Many of you have read or even followed the series on Heroin on Long Island in the Newsday. It gives the impression that Newsday discovered this epidemic and are now making the public aware. The truth is the DAI armed with information from the membership, especially Narcotics Vice Squad, brought this to the legislators at a Public Safety Committee Meeting on April 7th 20008 this is the same meeting that Legislator Mejias turned his back to me as I was testifying before them. (Possibly an action because we did not endorse him.) The DAI was requesting more detectives to fight this issue and other rising crime issues such as bank robberies. It fell upon deaf ears and the department took the stance that we have plenty of people doing the enforcement and there was no epidemic.
Overdose deaths continued to increase and two months after the DAI testimony about the heroin epidemic we saw the overdose death of Natalie Ciappa. We saw bank robberies continue to rise and more and more heroin arrests. We saw people that normally would not commit crimes do so because of their need for heroin.
The DAI armed themselves with more information and returned to the Legislature on October 20th 2008 with approximately 150 detectives present to hear the DAI asking for more detectives or to at least fill the 425 detective positions. This again fell on deaf ears and the answer was to reduce us to 404 detectives. We have now been reduced much lower then that and our budgeted amount of detectives is allegedly 394. After July 1, 2009 our number of detectives will be in the 370's.
Could you imagine what just 10 more detectives assigned to fight this heroin issue would mean? If each detective averaged 20 sale arrests per year and we added 10 more that would mean 200 more dealers off the streets of Nassau County. If we added 20 more detectives that would mean 400 more dealers off the streets. Remember when the department fought the "crack epidemic"? They assigned additional personnel to Narcotics Squad and it worked.
It seems a lot of people now want to sound the horn and blow the whistle on the heroin epidemic such as the District Attorneys office, Newsday and even Legislator Mejias. We know it was the DAI armed with information from you and the cop on the street that first brought this to the Legislators. Maybe it is because Election Day is nearing?
I will be going back to the Legislature shortly to advise them of the shortage in the Detective Division. I will advise you on the progress and attempt to forward transcripts from testimony at the Legislature on our issues.
I am forwarding you an opinion editorial I wrote in December 2008 that Newsday refused to print.
Fraternally,
Tom Willdigg
Opinion Editorial submission to Newsday
By Thomas R. Willdigg, president, Nassau Detective's Association
Leadership's Heads in Sand as Nassau's Heroin Epidemic Grows
It's no surprise to me that in late November, SuffolkPolice searching the home of a Smithtown man found about 10,000 packets of heroin, more than 1 kilogram of cocaine, more than 100 oxycodone pills and nearly a pound of marijuana. And, I wonder how many Nassau residents, and bank presidents and their employees know that 60 bank robberies in our county are tied to offenders with heroin addictions?
Nassau's detectives know the epidemic is real and so do drug treatment centers who are bulging at the seams. In particular, heroin use is up amongh white middle class teens in southeast Nassau County. Sound unbelievable? Just ask Linda Diorio of Farmingdale, Doreen Ciappa of Seaford and Jerry Gentile of Smithtown, all whom have lost a child to heroin use. Georgr Chuvalo, a retired Canadian heavyweight boxer, who lost his three sons to heroin, has joines the fight by visiting Long Island schools to raise a collective voice against this scourge.
Statistics from both counties show an increase in both heroin-related arrests and overdoses over the past seven years. Law enforcement and health care officials are trying to do their part while parents fight to devise solutions that work for their families in crisis. Suffolk has now created a dedicated heroin unit. What I see is a tremendous lack of "common sense" leadership from Nassau County officials.
When Doreen Ciappa and I testified before the Nassau Legislature's budget hearing in October, our call for more detectives to fight the epidemic fell on deaf ears. It boggles my mind that legislators do not understand the essential tactic to fighting this epidemic is to get the drugs off the streets before your teens go looking for them. Nassau County's priority should be funding more at least 10 more detectives to make the buy-and-busts urgently needed to root out the larger drug dealers.
Over the past few months, county legislators from both Suffolk and Nassau introduced bills that would require police to notify school districts if any of their students were arrested on heroin-related charges or if there were heroin-related arrests in their districts. Suffolk's legislation would also institute an anonymous texting tip system for the Suffolk Crime Stoppers program. Both proposed bills are named Natalie Ciappa's Law, after the 18-year-old Massapequa woman who died of a heroin overdose in June.
These legislative attempts are noble and well meaning-but they are useless. School administrators have been quoted as "being concerned about what to do with the information once they get it" and that "eventually, we will work through that and find a benefit to this type of communication." Now, school superintendents and boards are so concerned about lawsuits from parents if police inform the school that their child has been arrested, that the Suffolk bill has been scrapped entirely for a new approach. The Ciappa's are looking for New York State to pass a law that would give parents an option (other than using the criminal justice system) to force young adults over the age of 18 into rehab.
Several years ago, the Detective's Association sounded the alarm on the increasing influence and impact of gangs in Nassau County. And, with political courage, county leaders funded a dedicated gang squad. Next, we sounded the alarm about sexual predators and the increasingly dangerous online solicitation of minors. Shining a light on these trends put more detectives in place to handle those issues and it worked. There needs to be an urgent commitment of resources to battle the heroin epidemic right now. It is no different than fighting gangs or tracking sexual predators. And, if you ask the Diorio's, Ciappa's or Gentile's, Nassau's leaders are too little, too late.
Newsday columnist Joye Brown, in her December 7, 2008, column "Putting a face on LI's heroin problem" cited statistics from the detox unit of Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow. "It is at 100 percent capacity. Seventy percent of those patients are addicted to opiates, including heroin. And those patients, a hospital official said, are getting younger, at 18, 19 and 20 years old."
While we all wait for Nassau's officials to act, I am launching a "take it to the streets" community awareness campaign to bring our message of concern to all taxpayers. Like President-Elect Barak Obama's groundswell of community support to capture the White House, the tide of change must come from every Long Islander. We need every parent, community and business leader in Nassau and Suffolk to stand with local law enforcement in this fight.
Perhaps if Nassau had more Narcotics Vice Detectives working in the field we might have prevented some, or all, of the 35 overdose deaths in our county this year alone including Natalie's. We would have locked up another dealer or gotten to one more person before they overdosed. I can't speak for any one parent, but I am sure families with drug-addicted children would rather visit their child in the police station than in the morgue.
Thomas R. Willdigg is president of the Nassau Detectives Association, Inc., the union representing 404 detectives working throughout Nassau County.
