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False values to blame for ineffective drug policy
08 Dec 2006 12:00 am
"War on Drugs" is
Deep in error;
Much akin to
"War on Terror."
Cliff Thornton, the recent Green Party candidate for governor, is a man of commendable substance and character. One of his seminal comments during the campaign was "We've got to understand that the drug war is meant to be waged, not won."
Others have said much the same about the war on terror, and all are right, but the election showed the public might at least have caught the drift about terrorism. Not so about drugs. Voters still seem ready to punish politicians who seem to be "soft."
This faulty faith in an incarceration ideology, promoted especially by the prison-industrial complex, is painfully damaging to society.
Take Hartford. New research has found one child in six there has a parent in jail. Very few of these got sentenced for stock fraud or embezzlement. White-collar criminals are from the suburbs, and mostly they just get fines and probation. The heavy sentences are reserved for drugs and related crimes. Indeed, there exists a kind of puritanical belief those of us who maintain freedom from such substances will vouch safe a place for ourselves in heaven, as long as we persecute those who have fallen.
Drug laws purposely are drawn to punish blacks and Latinos with especial harshness. Not coincidentally, we also tie in restrictions on their right to vote. In some states, there is a lifetime prohibition.
Yes, there have been improvements. While our state still over-punishes for cocaine possession, at least it's now equal for blacks and whites. Penalties used to differ greatly for possession of crack cocaine (cheaper to buy) and the powder (expensive). Eleven states - not us - also allow medical marijuana use, though the feds are thrilled to jump in and arrest sufferers anyway. And California widely offers treatment instead of jail. Still, the drug war nationally continues to fuel crime syndicates, destroy families, and breed corruption here and in Mexico.
That's a heavy price to pay for a false religion.
Routine call gone wrong
TERRI MILES
07 Dec 2006 12:00 am
Milford Police Chief Keith Mello remains adamant that police were not responsible for the death of 24-year-old Nicholas Brown of Bridgeport.
However, he said the "unbecoming manner" in which some police department employees conducted themselves and "inappropriate" comments made during the young man's incarceration demanded disciplinary action.
During a recent press conference, Mello said that sometime during Brown's arrest outside the Red Roof Inn on Rowe Avenue, the young man swallowed a package of cocaine.
Brown, who was accompanied by his pit bull, was shocked with a Taser® stun gun three times. Officers at the scene said they used the stun gun because Brown was uncooperative.
A Taser® overrides the central nervous system as it delivers a five-second electric shock of up to 50,000 volts through probes attached to thin wires.
According to documentation from the investigation, Brown was asked several times what he swallowed. He reportedly told police he had swallowed two "roaches" (marijuana cigarette butts) and also said it was a piece of paper from his probation officer stating that he was not allowed to drive. The officers said he never indicated that he swallowed cocaine.
Four hours after the arrest, Brown was dead. The Chief Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death as cocaine toxicity and determined the manner of death to be accidental.
Brown's mother, Lori Brown of Stratford, reportedly plans to bring a wrongful death suit against the city and the police department.
On the registry, but not a predator
Jennifer Abel
12 Nov 2006 12:00 am
Joshua S. is one of 79 registered sex offenders living in Bristol, and one of an unknown number of Connecticut residents branded sex offenders and listed on the state's sex-offender registry for committing statutory offenses - usually consensual sex with a minor - while still minors themselves.
The sex-offender registry is a byproduct of "Megan's Law," named after Megan Kanka, a New Jersey 7-year-old who was raped and murdered by a convicted pedophile in 1994. The rationale behind the law, passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, was to give people a way to learn if child molesters or violent sexual predators live in their area.
So how did it come to cover high school sex acts?
"That's a good question," says Norman Pattis, a criminal-defense attorney based in Bethany. "Sex crimes are the equivalent of what witchcraft was in Salem ... a lot of the law is draped in Victorian convictions about sex and sensibility. There have always been young teenagers who were sexually active, but we don't want to admit it so instead we criminalize it ... the state is overreacting to the public's hysteria."
Advocates for sexual-assault victims also want people like Joshua off the registry, so it can serve its initial purpose letting the public know about dangerous sexual predators. Nancy Kushins is the executive director of Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services in East Hartford.
"As a victims' services organization, we're concerned about public safety, which is not being served by putting these teenagers on the list. The sex-offender registry can be a useful tool, but it's most valuable if it focuses on dangerous sex offenders."
The registry's vagueness makes it impossible to know exactly why a person is on it. For example, Joshua's entry on the registry says only that he was convicted of sexual assault in the second degree. In his case, that meant consensual sex with a minor while he was still one himself. But a prison guard convicted of having sex with an inmate would also be guilty of second-degree sexual assault. Those bland words could also describe a man who committed violent, forcible rape and then plea-bargained down, Kushins said.
Voters Deserve To Hear From All Candidates
Susan Campbell
29 Oct 2006 12:00 am
If you want to understand what brings on voter apathy, a small meeting room just off the lobby at Central Connecticut State University's student center is a good place to start.
Clifford Thornton, Green Party candidate for governor, has come to talk to members of the Progressive Student Alliance, an organization whose members seek to expose students to new ways of looking at the issues.
As it turns out, Thorton was free, even though the second and last gubernatorial debate was going on.
Save for one notable exception, Connecticut's political debates have decidedly been for the two major parties - third-party candidates need not apply. Even though four gubernatorial candidates met the secretary of state's criteria for candidacy, only two were included in either of the televised debates. Say what you want about the democratic process, but it failed here. Only two candidates participated in what is arguably the largest (and most accessible) forum available for voters. Come Election Day, voters won't have the whole picture.
"But that's not fair," one student said at the CCSU meeting.
It's not fair. Nor is it democratic (or republican). And we should be ashamed of ourselves. We're proving to disaffected voters that democracy is restricted to big-ticket participants with deep pockets. And the people who broadcast the debates do so by borrowing the airwaves. Those airwaves belong -- so says the Federal Communications Commission - to the citizens. And the citizens deserve to see and hear everyone.
To a small but rapt audience, Thornton quickly lays out the Green Party platform: free college and enhanced mass transportation and a radically different drug policy.
He had asked one journalist involved in the debate to ask the Republican and Democratic candidates why all candidates weren't included. I bet him a dollar the journalist (a respected reporter) would.
But the reporter didn't. In the polished world of two-party politics, going off-script would have been entirely too much to ask. And here is where you lose so many would-be voters. If they think that the fix is in and the game is locked, why ever would they want to get involved?
Registered sex offender found near school
Ken Borsuk
07 Sep 2006 12:00 am
A man once found in possession of child pornography was arrested last week after allegedly violating his probation by going near children.
Ernest Drupals, 35, of Stamford, was arrested Aug. 29 by an arrest warrant after Mr. Drupals was found in a vehicle at Old Greenwich School, on Aug. 16, watching children play on an athletic field. Greenwich Police Department Public Information Officer Daniel Allen said officers on routine patrol saw the vehicle and when the patrol car approached, Mr. Drupals drove away suddenly.
Lt. Allen said the vehicle was pulled over and a standard check found Mr. Drupals was a registered sex offender. Being in the school parking lot close to the children violated the terms of his probation.
Mr. Drupals was charged twice during a two-week span in 2000 when he was a Greenwich resident. On Nov. 30 he had been arrested after peering through a window at Greenwich High School to watch and videotape boys swim practice, and then on Dec. 14 he was additionally charged with 20 counts of possession of child pornography. A search of Mr. Drupals’ home at the time turned up more than 300 computer disks that contained more than 4,000 images of child pornography as well as video tapes of young males in locker rooms and at various swimming events from other towns, including New Canaan.
At the time, Chief of Police James Walters said some of the images involved children as young as six years old and added he was “shocked by the graphic nature” and volume of what had been found.
Teen curfew plan submitted to aldermen
WTNH
05 Sep 2006 10:50 pm
The deaths of three New Haven teenagers this summer have brought increased attention to the subject of youth violence.
On Tuesday night, several New Haven aldermen officially submitted a Youth-Protection proposal, a city wide curfew they hope will curtail some of the violence plaguing the Elm City.
The proposed ordinance would set a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m curfew for kids ages 17 and under. Caught once they will get a warning, twice a $75 dollar fine and three times or more a $99 dollar fine.
The issue must be debated on in committee, as well as public hearings, before an actual vote - something that could take a few months.
There’s no place for vigilante justice
Jeff Mullin
03 Sep 2006 1:07 am
We would do anything for our children. We would die for them. We would kill for them.
Or would we? To save their lives, certainly. But to avenge a wrong against them, whether real or perceived?
That is precisely what happened in Connecticut earlier this week. A 2-year-old girl told her mother she had been molested by a neighbor. The mother told her husband, the girl’s father. The father went berserk.
The idea of vigilante justice, of an ordinary person taking the law into his or her own hands, is an intriguing one. It is almost Biblical, real “an eye for an eye” stuff. It is straight out of the code of the Old West, shoot first and ask questions later.
And there are plenty of questions surrounding this disturbing case, not the least of which is, did Barry James do what Jonathon Edington’s daughter says he did?
If he didn’t, Jonathon Edington is merely a murderer. But if Barry James was a child molester, and if he did have inappropriate sexual contact with the 2-year-old, what does that make the Connecticut lawyer?
If someone did something to a member of our family even approaching the horror of sexual abuse, we would be tempted to use a gun, a knife, a club or our fists to mete out our own version of justice.
But if we are going to do that, we might as well fire all the police, sack all the judges and tear down all the jails. We can all arm ourselves to the teeth and simply battle it out whenever we have a dispute with a neighbor, whether over an allegation of a horrific crime, or a dog digging in a flower bed.
A country ruled not by laws, but by those with the most weapons and the shortest tempers, is frankly not a country in which I would care to live.
Lawyer charged with murdering neighbor
JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN
30 Aug 2006 2:45 pm
A lawyer climbed through a neighbor's bedroom window and stabbed him to death after being told by a family member that the man had molested his 2-year-old daughter, authorities say.
Barry James, 58, was stabbed in the chest nearly a dozen times Monday. The lawyer, Jonathon Edington, 29, was charged with murder and burglary and was released on $1 million bail Wednesday.
Mother sues town and sexual abuse suspect
Associated Press
16 Aug 2006 7:43 am
A sexual abuse arrest has led to a federal lawsuit against the town of East Windsor and two former emergency management officials.
The mother of three boys who were allegedly molested by Peter Waraksa, a former assistant director of the East Windsor Emergency Management Agency, filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Monday.
The lawsuit charges that the children were sexually assaulted by Waraksa, 44, while he was an employee of the town agency.
It further alleges that the town should be held liable because Waraksa's former supervisor, state Trooper Mary Buckley, authorized him to organize a youth program that ultimately resulted in the sexual assault of the three children.
Waraksa was arrested in December on charges he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy. In July, additional charges were filed against him including two counts each of fourth-degree sexual assault, illegal sexual contact and employing a minor in an obscene performance in connection with the boy's brothers, who were 3 and 6.
College workshop focuses on preventing sex assault
Heather Barr
11 Aug 2006 4:00 am
Linda McGarr worries that her 17-year-old daughter, Katie, who is going to college thousands of miles away this fall, may not be aware of the all dangers she faces and be able to make the right decision in a bad situation.
The New Preston mother asked her daughter Wednesday night if she would spend two hours of her only night off from work to attend a College Safety Workshop held by the Women's Center of Greater Danbury, where topics ranged from sexual assault to dating violence.
One statistic that really got Katie McGarr thinking was that the highest risk of a sexual assault for new students occurs between the first day of college and Thanksgiving break.
Ex-offender laws must pass muster
04 Aug 2006 11:56 am
Connecticut state law leaves no ambiguity when it comes to sex offenders. After the criminals have served their time, they are required to register into an electronic database, accessible to the world from the state's Web site.
It's a proactive regulation, one that aims to keep kids and families safe from such criminals who, some studies show, have a high rate of recidivism.
Now, several Connecticut municipalities are looking to extend their reach in an attempt to further regulate the lives of convicted sex offenders.
Protecting the wellbeing of our children must be the chief priority for both state and local governments.
But that goal must not be accomplished by sacrificing rights guaranteed to all United States citizens by the Constitution — even sex offenders.
Man Pleads No Contest
JODIE MOZDZER
04 Aug 2006 12:00 am
An East Hampton man who was accused of sexually assaulting six children in 2002 pleaded no contest to the charges Tuesday in Superior Court.
Frank E. Carreiro, 78, was initially charged with two counts of first-degree sexual assault, two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and 21 counts of risk of injury to a minor. Under a plea bargain, the charges were reduced to six counts of risk of injury to a minor - one count for each child. He faces up to five years in prison, with the right to argue for less.
Carreiro was charged with molesting five boys and one girl, who were 7 to 12 years old at the time of the crimes. One of the children has since died in an unrelated car accident.
The children, four siblings and their two cousins, were sexually assaulted at sleepovers at Carreiro's East Hampton home, where Carreiro would show them pornographic magazines, have sexual talks with them and play sexual games, said State's Attorney Maureen Platt.
"The experience was extremely traumatic for the children involved," Platt said. "All of the children are in counseling as a result."
The affidavit said Carreiro, who was the landlord of some of the children's parents, threatened to evict the parents if they went to police.
Carreiro was sentenced in 2003 in Alaska to four years in prison, suspended after 18 months, on each of two counts of sex abuse of a minor. His two victims were 9 and 10 years old. He was also convicted in Superior Court in Middletown of a charge of fourth-degree sexual assault in 1989 and served two years of probation.
The current case was continued to a pre-sentencing hearing on Oct. 20, where Carreiro can argue for a lesser sentence.
