nothin On Judgement Day, K2 Dealer Wins Mercy | New Haven Independent

On Judgement Day, K2 Dealer Wins Mercy

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Quentin Staggers at a 2017 protest for rights of homeless people.

The same day paramedics carted victims of over 100 K2 overdoses from the Green, Quentin Staggers was slinging his own supply of the synthetic drug in Fair Haven with doses powerful enough to knock one customer unconscious at a Branford gas station.

Federal agents busted down his door, convinced he had something to do with the Green overdoses. On Thursday, seven months later, that was no longer so clear — and Staggers walked free with another second chance” after a judge heard the heartbreaking tale of a boy who smoked crack with his mother and grew up to a life of struggle on the streets.

Based on tips from two informants, law enforcement concluded the overdoses in Branford and on the New Haven Green that August day might be connected, especially after hearing that Felix Macho” Melendez, another dealer convicted for distributing bad K2 on the Green, had been seen at Stagger’s apartment earlier that day.

So federal prosecutors charged Staggers, a 48-year-old homeless man, with three counts of drug-dealing. A few months later, he pleaded guilty to one count of possessing K2 with intent to distribute.

His sentencing took place Thursday at U.S. District Court on Church Street.

At the sentencing, prosecutors asked the judge to lock Staggers up for at least one year. Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Caruso called that a reasonable sentence for a career criminal” with 21 other convictions on his rap sheet.

Staggers did admit that he’d sold K2 to homeless people on the Green for years, once breaking a guy’s nose with a kick to the face in a deal gone awry. He admitted that the last batch of K2 he’d sold — crinkly metallic bags of Scooby Snax” found in his trash — led to the overdose in Branford. He admitted that he’d long been addicted to K2 himself, smoking up to 30 blunts a day.

But when it came to the rash of overdoses on the Green, Staggers said that prosecutors had the wrong guy.

His lawyer, First Assistant Federal Defender Kelly Barrett, argued in court Thursday that no hard evidence tied Staggers to the Green on that fateful day. She pointed out that none of the dozens of K2 smokers who’d been hospitalized identified Staggers as the K2 dealer; in fact, the only source who had associated Staggers with Melendez, the one who OD’d on K2 in Branford, now refused to stick by the statement in court.

U.S. District Judge Janet Hall told the attorneys in her courtroom Thursday that she didn’t understand why they were arguing about the summer’s overdoses, other than for headline purposes.”

She said that it was enough for her to know that Staggers had admitted to selling drugs that are illegal and dangerous and impacted our community,” regardless of how many overdoses he’d caused. She also credited Staggers with making a turnaround since his latest arrest, after decades of homelessness, drug addiction and crime.

In the end, Judge Hall decided to let Staggers go home. She credited his six months in prison as time served and she sentenced him to an additional four-and-a-half months of house arrest. After that, she said, Staggers will do 100 hours of community service, pay a nominal $100 fine and report to probation for three years.

Obviously I did not deliver what the government thought was appropriate in this case. The sentence they asked for could be viewed by many people as reasonable — including by me a few years ago,” Hall told Staggers. But I’m giving you a chance to continue what you’re doing now. If you’re back in front of me for a violation, what Attorney Caruso asked for will be very much in front of my mind, because it will mean I made a mistake today, that I misjudged where you are and your ability to stay on that straight road.”

Judge Hall said she was well aware that five other judges had all given Staggers a chance, and each time he’d flubbed it. She said she hopes a court-ordered mental-health treatment might finally make the difference.

Addiction is a very difficult thing to combat, but you have uncharacteristically — maybe because of the intensive in-patient that you had — not slipped. But you haven’t been out very long either,” Hall said, after handing down her sentence. I wish you all the best, Mr. Staggers.”

With three decades of trauma up against him, from a childhood of smoking crack in the Ashmun Street projects to an adulthood of sleeping outside on New Haven’s streets, some nights on the very courthouse steps, Staggers surely needed it.

From Shacks To Crack

Library of Congress

The towers of the Elm Haven housing projects rise in 1986.

At 12 years old, Staggers tried crack cocaine for the first time. Like his mother, he got hooked. As their addictions worsened, they both ended up in the same crackhouses. They avoided each other, getting high in separate rooms, until they ran out of rocks.

Barrett, the public defender, recounted that anecdote in an epic 54-page sentencing memo for Judge Hall, as she argued that Staggers’ troubled upbringing led, almost inevitably, to his current situation.

Born to a single mom in 1971, Staggers grew up in the old Elm Haven/Ashmun Street projects in Dixwell, a decaying public-housing development characterized by broken glass, crumbling walls, unreliable heat and creeping rats. Muggers waited in darkened hallways. Drug dealers took over abandoned units.

By the time Staggers reached middle school, the public-housing development was a go-to marketplace for suburbanites looking to buy coke. Boys as young as nine years old served as lookouts for the trade, and sometimes they were gunned down like their older brothers.

In 1984, a 13-year-old shot an 11-year-old in the head in project’s courtyard, the gunfire reverberating from the walls in what sounded like an explosion. Barrett wrote that Staggers grew up amid a state of urban warfare.”

Staggers also endured sexual abuse, Barrett hinted in court, though the details are redacted in the sentencing memo.

The same year, Staggers first tried drugs. He recalled showing up at school in the morning, already high, just to have his attendance marked present, before he ditched to smoke more.

By 1985, at 14 years old, Staggers started selling drugs to support his habit. He wound up in the same crackhouses as his mother.

The next year, the family received an eviction notice. His mom moved in with her family, but Staggers remained in the empty apartment for several weeks until authorities finally cleared it out. Aside from a five-year period from 1993 to 1998 when he lived with a girlfriend in the Brookside projects, Staggers stayed in crackhouses.

Traumatized and genetically predisposed to addiction, he wouldn’t get clean for decades.

Quentin’s journey from childhood trauma to drug addiction to crime is in no way abnormal. In fact, Quentin’s story is consistent with a wealth of literature regarding the prevailing and lasting effects of trauma,” Barrett wrote. Exposure to childhood trauma affects brain development and leads to difficulty controlling impulses and delaying gratification. Studies show that adults who experienced trauma during childhood often using alcohol and drugs to self-medicate and cope.”

In 2001, at 29 years old, Staggers was held up at gunpoint over a chain, and the robber fired a gun into his head. He’s now blind in his right eye, and he recently told psychiatrists he still has nightmares and flashbacks about the shooting.

Over the decades, Staggers committed crimes to fund his addiction. He was arrested more than 30 times, and he spent 10 years in prison. In 2011, after competing a four-year sentence for a probation violation, Staggers lived on the streets for almost seven years.

In 2014, severely depressed, Staggers tried to commit suicide by overdosing on cocaine, injecting, snorting and smoking as much as he could. But he eventually walked himself into Yale-New Haven Hospital. With a rehab program, he finally ended his crack addiction.

From Crack To K2

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Staggers, at right, behind Bealton Dumas at the 2017 march.

By 2017, his life was starting to turn around.

Staggers had a part-time paid gig as an outreach worker for the Housing Not Jail coalition. In that role, he helped organize rallies against the criminalization of homelessness and testified for a homeless bill of rights. He asked the city to allow homeless people certified in building trades to squat in abandoned houses, as long as they made a start in fixing them up.

Around the same time, Staggers also obtained a Section 8 voucher for a Farren Avenue apartment. He continued to travel to Hartford to testify that homeless shelters needed more funding, and he prepped food in his kitchen to bring downtown.

That personal progress was soon undercut by a new addiction to K2, a cheap street drug.

Staggers sought help from rehab clinics. They dismissed him, telling him that he should just stop smoking that incense potpourri.” He resumed selling drugs to feed his new addiction.

Last year, cops started tracking his dealing. In July, a month before the outbreak of overdoses on the Green, they picked through the trash bags outside his apartment and found K2 packaging still tainted with residue of a synthetic cannabinoid.

A month later, as the ambulance sirens finally quieted from the non-stop shuttling between the Green and Yale-New Haven Hospital, DEA agents busted down Staggers’s door in a forced entry. They found three empty foil packages that had another synthetic cannabinoid, different from the chemical on the Green.

Staggers told agents that he’d picked the K2 up from a Bridgeport bodega the day before the overdoses started in New Haven. He said it was for his personal use. He claimed he hadn’t sold any since 2016.

In court on Thursday, Staggers said he took the arrest as a chance to turn his life around.

From K2 To A Comeback

Paul Bass Photo

Emergency responders to some of the more than 100 K2 overdoses in August 2018.

Under court order, Staggers completed two inpatient programs, 45 days at the Connecticut Valley Hospital and 90 days at Lebanon Pines, followed by meetings at Yale-New Haven Hospital four days a week. Barrett said he hasn’t failed a drug test since. He has taken out an application for Gateway Community College, and he says he wants to study to become a drug counselor.

On Thursday, Barrett argued that incarcerating Staggers wouldn’t do much good.

Barrett said that the a trip back to prison would likely be more traumatizing, especially given the system’s limited mental-health supports. And she added that he’d likely lose his housing voucher, putting him back on the streets after release.

Caruso said that losing his housing might be what Staggers deserves.

I’m sorry but I don’t think that somebody who’s doing what Mr. Staggers is doing in the residence provided to him should have a housing voucher,” he said. Maybe that’s viewing life through the prism of a prosecutor for 17 years, but it doesn’t sit well with me at all.”

Judge Hall said that she thought that mental-health treatment would give Staggers a real chance that he hadn’t had before.

There’s becoming fairly solid research on the impact of trauma on young children. You could almost be a case study,” she said. I think it’s reasonable to draw the conclusion that your criminal history is very much driven by your addiction and homelessness. It doesn’t excuse it; it doesn’t make it any less serious. But it does, I think, provide an explanation.”

Hall added, You have a long way to go, Mr. Staggers.”

After the sentence, Staggers talked with his family members in the courthouse hallways, explaining the judge’s decision. On his lawyer’s advice, he declined to answer any questions.

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