Markeshia Ricks Photo
Boyd: Fed up.
Dawson: APT “saved my life.”
On the same day that a man was found guilty of killing another outside a methadone clinic in the Hill, residents meeting in the elementary school next door took sides on the value of having that clinic as a neighbor.
The debate got personal, on both sides.
It took place Tuesday night at a joint Hill North and Hill South Community Management Team meeting at John C. Daniels School a block up Congress Avenue from the APT Foundation’s methadone clinic.
On one side, longtime Hill resident and activist Ann Boyd told the crowd that she is fed up with the addiction and crime that she said the clinic attracts to the area. On the other side, Wanda Dawson encouraged her neighbors to think about the good that the clinic has done for people, including her.
Boyd said she was concerned about a methadone clinic being so close to an elementary school. She said children should not be exposed to the clinic’s clients, who hang around the streets near Congress Avenue sometimes engaging in crime and drug use. A man was stabbed 16 times outside the clinic last year. (Read more about the conviction of his killer here.)
Boyd indicated that her understanding of the history of the APT Foundation clinic was that it was originally supposed to be located at the more isolated former Welch School (now the construction site of a new mixed-use development), and it was stopped. But somehow, without any consultation with the neighborhood, the clinic landed in its current location, she said.
After the holiday season, Boyd said, she plans to trade her boots for a pair of tennis shoes so she can hit the streets to start a campaign to get the clinic to pull up stakes.
“The APT Foundation has to come out of there,” she said. “We don’t want it in the Hill.”
Christopher Peak Photo
APT’s Congress Avenue location.
Dawson told those gathered that she works for the APT Foundation. She said she has 14 years of sobriety because of the help she got there. She said it makes her sick to her stomach when people blame the clinic for the troubles on Congress Avenue.
“I’m here today because of the APT Foundation,” she said. “We don’t try to damage lives; we try to save lives.”
She urged neighbors, instead of pointing fingers, to work together for a solution and to help those who are less fortunate.
“This here addiction does not discriminate,” she said. “The APT Foundation has been good to me. It saved my life.”
Another neighbor said it’s not about knocking what the foundation does for people, but about what is allowed to take place outside APT’s door around children.. She works at a similar facility on East Street. She said they don’t have similar problems because clients don’t hang out at the facility after treatment.
“They get their medications, and then they move along,” she said; they are encouraged to do so by not only the on-site security but the police. Also, that program is not a block from a school.
Sylvester Salcedo, who serves as the John C. Daniels Parent-Teacher Association president, told the assembled neighbors that he’s willing to help facilitate community conversations about the opioid crisis. He said he thinks that conversation should include not only neighbors and foundation representatives but clinic clients too.
He would bring together all of those people along with experts from Yale University’s School of Public Health and School of Medicine and even the chiefs of the fire and police departments.
“I would really like to hear from the affected population,” said Salcedo, who is a lawyer who lives in Orange and an organizer for the Connecticut Heroin Users Union. He said he would also like to hear from the city on how much of its resources are used treating opioid addiction through the criminal justice system as opposed to treating it like a public health crisis.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Harp updates neighbors..
Mayor Toni Harp, who stopped by Tuesday’s meeting to talk about the city budget, said that her administration has been meeting regularly with the APT Foundation to address the concerns of the neighborhood. She said the clinic is licensed by the state to be where it is, so it will not likely move. But she said there are plans for the foundation to build a bigger waiting room where people can hang out after they’ve received treatment, she reported.
“We’re hoping that would take pressure off the street,” she said.
The foundation has also started back regularly hiring off-duty police officers for security. Hill District Manager Lt. Jason Minardi said that has been going well.
Harp also said officials have identified potential state funding that could further help alleviate some of the neighbors’ concerns. That money could fund street psychiatrists and recovery coaches to help people who have dual diagnoses of substance abuse and mental illness and are often preyed upon outside the clinic. She said having recovery centers like the ones Hartford and Bridgeport have would be even better.
“We’ve been working at it,” she said. “We’re waiting for a change in [state] administration to get those resources that we have identified.”
My understanding is that the APT foundation does not require a clean piss test for someone to be given methadone or the like.
Therefore the clinic is most definitely inviting active drug users into our neighborhoods, (Downtown, the Hill), where the problem population subsequently congregates and causes trouble for neighbors.
I have no issue with the people working hard to turn their lives around. Let them get their treatment and be on their way. But the problem population (those still actively using) should arguably not be served by APT, or IF SO NOT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS!
To congregate the drug users in one area is not being a good neighbor, and APT needs to solve this problem by treating these people somewhere else, — in disparate small locations, in an industrial zone, by mobile van, etc.
The status quo is not okay, and our political leaders need to step up and insist on real changes. A solution shouldn't be that hard to devise.