If a Westville man had been home when UPS came to his house, then narcs might not have come next time to break down his door.
Instead of receiving his package full of pot and hashish, the 45-year-old man is scheduled to appear in court later this month to answer eight felony charges and two misdemeanors.
Here’s what happened, according to an investigative report written by Officer Robert Lawlor of the Statewide Narcotics Task Force.
A UPS driver came to the door of the 45-year-old man’s Willard Street apartment on Dec. 20 to deliver a mailed package. The man wasn’t home. The package was addressed to him.
So the driver put the package back on a shelf in the back of his delivery truck.
The package fell and broke. The driver took a peek at the contents inside. Looked like marijuana and “other illicit narcotics/controlled substances.”
UPS called the Orange cops. The cops went to UPS’s Orange facility. They looked in the package. They came to the same conclusion about its contents.
Because the package was intended for delivery to New Haven, the cops contacted Officer Lawlor, who’s based in the city. He and other task force members got involved in the case. They seized the 36.9 grams of pot and 29.9 grams of hashish inside the package.
Then Lawlor obtained a search and seizure warrant for the man’s apartment. Task force members showed up at the Willard Street apartment complex on the afternoon of Jan. 8. A maintenance worker let them into the complex.
They knocked on the 45-year-old man’s apartment door. No answer. They announced “in a loud enough voice for people inside the residence, ‘“OPEN UP STATE POLICE WITH A SEARCH WARRANT,’” Lawlor’s report alleged. Several knocks and announcements later, they still received no response.
“After waiting a reasonable amount of time,” the report continued, a detective used a “CSP [Connecticut State Police] breaching tool to gain entry into the residence.” In other words, the detective broke down the door.
Guess who was inside? The 45-year-old man. Police “detained” him “without incident.
Guess what else the police found inside the apartment? A “pill bottle with no prescription label” with ten Oxycodone Hydrochloride pills inside. Plus a freezer bag with another 120 grams of marijuana. Plus another bottle of Oxycodone Hydrochloride pills. Plus “suspected packaging” materials.
The cops seized all that, along with the man’s computer hard drive, “miscellaneous paperwork,” and “IDs.”
They charged the man with, among other offenses, felony narcotics possession and possession with intent to sell.
The man was released on a promise to appear in court. He also agreed to undergo drug tests and abide by a 10 p.m. curfew. His next scheduled court appearance is Jan. 30.
Note to self: wrap packages carefully, unless sending drugs to worse enemy, with second worse enemy as return address.