Last Monday, Town of Montgomery Police arrested a Walden man, after he was stopped while driving with a suspended registration. In his car, police found 390 decks of heroin. Local authorities say the drugs had a potential street value of anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000.

While substantial, this quantity of heroin is not a very large amount by law-enforcement standards. The arrest, however, does point to a disturbing trend taking place in the region, where authorities are now witnessing a surge in heroin abuse and heroin-related crime.

Lt. Alex Landolina, who has worked with the Town of Montgomery Police Department for almost 20 years, said it was likely the drugs were meant for local distribution.

“Three-hundred ninety decks of heroin don’t tend to be for personal consumption,” he said.

Landolina said that town police were seeing an increase in petty crime like petit larceny and more serious offenses like robbery and burglary, as a means to fund heroin addiction.

More troubling, he said, was that a lot of this crime was being carried out by teens who are addicted to the drug. Further repercussions include overdoses with some resulting in the deaths of teenagers as young as 14, he said.

“I’m shocked,” said Landolina.

It appears that during the economic downturn, heroin users are resorting to even more desperate measures to finance their habit. Lt. Michael Clancy of the Town of Newburgh Police confirmed the trend, explaining that a significant amount of the petty crime in the Town of Newburgh also stemmed from addiction to the drug.

“A lot of them are getting caught over and over again,” he said. “A lot of them will tell you it’s relating to heroin.”

Clancy spoke about a time, not too long ago, when another drug-related spike in crime occurred.

“Crack hit Newburgh in 1986,” he said. “When you see crime stats you can tell when it hit – crime-spiked.”

In the Town of Crawford, Lt. Dominick Blasko said that heroin had been back for a few years, bringing with it a rise in the number of overdoses, some fatal, some not.

“It’s cyclical,” he said.

New York State Police Senior Investigator Neil Moscato described heroin as a “powerful” drug.

“Once you try it, usually, heroin owns you,” he said.

Moscato said State Police were seeing a rise in heroin overdose fatalities, as well.

“In the last couple of years it seems like we’ve seen twice as many as before,” he said. “Relatively recently, we had about six people in the area die from overdoses.”

An investigator for the State Police Community Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), who asked not to be identified for this story, said that typically when a person first tries heroin, he or she experience a euphoric high, which often leads to a physical addiction accompanied by symptoms of physical withdrawal like nausea and vomiting.

The pain and discomfort of withdrawal can then lead a person to continue using the drug in order to alleviate their symptoms, he said.

He explained that many people are introduced to heroin through “gateway” drugs like Oxycontin, another opiate prescribed for pain and injuries. When a person who has developed an addiction loses their prescription, they can turn to heroin, he said.

Heroin is relatively cheap, with a bag selling locally for $8 to $20. Though heroin is widely abused in the U.S., it is grown and processed in regions like South America and the Middle East with countries like Colombia and Afghanistan being forerunners in the trade.

“Heroin, locally, for the most part, comes in from South America,” he said.

Derived from the seeds of the opium poppy plant and spread through major distribution hubs like New York City, it is most often sold in little glassine bags as a “deck,” containing 1-15 grams of heroin per baggie.

Often these baggies are stamped with trendy symbols. (Recently, baggies have been stamped with the words “notorious,” the last marking seen by the agent.)

The investigator explained that the situation had been worse last year, before a federal wiretap led to the disbanding of the Gilbert and Lucas Alvarez heroin ring, based in the Town of Wallkill. Dubbed “Operation Dispatch,” the investigation was a joint effort of the DEA, the State Police, the City of Middletown and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. About 45 people were arrested in the bust.

“That put a major dent in local distribution,” he said. “They had customers coming from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and across the Hudson Valley to purchase heroin.”

Now, he explained, other organizations were taking up distribution at smaller levels, trafficking smaller quantities of the drug, as seen with the arrest last week.

“It’s still out there, but we haven’t identified any significant organizations at the Gilbert Alvarez level,” he said.

The agent said that State Police were continuing to “proactively investigate” all leads relating to heroin trafficking in the region.

By SHANTAL PARRIS RILEY
sriley@tcnewspapers.com