston police say, but they could not provide an exact number and there is no requirement that they or other police departments publicly disclose when suspects they are holding die in their custody.
The conditions in police holding cells are sparking increasing concern among prisoner advocates who warn that the opioid crisis is driving more people into a criminal justice system that was never designed to prevent overdose deaths or care for those going through withdrawal.
Boston police officials declined to discuss Stilphen’s death or how prepared they are to handle suspects struggling with drug addiction, who may have to spend hours or even a weekend in the department’s holding cells, waiting to make bail or appear in court, but other police chiefs say they feel overwhelmed and unprepared to safeguard suspects with drug issues who end up in their custody. Search policies also limit their ability to confiscate drugs that suspects may be hiding — making it difficult, police say, to prevent an overdose.
“We just don’t have the people to screen them on a mental health basis or an addiction basis, unless the person is honest with us that they just shot up,” said Weston Police Chief Michael Goulding. “What are we going to do?”
Natick Police Chief James Hicks said his officers carry Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose, and watch suspects in the department’s holding cell, but the care and protection of people addicted to opioids “is not our expertise,” he said. “You do your regular rounds of checks, but something can happen in 10 minutes,” Hicks said.
Boston police say the internal affairs and homicide units are investigating how Stilphen died, hours after he was arrested for allegedly breaking into a car. Cox believes her son, who was 28 and struggled with heroin addiction, overdosed on police watch. Police say an official cause of death has not been determined.
It's tragic all around, and no one to really blame. I throw up my arms at my wits end. Just say no.
In May, a 39-year-old man died in the same police station in the South End after he was arrested on a warrant from New Hampshire. His name has not been released, but police say he was alone in his cell and there were no signs of trauma on his body.
Law enforcement officials say that although deaths in custody must be reported to the local district attorney, they are rarely made public because overdoses and suicides are considered private matters, not criminal acts.
“Any death that occurs in the custody of a law enforcement agency will be thoroughly reviewed and we will provide the public with information as we receive it, if appropriate,” said Renee Algarin, a spokeswoman for Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins. “We balance our responsibilities to the public with our responsibilities to the deceased and their family, who have a right to privacy as they grieve their loved one’s death.”
Wow, does this ever put her office under the sizzle.
Advocates argue that the deaths, even without personal information, should be reported publicly so they can be tracked as a public health issue.
“If people are dying in police custody, and dying for reasons that are preventable, and not being kept safe, then the taxpayers and the Legislature should know that so we can improve the system,” said Elizabeth Matos, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services. She and others said they are concerned that police may not be responding humanely to suspects in the throes of a drug crisis.
“The expectation is they’re going to be physically suffering, and the worry is that can lead people to overlook, disregard, or not care about the physical anguish of people in jails and prisons,” said Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
He pointed to the case of Madelyn Linsenmeir, a 30-year-old Vermont woman who struggled for years with opioid addiction. Springfield police arrested her on outstanding warrants on Sept. 29, 2018, a day after Linsenmeir texted her mother, “I need to go to the hospital I am dying I weigh 90 pounds mom I need you.”
While she was being booked, officers refused her pleas for medical attention, according to a lawsuit that the ACLU filed on behalf of the Linsenmeir family.
An officer who was on the phone when Linsenmeir called her mother, Maureen, from the police station “even made a sarcastic comment,” when the mother expressed concern that her daughter was being denied medical care, the lawsuit states.
Linsenmeir died Oct. 7, 2018, after she was transferred to the custody of the Hampden County sheriff’s department and then rushed to the hospital. A medical examiner’s report found the cause was complications from a staph infection.
“There’s no excuse for how Madelyn Linsenmeir was treated, and that’s why we’re continuing to investigate on behalf of the family,” Segal said.
The Boston Police Department rule book requires officers to treat people in their custody “in a fair and humane manner.”
Suspects must be checked for cuts and bruises and taken to the hospital if they are sick or injured. Those who are unconscious should be roused, and “any unusual appearance or behavior . . . shall receive immediate attention,” the book states.
Belts, shoelaces, and other items that could be used for suicide must be confiscated, and suspects must be searched for drugs and weapons. A strip search is allowed only if officers have probable cause to believe the person is hiding weapons or drugs.
Suspects held in a cell must be checked every 15 minutes.
Boston police would only speak generally about their handling of suspects with drug issues, with a spokesman, Sergeant Detective John Boyle, saying, “If someone complains of medical issues, EMS is called and they’re brought to a hospital or treatment facility.”
In Middlesex County, 54 police chiefs have endorsed legislation that would create a regional lockup facility where suspects could be brought after they are booked. The facility would be run by Middlesex Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian, whose staff includes round-the-clock mental health and medical professionals.
Here is what it will look like, and you could be in there with a killer.
Koutoujian said his department can verify prescriptions, check medical records, and contact medical providers, and his staff is trained, he said, to oversee a “medically managed withdrawal” and initiate treatment with Suboxone or other medication.
“This is not what police do,” Koutoujian said. “This is not what police should do. Police should be back on the street patrolling neighborhoods, not watching somebody in lockup.”
Goulding, the Weston police chief, agreed that protecting people with substance use disorder in a holding cell is not his officers’ primary function.
“The Middlesex sheriff’s department, they have better facilities and better staffing meant to handle these types of people. We don’t,” he said. “It’s not doing our officers any good, and it’s not doing them any good. They need to be in a place with resources.”
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Good thing the newspapers are looking over the police blotters:
"Student newspaper case could upend journalism protections" by Deirdre Fernandes Globe Staff, July 26, 2019
It was a routine story for the University of Massachusetts Boston student newspaper that came straight out of the police blotter.
Campus security officers were looking for an unidentified man who had allegedly taken photos of women around the university. The newspaper published a short story about the search with a photo under the headline “Have You Seen This Man?”
Now, six years later, that story is at the heart of a free press battle and defamation case that has reached the state’s highest court and could upend longstanding journalism protections.
As a blogger, I have some interest and concern even though I am only regurgitating pre$$ pablum.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has stepped in to defend the former student editor and the college paper’s right to publish the story, deeming the case to be in the public’s interest. Media attorneys are penning amicus briefs and warning that — if the plaintiff succeeds — this case could severely hamper how journalists do their jobs and inform the public.
“I fear it would have a severe chilling effect on the news media to report on police investigations,” said Jeff Pyle, an attorney with Prince Lobel Tye, who has represented the New York Times and the Boston Globe. At issue is whether Mass Media, the university’s independent student newspaper, overstepped by publishing the police report and photo.
Jon Butcher, a former security engineer at UMass Boston’s information technology department and the man that police were looking for, argued that the story defamed him and damaged his relationship with his boss, forcing him to eventually leave UMass Boston. Butcher denied taking any photos of women, and after police searched his phone, they mostly found pictures of people riding the T or on the bus, according to court documents.
Police never arrested or charged Butcher with a crime. Butcher, who is representing himself in the case, could not be reached for comment.
A Massachusetts Appeals Court agreed with Butcher and concluded that because police never issued a search warrant or made an arrest, the information in the police report wasn’t protected and the newspaper was liable. That decision has been appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which is likely to hear the case this fall.
That a student newspaper would now be at the center of one of the most important statewide fights over press freedoms in the past two decades is unusual, Pyle said.
“It’s not the normal type of case you would see in the defamation case book,” he said, but, he noted, “The student press is not immune from claims of defamation . . . Student journalism is important journalism and can ruffle feathers the same way.”
The UMass Boston weekly school newspaper has generally focused on campus life issues, such as student parking fees. When the paper has engaged in First Amendment fights, it has usually been against university staff or administrators who are withholding information or, as they did this past spring, removing and covering over newspapers in a public area during prospective student visits, because of an embarrassing front-page article.
Was it this?
"Amid an unprecedented financial crisis, the university has hired at least seven people with connections to state government and politics as administrators with salaries between $81,000 and $222,000 in the past year and a half, records show. The hires include the former head of the state Democratic Party, a former legislative aide, and a former state commissioner of environmental protection. Together, the seven people earn nearly $1 million. A UMass campus spokesman said in a statement that hiring is based on merit, and the hires underscore UMass’s reputation as a place where the politically connected of Beacon Hill can land a job with a single phone call. It’s an attractive place to work in part because the UMass system is part of the state retirement system, so state employees can continue to earn toward their pensions, which are based on their three highest years of pay and their number of years of service. And the campus’s location is for many more appealing than traveling to the other campuses in Lowell, Dartmouth, Worcester, or Amherst."
Then think about the optics. The administration and staff that promotes itself as beacons of tolerance and thought, and institution of higher learning that lectures us all on freedom and democracy, running around like of bunch on communist apparatchiks censoring and covering up the news.
That's your first lesson, kids. Hypocrisy and chutzpah know no bounds.
“We don’t get into a lot of conflicts,” said Kelsey Hale, 21, a rising senior and editor-in-chief of the paper.
The reporters at the paper are careful about what they publish, Hale said, but they don’t back away from controversial stories or chasing public records to get the news. For example, last school year, when university administrators were vague about a chemical incident in the new dorms, the reporters found the fire department reports that indicated a student was allegedly trying to manufacture drugs in his room and set off the alarm, drawing police and other emergency personnel in hazardous material suits.
“Our writers stayed up until midnight on a Friday to make sure it was accurate,” Hale said. “We worked very hard to publish factual information.”
Unlike the ma$$ media operations, which accept government handouts no questions asked.
Even though the case in front of the Massachusetts high court predates Hale’s time at UMass Boston, she said the police blotters remain an important source of information, and the newspaper receives them on a weekly basis.
Police incident logs are crucial for all reporters, David Kravitz, a deputy state solicitor in Healey’s office argued in court documents filed earlier this month.
Police provide media organizations with reports of unidentified people of interest or those involved in suspicious activities frequently, including in stabbings or robberies, Kravitz said in court documents.
“Publications of this kind serve important public interests: They alert residents to reports of possible wrongdoing in their neighborhoods, they inform residents of the activities of local law enforcement agencies, and they may assist law enforcement in completing investigations of suspected wrongdoing,” Kravitz wrote.
As long as the news report is a “fair and accurate” reflection of the police log, it should be protected, Kravitz said. Requiring independent verification by the media, he wrote, would be a heavy burden, but Richard Peltz-Steele, a professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, said the media should be more careful about simply reporting from police reports.
The police can be wrong, and in the internet age that incorrect information about a person can live on and do damage long after the case is closed, Peltz-Steele said.
I had the feeling there was a censorship angle to all this.
“I think 25 years ago this would have been a clean victory for the press,” he said. “Today I see courts more willing to parse the facts and give plaintiffs a chance . . . We as a society went massively protective of media in the name of a free press. But today the capacity of mass media to injure reputation and cause real suffering has reached unprecedented heights.”
Especially when they blare war lies from the front pages, leading to the deaths and maiming of millions.
If the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upholds the lower court decision, the defamation case against the newspaper’s editor will go to trial.
Cady Vishniac, 33, the UMass newspaper editor who was part of the team responsible for the publication of the original story in 2013, said she understands the damage that can be done by news articles.
She was the only student editor who Butcher was able to serve with court documents and her name is now linked to this defamation case.
Vishniac now lives in Michigan, has gotten a graduate degree in creative writing and is no longer in journalism. She said she worries about potential employers and colleagues searching her on the Internet and finding this defamation lawsuit.
Good move!
“I am sure that there are greater issues at stake here,” Vishniac said. “I just don’t for the life of me understand how it got this far.”
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If it were not for them, the Globe wouldn't get this:
"Hanson woman accused of slashing 3 men with a machete outside Sharon hotel" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff, July 29, 2019
According to the police report, the confrontation began when a New York man and his two adult sons who had just attended a wedding together noticed a silver SUV pull into the hotel’s parking lot and park diagonally across a space with its rear tires on the grass. When Allison Maitland, 34, of Hanson, and the man inside the SUV started “making a lot of loud sexual noises,” one of the brothers made a comment to “get a room,” the report states.
The driver, who police identified as Sean M. Perry, 35, of Hanson, and the brother got into a fist fight in the parking lot, and the other brother attempted to separate them, according to the report. When the driver was knocked to the ground, a witness said Maitland got out of the vehicle with the machete in her hand and began to “slash at everything in front of her,” according to the report.
One of the brothers sustained a severe laceration to his clavicle/pectoral area; the other sustained a severe laceration to his left wrist that required immediate surgery, and the father sustained a deep laceration to two of his fingers, police said.
“They didn’t know each other,” Deputy Police Chief Donald B. Brewer said. “Basically they met each other in the parking lot, some words were exchanged, and things got out of control quickly.”
No drugs involved?
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Related:
Michelle Carter moved to another jail, for reasons unknown
Law inspired by Michelle Carter case could clarify gray area
That would be do Americans favor capital punishment, and that depends on whether murder rates rise or fall.
"A Massachusetts man who said he couldn’t get a fair trial from an all-white jury in Maine has been sentenced to 14 years in prison on drug charges. Myron Crosby Jr., of Springfield, said he didn’t think he could get a fair trial because he’s African-American and the jury is white. The 56-year-old was convicted of conspiring to bring 60,000 to 80,000 bags of heroin into Maine. He told a judge last year he'd like to be tried by a jury of his peers in Massachusetts or Connecticut, where the drug sales occurred (AP)."
"A Methuen police officer who once served as treasurer of the patrolman’s union was indicted Wednesday for allegedly stealing funds from the labor group, authorities said. Mark Whittaker, 54, of Salem, N.H., was indicted by an Essex grand jury on two counts each of larceny over $1,200 by single scheme and embezzlement from a voluntary association, according to a joint statement from Methuen police, the Methuen mayor’s office, and the Essex district attorney’s office. The indictments follow a probe into alleged misappropriation of funds from the Methuen Police Patrolman’s Association. Authorities allege Whittaker, a previous treasurer of the union, embezzled and stole money from that organization from 2015 to 2019. It was not immediately clear how much he is alleged to have stolen. A police spokesman said the amount was in the thousands to tens of thousands, but declined to get more specific. A spokeswoman with the Essex district attorney’s office said she did not have that information Wednesday evening. Fiscal irregularities were unearthed once officers other than Whittaker took over fiduciary duties for the union, according to authorities. Whittaker, who was placed on paid administrative leave for an “unrelated matter” in April, will now be suspended without pay, pending the outcome of the case, officials said. He was hired as a reserve officer in 1998 and elevated to a full-time patrolman two years later. “This case represents a staggering abuse of trust and the theft of money from police officers allegedly by one of our own,” Methuen Police Chief Joseph Solomon said."
It's almost as bad as Madoff.
Looks like they are bringing some protesters in to book:
"‘These are all people’s children’: Protesters remember addiction victims as Purdue Pharma seeks to dismiss Mass. lawsuit" by Allison Kuznitz and Andrew Joseph Globe Correspondent and STAT, August 2, 2019
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma on Friday sought to minimize its role both in the opioid addiction crisis and as a player in the painkiller industry as it asked a Massachusetts judge to dismiss a lawsuit from the state.
The state alleges the company’s deceptive marketing of its drugs spawned the opioid epidemic in Massachusetts, but a lawyer for the company pushed back against that claim.
“The notion that Purdue has created this epidemic is a serious misperception,” attorney Timothy Blank argued for Purdue.
The arguments in Suffolk County Superior Court are the latest turn in Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s lawsuit against Purdue, members of the Sackler family, who control the company, and executives and board members.
Attorney General Maura Healey (left) comforted Wendy Werbiskis of Easthampton outside the court on Friday.(Nic Antaya for The Boston Globe)
Where does she get the energy?
Judge Janet Sanders did not rule on any of the defendants’ motions to dismiss from the bench, and said that reviewing all the submissions from all the parties would take some time.
Outside the courthouse, dozens of relatives of overdose victims held a somber protest to keep the focus on the human toll of the opioid crisis.
Before February 2018, when his son overdosed on fentanyl, Gary Carter thought the worst was over after a yearslong habit of self-medicating to soothe recovery from knee surgeries and flare-ups of an autoimmune disease. Bryant Carter, 25, was engaged and had a baby on the way.
“We were in the process of planning his wedding,” Gary Carter, of Maynard, said, his eyes turning glassy as he stared mournfully at an enlarged image of Bryant. “Instead, we were planning his funeral.”
Massachusetts filed its lawsuit in June 2018, alleging that the company, the Sacklers, and executives misled the public about the risks of its drugs as it flooded communities with opioids, both contributing to overdose deaths and seeding a broader addiction crisis that has metastasized into one driven by illegal drugs.
It was a marketing strategy, and they all did it while blaming others.
It is one of some 2,000 lawsuits related to the roots of the addiction crisis from states, local governments, and tribes, most of which have been consolidated into a so-called multidistrict litigation in federal court in Ohio.
It's a consolidated trial so the pharmaceuticals will be protected by the government and not driven out of business.
In arguing for dismissal Friday, lawyers for the individual defendants sought to distance their clients from any alleged corporate misbehavior — noting the limited years of their tenures and downplaying their influence over company-wide actions — and questioned whether board members and executives of a national company could be pulled into one state’s lawsuit. They told the judge that the state was lumping its allegations together and throwing them at an array of defendants, a lack of specificity that was leading to errors and false accusations.
Gregory Joseph, a lawyer representing 13 mostly former board members, including eight Sacklers, said that the state’s claim is based on the theory that board members green-lighted deceptive marketing strategies and aimed them at Massachusetts, but he argued that there was no evidence included in the lawsuit that showed the board approving marketing materials or demonstrating that they targeted Massachusetts.
“The board never met here, they never directed marketing at Massachusetts,” Joseph said.
Assistant Attorney General Sydenham Alexander sought to counter some of Purdue’s claims. He cited a 2017 note from CEO Craig Landau included in the lawsuit that outlines how “too many Rxs being written / too high a dose / for too long” caused the opioid crisis.
“These defendants were behind each one of those dangers,” Alexander said.
Alexander also pushed back on Purdue’s claims that it represented just a sliver of the prescription opioid market. The company pushed the highest — and most dangerous — dosages, Alexander said, because they were the most profitable.
The Massachusetts lawsuit has garnered national attention. Its complaint, fully released earlier this year, relied on internal Purdue emails and reports to pull back the curtain on activity at the company, seeming to portray it as devoted to profits and certain members of the Sackler family as intimately involved and disparaging of people who had become addicted to opioids.
That last part is damaging, and shows how they viewed the victims as subhuman.
During the hearing, Judge Sanders asked Joseph, the lawyer representing board members including the Sacklers, about situations cited in the complaint that depicted certain family members, namely Dr. Richard Sackler, as a micromanager.
“What about Richard Sackler, what about Kathe Sackler, what about Mortimer Sackler?” Sanders asked.
What about David Sackler?
Joseph said that asking about budget numbers or returns on investment for new initiatives were appropriate conduct for any board member. He also cited an e-mail included in the complaint from Russell Gasdia, formerly Purdue’s vice president of sales and marketing, asking the CEO to get Richard Sackler to leave the sales force alone as a demonstration that he was separate from the company staff and their actions.
Sanders countered, however, that the e-mail could be construed to suggest that Richard Sackler was trying to assert control over the day-to-day operations of the company.
“The Sacklers’ reputation has been severely harmed by the distortions in this complaint,” Joseph said.
I $en$e a defamation counter-law$uit.
Standing on the steps of the courthouse, Carol Lorento said she cried while pasting photos of her son, Derek, and his two good friends on a rectangular poster, but, Lorento, 59, was careful not to shed tears on their faces, she said, to avoid smudging the message scrawled in looping purple script: “They should still be here with us!! They never should have suffered!!”
She recently adopted her 7-year-old grandson, who knows “Dada” is in heaven — but not much else, not how a 13-year “battle” began with a painkiller prescription for a broken arm in high school.
“Derek fought really hard, but there was never enough treatment,” Lorento said. “The final demise for my son was the pain and humiliation.”
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Friends and family of opioid overdose victims gathered outside of the steps of Suffolk County Superior Court on Friday while a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family was underway inside.(Nic Antaya for The Boston Globe)
Globe lets you know where they got the stuff:
"One drugstore dispensed a lot of painkillers. But that’s not the whole story" by Jonathan Saltzman and Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, July 28, 2019
GREENFIELD — Little about the appearance of the only CVS store in this picturesque old mill city of 17,000 suggests anything remarkable.
The cream-colored 24-hour pharmacy occupies a plaza wedged between a brick public elementary school and a storefront business that prepares tax returns, but this CVS in the northern part of the state’s Pioneer Valley bears a dubious distinction: From 2006 to 2012, the pharmacy received the largest number of opioid painkillers of any neighborhood drugstore in Massachusetts, taking in 5.3 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills from pharmaceutical distributors, according to recently released federal data.
The data, which The Washington Post and other media outlets recently obtained from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, has stirred concerns about the painkillers that poured into this Western Massachusetts city.
They are on a quest, huh?
“I can’t believe we’re in that much pain,” said Mayor William F. Martin, who wrote to CVS Wednesday asking for an explanation amid media reports on the data.
I can. It's the poorest county in the state.
CVS attributes the high volume at the Greenfield store during that period to its location. It is the only 24-hour CVS within a 30-mile radius and is near a hospital and a large physicians’ practice. Only a third of the pharmacy’s customers live in Greenfield, said a spokesman for the corporation, but the questions that the new data generated underscore the complexities and contradictions surrounding the opioid epidemic, which began with prescribed pain pills about 20 years ago but has since shifted to illegal drugs.
All right, the amount is now perfectly explainable, and yet the Globe is going to make something of it.
Today, the overdose crisis in Massachusetts is driven almost entirely by street drugs, particularly the deadly, illicit forms of fentanyl.
Indeed, the state has consistently had one of the nation’s lowest rates of opioid prescriptions, according to previously available federal data going back to 2006. The new DEA figures confirm this pattern, showing that the number of prescription pain pills that flowed into Massachusetts in 2006 through 2012 was lower, per person, than in many other states, and the pill count in Franklin County, where Greenfield is located, was lower than in most other counties in the state.
Then WTF? Something else is at work.
Even so, in 2017 Massachusetts had the seventh-highest rate of opioid-related overdoses in the nation, and Franklin County generally followed the statewide pattern.
Yeah, even so!
Dr. Ruth A. Potee, a Greenfield family physician and addiction specialist, has an explanation for the seeming contradiction: “The way that the pills came to New England wasn’t from the local prescription pad,” Potee said.
Instead, starting in the late 1990s, a flood of painkillers came illegally from pill mills in Florida, driven up the “Oxy Highway,” as Potee and others familiar with the situation called Interstate 95.
After the pill mills were shuttered in 2010 and painkillers became scarcer and more expensive, many who became hooked turned to heroin, and in recent years, heroin has been contaminated with illicit, highly potent fentanyl, leading to the high death rate.
No offense, but that is kind of ancient history compared to now. It's a decade ago.
As for the Greenfield CVS, Potee said she has known for years that the pharmacy was the biggest dispenser of pain pills in the state, but she was not overly concerned because she knew the customers came from a wide area.
That CVS, she said, is the only 24-hour pharmacy in rural Franklin County, which covers 702 square miles and sits close to Vermont, where 24-hour pharmacies are also scarce.
AAAAAAH!
It serves a wide geographic area for people who may have trouble getting to the pharmacy!
I'm only annoyed because this Globe hit job hits close to home and because it seems that they want us in pain.
In 2016, CVS, based in Woonsocket, R.I., reached a $3.5 million settlement with the federal government amid allegations that pharmacists in Massachusetts and New Hampshire filled hundreds of forged prescriptions for painkillers. Later that year, it paid a $795,000 state fine in a settlement over what the attorney general’s office called improperly dispensed opioids, but CVS spokesman Michael J. DeAngelis said in an e-mail that over the past several years, the drugstore chain has taken “numerous actions to strengthen our existing safeguards,” resulting in a 30 percent reduction in the amount of controlled substances that its retail pharmacies dispense.
WTF then?
Still, the newly released data have sparked shock and dismay among some in Greenfield. In his letter to CVS, Mayor Martin asked how “such a large deployment of opioids to one single CVS Pharmacy” failed to raise red flags for the giant drugstore chain.
Yeah, still!
Sigh!
The data also troubled a Boston attorney who is helping to represent Greenfield and about 120 other Massachusetts cities and towns as part of a mammoth, multistate lawsuit against the makers and distributors of opioids. Greenfield was the first community in Massachusetts to sue the drug companies.
Ah, this whole front-page hit job about advocacy for a lawsuit.
“This pharmacy in Greenfield is exactly what the lawsuit is all about,” said the attorney, Peter Merrigan, a Greenfield native. “There’s an unusually high number of opioids being sold in this pharmacy, and the distributors, under the [federal] Controlled Substances Act, had a duty to report any suspicious orders to the DEA.”
Merrigan said his cousin died in 2012 of opioid addiction at age 34.
And it's personal. Tried to kill my dad.
The DEA data show that 1.28 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills poured into Massachusetts, and 76 billion nationwide, from 2006 to 2012.
They went on a quest to find them.
The hot spots in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and elsewhere received 150 to 250 pills per person per year. In Massachusetts, the per-person count ranged from 19.7 in Middlesex County to 38.5 in Dukes County, which encompasses Martha’s Vineyard. In Franklin County, the number was 26.6.
The sales strategy really wanted to hit at the heart of the country in Appalachia, the rock solid rib of nation, and they are no different than the Mexican drug cartels only with the veneer of legality.
The highest number of pain pills received by any business in the state — 34.2 million — went to the Injured Workers Pharmacy in Andover. The company, now known as IWP, is a mail-order pharmacy that ships drugs nationwide, with only a small fraction going to Massachusetts patients. (Nevertheless, Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said Wednesday that it is investigating IWP’s opioid dispensing practices.)
Yeah, get the injured worker addicted (kickback forthcoming).
The second- and third-ranking pharmacies on the list are part of national companies that serve nursing homes and other facilities. The Greenfield CVS received the fourth-highest number of pills statewide.
Yeah, the forgotten nursing home scandal where they were feeding them to the most vulnerable and those who couldn't properly communicate for themselves shows you how low these guys will go for profits and sales.
In Suffolk County, the largest number of pills went to Sullivan’s Pharmacy in Roslindale. The pharmacy did not return calls seeking comment, but its website says it provides home delivery to patients throughout Eastern Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, opioid prescriptions have declined nationwide since 2012. The trend is especially steep in Massachusetts, where opioid prescriptions fell by nearly 40 percent since the beginning of 2015.
Meanwhile?
Prescriptions are down drastically?
In fact, instead of worrying about too many painkillers being dispensed, Potee, the Greenfield physician, started to worry that there were too few, leaving pain patients without relief.
Oh, in fact now!
Anymore qualifiers destroying the premise of the article is going to cause me to take a pill!
Yup, they want us rubes in pain out here.
Secession is starting to look pretty good!
In 2014, she said, she and other members of Franklin County’s opioid task force raised concerns about pharmacists’ new restrictions on dispensing opioids. The group met with representatives of CVS and several other drugstores to urge them not to withhold medication from people in pain but instead to stay alert to warning signs of misuse.
Meanwhile, powerful fentanyl has become almost ubiquitous within the illicit drug supply. As of 2018, nearly 90 percent of opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts involved fentanyl, and prescription drugs were found in the bodies of less than 20 percent of the victims, according to Department of Public Health data.
Meaning this all no longer has anything to do with pills being overly prescribed.
Like many poorer communities in Massachusetts, Greenfield, which once had a thriving tool-making industry, has had to combat opioid addiction.
You know, if you read the Globe all you would know about us out here is we are a bunch of homeless drug addicts.
Thanks for stereotyping the town, you eliti$t wretches.
Of course, when it comes to the beers it's hoist a toast.
Gene LaCoy, owner of The Music Store, which sells stereo equipment kitty-corner across from the CVS, has seen the effects.
When he sought to recoup $1,000 from a customer who stiffed him, he learned the man was in jail for burglaries to feed an opioid addiction. He said he fired an employee who stole small sums of cash from the register to pay for drugs, and the son of a motorcycle buddy of Lacoy’s died of an opioid overdose earlier this year, he said.
LaCoy, 55, has worked at the store for 34 years, and has seen the town change since he grew up there. These days, several storefronts on Federal and Main streets stand empty and the mini-golf courses and video game stores he enjoyed when he was young are gone.
“There’s not a lot of things for kids to do around here,” he said.
Not only that, it is a sanctuary city, too. That never entered conversation.
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Well, I hope you learned something about opioid addiction, what is at stake, and the profits that go to the kingpin.
Time for the Globe to do some laundry for you:
"Mass. banks, credit unions expand services for marijuana companies" by Dan Adams Globe Staff, July 26, 2019
With the state’s marijuana sector slowly gaining steam, Massachusetts banks and credit unions are expanding the services they offer to recreational cannabis companies, testing just how closely federally regulated financial institutions can work with an industry that sells a federally illegal drug.
The GFA Federal Credit Union in Gardner, which last August became the first institution in the state to openly serve recreational operators, told the Globe it is preparing to extend loans as early as this fall to licensed companies that grow, process, and sell marijuana.
The ball is rolling. No stopping it now.
While a final decision has not been made about whether to go ahead with the effort, GFA chief executive Tina Sbrega said the credit union hopes to find a way forward regardless of whether Congress acts on bills to remove much of the legal risk.
If it does decide to launch a loan program, GFA would become one of just a few — if not the only — US financial institutions openly lending to marijuana companies.
“We are examining it and working it hard because we understand these are legitimate businesses,” Sbrega said. “The demand is there and the need is there.”
Meanwhile, Century Bank of Medford, the first bank to serve medical marijuana firms in Massachusetts, has quietly opened its doors to recreational operators, too, according to three people familiar with the company’s operations. It joins GFA and Swansea-based BayCoast Bank as the only institutions in the state known to work with such companies.
The move represents a reversal: In December, Century president and chief executive Barry Sloane insisted to the Boston Business Journal that his bank would not work with recreational pot companies “until and unless” federal law changes. He declined to comment for this story.
Did he take over for Marshall?
It’s unclear what prompted Century’s policy change; while significant new political momentum has gathered behind efforts to reform federal marijuana laws, proposed bills that would make it easier for banks to work with cannabis firms or even legalize the drug nationally have yet to pass in either chamber of Congress; however, most of Century’s medical cannabis clients are also seeking recreational permits, raising the possibility that they would be forced to work with two different banks — or ditch Century for an institution willing to service both aspects of their businesses.
Smoke at own risk, but if Feds were smart they would plop a $5 fee of their own on every transaction for a big pot of money (pun ha-ha).
So far, financial institutions that follow extremely onerous federal guidelines have not been prosecuted for working with state-legal marijuana firms, but the risks, plus the cost and complexity of vetting potential clients and complying with those federal guidelines, have kept most banks on the sidelines.
Sbrega said GFA’s nearly year-old recreational marijuana banking business — which employs numerous workers to manually monitor every deposit and generate reports for federal regulators — is not yet profitable, though she expects it will break even this year.
“There are a lot of costs and it’s very labor-intensive,” Sbrega said. “But long term, we see this . . . adding to profitability.”
How long before they start mining data.
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At least there is treatment available one town over:
"Treatment center for video-gaming addiction proposed for Western Mass." by Alison Kuznitz Globe Correspondent, July 30, 2019
A spiritual retreat center in Western Massachusetts, home to 19 acres of bucolic fields and forested trails, may become a residential treatment facility for young men who need to detach from technology and overcome their debilitating addiction to video games.
Odyssey Behavioral Healthcare is awaiting a special permit approval from the town of Leyden, near the Vermont border, to launch the Greenfield Recovery Center, intended for people with “gaming disorder.”
The voluntary program could accommodate about 30 patients who are on average between 18 and 25 years old, said Dr. David Greenfield, an Odyssey clinical partner and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford, Conn. The new center would be in his name.
“It will be reintroducing them to real-time living,” Greenfield, also an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, said in a phone interview Tuesday.
It looks like game over for you, kid.
Greenfield said that once patients arrive, they must surrender all technology. After several weeks of separation – and of learning about sustainable screen-time habits – they’ll be gradually reacquainted, he said.
The Tennessee health care company, which operates six other facilities for eating disorder and social integration, already lists the Greenfield Recovery Center on its website. The program in Leyden would also be geared for adults who “compulsively” use the Internet, social media or smartphones.
Time to cut back on blogging.
Company officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Plans for the center were reported earlier by the Recorder newspaper of Greenfield.
The facility is being proposed amid debate over gaming disorder. The World Health Organization has recognized it as an official disease. The American Psychiatric Association has deemed it a “condition warranting more clinical research and experience.”
Dr. Ron Pies, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine is dubious of any type of treatment for “Internet addiction” or “Internet Gaming Disorder.”
“The bottom line from the research I looked at is that there are no good, solid, randomized, controlled studies [regarding] efficacy,” Pies said in an e-mail Tuesday. “There is still controversy [regarding] whether the term ‘addiction’ ought to apply, at least in the sense we would apply that term to opiate or alcohol ‘addiction.’ ”
The town’s municipal assistant, Michele Giarusso, said Tuesday that about 50 people attended the public hearing last week in Leyden, population about 700. Some raised questions about staffing numbers and security protocols, especially if patients were to “escape” overnight and knock on the doors of nearby homes.
Greenfield laughed at what he called the stereotypical misconception of addicted video gamers roaming the streets in a zombie-like haze. He said Odyssey would install a security system and that there will always be employees on duty.
“In general, this population is fairly docile,” Greenfield said of those who would seek help. “What they really want to do is be in front of a screen.”
Actually, the shooter in El Paso is alleged to have been a gamer, the Sandy Hook kid was, and so was the Jacksonville shooter.
Doesn't look too docile to me.
Giarusso said that other worries expressed at the meeting touched on “dual addiction,” or the idea that patients could simultaneously be addicted to pornography or drugs.
“There are some concerns this is a quiet, rural town,” Giarusso said by phone. “Will this change it? No one has an answer for that.”
And we would like to keep it that way.
Greenfield said he hopes to open the center as early as this fall, pending a decision from the town Planning Board.
The center would be located on the site currently occupied by Angels’ Rest Retreat, which for nearly two decades has hosted spiritual and corporate retreats, personal growth workshops, family gatherings, and wellness vacations, according to its website.
Oh, it's got good Karma, huh?
The fast-moving process began in May, when Odyssey contacted the retreat’s owner, Jennifer Paris, about purchasing the property.
“It’s a healing land, and it’s always been used for healing,” said Paris, who is retiring. “It’s just been kind of a sacred place. To benefit young men, I think that’s awesome.”
What, no female gamers?
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Not like they will be setting fires to get something to eat like the potheads.
Related:
Nintendo profit drops despite higher sales
Also see:
"Alicia Esquilin, 24, of Hudson, N.H., was charged with drunken driving after she was pulled over Friday night with a gas nozzle still hooked up to her Range Rover, officials said Tuesday. She was arrested for operating under the influence of liquor, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and an open container violation, police said in a statement. Esquilin was arraigned on Monday on those charges and released on personal recognizance, according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office. She is expected back in court on Oct. 16. She was unable to stay in her traffic lane, and a hose from a gas station nozzle trailed behind her car as she drove, authorities said."
She failed the breath test, too.
That puts this issue square in the headlights:
Truck driver was on drugs, reaching for drink at time of fatal New Hampshire crash, report says
The report provides the most detailed account to date of the fiery crash that killed seven, injured three others, and led to a widening scandal at the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Baker was moving on it, but his underlings blew off the hearing and made Beacon Hill mad.
RMV officials will testify before Legislature without ‘any limitations,’ Baker says
Here is what they had to say:
"RMV knowingly created backlog, ex-registrar tells lawmakers" by Matt Stout and Danny McDonald Globe Staff, July 30, 2019
Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles officials knowingly stopped processing alerts from other states in March 2018, and didn’t act for more than a year despite multiple warning flag.
The revelations, detailed during more than seven hours of testimony on Beacon Hill, paint a picture of an agency crippled by systemic dysfunction, questionable management decisions, and rigid staffing.
Erin Deveney, the former head of the Registry who resigned in June, disclosed that the department had, in fact, never processed the paper notifications other states sent it about errant Massachusetts-licensed motorists until she moved the responsibility in 2016 to a little-known unit known as the Merit Rating Board.
Erin Deveney, who resigned as head of the RMV following the fatal New Hampshire crash, answered questions from lawmakers on Tuesday.(Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
Governor Charlie Baker’s transportation secretary, Stephanie Pollack, told lawmakers that even as the issue first bubbled to the surface in 2016, the Registry didn’t let on about how serious the problem was. “We have no evidence that this issue was ever framed as being about anything other than old traffic citations,” she said.
They didn't show up before because they needed to get their stories straight, and remember this the next time you are told government doesn't engage in cover-ups!
Lawmakers, however, sounded surprised about how such a widespread problem could have gone unnoticed for so long.
It doesn't surprise me, not any more.
When the state launched new software in March 2018, Deveney and the board director, Thomas Bowes, said they stopped processing the daily notices still flowing in amid concerns the unit was falling behind on handling Massachusetts-based driving citations.
It's like me getting behind on blogging and then throwing out a bunch of Globes.
In his testimony, Bowes said his staff was struggling with adjustments to new software, and that his requests to Deveney to bulk up the board’s roughly 62-person staff went unheeded.
“I did not have the manpower,” he said.
How did you like the ball game?
Deveney said the Registry had to work with a specific head count for full-time employees, and that the “obligation” of the Registry was to “offer the services with the resources that we had.”
“I take responsibility for decisions made,” Deveney said.
She is falling on her sword, and I doubt it will be enough for the victims and their survivors!
She may not know it, but she is basically admitting to being an accomplice to manslaughter or murder.
A year after that decision to stop processing out-of-state notifications in 2018, however, an internal auditor sent Deveney another warning. Brie-Anne Dwyer, who works in the Department of Transportation’s audit unit, testified that in March she told Deveney that a backlog of 12,829 unprocessed notices from other states was sitting in an electronic queue within the Merit Rating Board.
Dwyer, who was tasked with auditing the board starting in January, said she also brought her findings to Bowes the same month, but when she asked him then who was in charge of processing them, Bowes was blunt, she said.
“He stated, ‘Nobody,’ ” Dwyer told lawmakers.
She is the ‘unsung hero’ in all this.
Bowes said he contacted an IT employee about the backlog, but acknowledged he didn’t pursue it further.
“An auditor told you there were 12,829 unprocessed tasks in the area of your responsibility and you asked one IT person [for help] and that was the end of it?” Senator Eric Lesser, a Longmeadow Democrat, asked Bowes at one point.
After a pause, Bowes replied: “Yes.”
Pollack told lawmakers she was never told of the extent of the backlog.
The excuses and passing of the buck are getting to be too much.
The Registry — now led by an acting registrar, Jamey Tesler — has since suspended the licenses of more than 1,600 drivers who, officials admit, should have lost them earlier but did not, because the paper notices were left unprocessed at the Registry’s Quincy headquarters.
The agency had also failed for years to notify other states when their drivers ran into trouble in Massachusetts. Officials have said they plan to put a system in place by Wednesday to automatically generate paper notifications for other states but that they will continue to mail them because there isn’t a system in place for states to exchange that information electronically.
Babble!
Throughout the hearing, lawmakers continually raised questions about Baker’s administration, including how its focus on improving customer service at the Registry may have handicapped its focus on public safety, and what his office may have known about the out-of-state notifications before the June crash.
In the fall of 2016, the head director of the state’s driver control unit had prepared a memo — a copy of which the committee released — specifying there was a backlog of out-of-state citations, without describing its size. The memo was addressed to Baker’s legal counsel, as well as the Department of Transportation’s legal office, but Pollack told lawmakers that the memo never made it to them.
“We have located no record that this draft memo was ever sent beyond the RMV,” she said. “It was a draft sent to the registrar but there is no evidence she ever resent it to its intended recipients.”
Tuesday’s marathon session came roughly a week after lawmakers abruptly ended a short-lived and contentious first attempt to conduct a hearing on July 22, when Baker administration officials didn’t produce witnesses or documents they wanted and said they could not answer many questions because of their own ongoing review.
Each of those invited Tuesday attended, though some didn’t testify after the hearing ran long.....
They didn't hear from auditing firm the state hired to do a 60-day review!
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"N.H. governor: ‘Horrific crash’ happened because Mass. RMV dropped the ball" by Vernal Coleman Globe Staff, August 2, 2019
The office of New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, lashed out Friday at current and former officials at the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, laying blame for a horrifying fatal crash in his state on their bureaucratic failures.
“Make no mistake: The deficiencies within the Massachusetts RMV under the leadership of Ms. Deveney resulted in the horrific crash in Randolph,” Sununu spokesman Benjamin Vihstadt told the Globe.
Sununu’s office was displeased with statements made Tuesday by Erin Deveney, the RMV’s former registrar, in which she said New Hampshire — like Massachusetts — had also failed to transmit notifications about out-of-state drivers who should have their license suspended.
On Friday, Sununu’s office fired back: “For Ms. Deveney to try and conflate the severity of their problem with New Hampshire is shameful and reaffirms why she no longer has a job,” Vihstadt said in a statement.....
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Related:
As Baker denies knowledge of RMV lapses, lawmakers ‘skeptical’ issues stayed inside agency
With state agency scandals, the buck never stops with Baker
They no longer care about the budget?
Time to hit the off-ramp:
Traffic at Logan is about to get worse
A construction boom beginning this fall will make the notorious traffic jams at Logan worse, so Massport is launching a marketing campaign to let the public know just how bad they’ll get.
Is Baker’s $18 billion bond bill a game changer for commuters?
Transportation bond bills allow the state to borrow money to fund projects, but that doesn’t mean the projects actually get done, and it was a big response to the growing hue and cry for more revenue to fix the MBTA.
Supporters of North-South rail link rally, testify before City Council
My printed paper says it was fans of link, with the sinking Red Sox at the bottom of page (the photo tells me to go to web site to see results of last night's game before they were swept on Saturday. Looks like they have been unable to recapture the magic of last year.
The good news is, it will soon be Tom Brady hunting for receivers along the sideline and over the top before running across the goal line.
Boston funding seven new public art projects
They will have a cop on the beat, too.
Menino’s daughter-in-law says at Boston Calling trial
Union members were furious at Boston Calling
Key Walsh aide testifies in corruption trial
Walsh aide testifies to pressuring Boston Calling to use union workers
Boston Calling organizer testifies
Walsh aides looked to preserve union-friendly reputation
Was all about preserving the mayor’s reputation as a staunch union supporter.
"Kevin McCrea, who ran for mayor and City Council, dies at 52" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, July 28, 2019
A local political provocateur who grabbed headlines with antics intended to draw attention to alleged government corruption died Thursday of a heart attack at 52, according to his family.
Was out celebrating his birthday.
Kevin McCrea ran for Boston City Council in 2005 and challenged then-mayor Thomas M. Menino in 2009, before returning to politics two years ago to campaign again for council under the name Pat Payaso.
“Payaso” is Spanish for clown, and McCrea campaigned for the at-large seat in a clown suit, running an outlandish campaign that included a music video set to the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage.” He garnered 2.3 percent of the vote.
McCrea, who was born in Brighton but grew up in Ohio, both decried and mocked the circus of modern politics, but behind the public shenanigans was a man focused on family, his beloved Red Sox, and building communities wherever he went, his siblings said.
“He was politically active, but impolitic, because he didn’t like facades; he didn’t like fakeness,” his sister, Meighan McCrea, 45, of Cambridge, said in a phone interview Sunday. “I think there’s sometimes a caricature of Kevin as just a gadfly, and that’s not who he was personally.”
His brother, Brendan McCrea, 50, of St. Louis, said his brother was “a larger-than-life force in our family,” as well as the Boston political scene.
Some of the family’s fondest memories, the siblings said, are of Red Sox games spent with their brother, who began buying season tickets in the team’s championship year of 2004. He made sure he and Brendan were there for the team’s ALCS victory that year over the New York Yankees and their World Series championship over the Cardinals in Brendan’s adopted hometown.
Boston fans were allowed to remain in the old Busch Stadium to celebrate, Brendan McCrea recalled, but not everyone made them feel welcome.
“Cardinals fans shouted, ‘Boston go home!’ ” he said, “Kevin and I turned around and said, ‘Oh we are.’ ”
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Well, he will no longer be a problem, huh?!
Did you see the names of the people who will be attending the funeral that will broadcast live on TV?
