Paul Bass Photo
(Opinion) Peter Webster, former chair of the Downtown Wooster Square Management Team, submitted the following opinion article about an issue that he spent much time dealing with:
The New. Haven Green: Hub of history. Crossroads of culture. Front yard to the third oldest college in the United States.
So much great stuff: The whipping post. The Potter’s Field. The long-gone stream. The leveled hillocks. The corn field. The grazing common for those too poor to have pastures of their own. The assembly spot for a real militia. The space for display and outrage. The place where stood the Lincoln Oak. The place for protest and outrageous joy. The fresh-air venue for a world-class festival, for free flicks and concerts, a Christmas tree, for dog walking and sunbathing, for lunching and business-meeting, stroller-stepping and day-dreaming, the lawn for the rest of us, bounded on all sides by religion, education, law, commerce and civil intercourse, bordered by stands of very expensive elms that give the Elm City its trademark name.
A field, then, of dreams, plotted in the starry past, destined for a starry future, a vista of green grass and white snow and flags and a fountain: an everyday jewel that fits in every pocket.
Owned since time immemorial by the Five Veiled Deities whose names to speak is almost outrage and fronting “The Yale,” that mythic beast, the Centicore, goat-like, rugged, with the tusks of a boar and four horns it can swivel in any direction: Yale University, an immigrant to New Haven from the wilds of Killingworth, Saybrook and Wethersfield, Yale, nurturing home of presidents and statesmen and stateswomen, lawyers and artists, monolithic corporation of intellect and income that is, perhaps, the even-more invisible Sixth Veiled Deity of The Green, The New Haven Green: The Field of Dreams.
Except, it’s a shit hole.
Discarded convicts, derelicts, transients, transfers, drunks, college rowdies including gentlemen songsters out on a spree, out-of-town service abusers, perverts, pedophiles, and the simple, truly homeless seeking some sort of comfort, and, yes, folks, addicts, addicts in every flavor, coming to buy and sell and be serviced by our generous, for-profit drug dispensaries that exchange one addiction for another, methadone for opioids and stuff like that, so a nice, not too clean dollar can be made.
Addicts. Addiction. Addiction Services. Business.
And business is very good.
Do you know how many times Engine #6 and Engine #4 roll to administer Narcan and other saving medications?
Do you know how many times AMR rolls its ambulances to take over from the first responders, for the little round trips to our two hospitals?
Do you know how many times the New Haven Police Department puts its blue gloves on and extricates the unfortunates from the hell they have put themselves in?
It’s in the public records. Just ask. Then ask again. Sometimes folks holding information do not want to share.
You would be surprised, no, you would be shocked, and shocked at the repeat rescues, the guy taken five times to the hospital in the same day, revived, then sent out to go back, Jack, do it again, wheels turning ‘round and ‘round.
And do you know how much it costs, each time Engine #6 and Engine #4 roll? How much it costs each time AMR rolls, and the NHPD needs to do grinding extra work to just keep up? And do you know who is paying for that, ultimately, in every way?
You. Me. Us.
We pay financially and morally, and spiritually: we pay.
We pay because there is no plan, no legislation, no realistic enforcement to deal with these shattered lives sunk in sensual ignorance, for any reason they might have to keep diving into, and almost drowning in the muck that is methadone and heroin and OxyContin, prescribed or not, that we have invited into our lives and our bodies to just get through the day, because we don’t have a plan, either.
Giving these folks a nice breakfast is not going to do it.
They need a realistic life plan where each day they can have a little victory.
Giving them space to live next to our highly-taxed dwellings is not going to do it.
They need a realistic life plan where each day they can have a little victory.
Giving these folks access to what is in essence a controlled addiction is not going to do it, even if graduate students and doctors at “The Centicore” and the hospitals get to study these folks to see how they are getting on with their controlled controlled-substance distribution and visit with them in their nice offices adjacent to the Green.
Folks, we need to come up with a plan that will allow these lost folks to take responsibility for their lives and their actions, a realistic plan, please, free from well-meaning “studies,” a plan that asks professionals, the actual case workers, the street-outreach workers, the New Haven Police Department district managers and cops on the walking beat. We need to ask the lucky few who have made it out of the morass of methadone, K2, OxyContin, heroin, crack, PCP, and the many evil dusts and pills and injectables that swirl around the Green and the side streets in all our neighborhoods. We need to ask the people who know what is real, not the statisticians, the academics, the CEOs of drugdispensaries and drug manufacturers.
We need to ask the people who wade through this muck everyday what might be done. And then: Listen. Legislate. Enact. Enforce.
This bad stuff is everywhere. It will not go away.
We allow it. In essence, we make it happen because we do not notice enough to care, unless our car gets broken into, or our house gets invaded, or our kid ends up dead.
Do you know about the methadone clinics located right next to a New Haven middle school and elementary school?
Do you know about the continuous incidents of overdose, copulation, vomiting and witless, lewd wandering-about near these two schools?
Do you know about the despair of the people who live in fear in paid-for houses near these two drug-dispensaries as they see their children exposed to these people who are being enabled in their irresponsible, dangerous life-choices?
Do you know about the grim patience and tireless efforts of the New Haven Police Department district manager who has to deal with these incidents, by these two schools, sometimes on an hourly basis?
Do you know how often this district manager has tried to contact the alders for this district, and the state legislators for this district, and how these elected officials have not had the decency to even return a phone call or an email?
Can you learn from this professional, equitable New Haven police officer the knowledge that you can’t just revive ‘em and remove ‘em, and book ‘em, over, and over and over and over again? That you need a plan? That we need a plan?
A City of New Haven plan, a State of Connecticut plan (good luck with that) and a federal plan (are you nuts?).
So let’s start with our own spot in time and space, our City, New Haven, the place we call home. We might be able to come up with the plan for our own house.
We are citizens, folks. We vote. We elect our representatives. We should make them work for a living. We should pay attention to who is selling what to whom and for how much, and we should hold legislators and CEOs accountable to serve up a plan, so that these unfortunate addicts get more than addictive drugs but maybe a life plan where they are responsible for what they do, and their service in return depends on their responsible engagement with society.
And we need to open up the books to the for-profit drug dispensaries and the New Haven-based shadow corporation that is the prime mover of all these too-high dosage doses of addictive drugs that do not stop drug addiction. They just enable the addiction so that the addicts now move at the pace of morbid sloths through a life that is just too hard to be believed.
Let’s come up with a real plan that helps these troubled people to actually live a life, to turn their hole of a life into a real life of possibilities, and let us turn the hole of our New Haven Green into the Field of Dreams it was meant to be.
Let us make a New Haven. Again.
It is a bit of a joke that the Green is now fully wireless, but no one wants to visit because of the behavior of those who populate it. So, yes, the convicts, derelicts, transients, transfers, drunks, college rowdies including gentlemen songsters out on a spree, out-of-town service abusers, perverts, pedophiles, and the simple, truly homeless can catch a signal while most in the city avoid the area because of them.