Thomas Breen photo
Police Chief Anthony Campbell outside City Hall Friday with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Mayor Toni Harp, Asst. Fire Chief Orlando Marcano, and Asst. Police Chief Herb Johnson.
Chief identifies K2 chemical that led to over 100 overdoses in 2 days.
• 3rd alleged dealer arrested.
• Blumenthal: Synthetics the new scourge.
• 2 suspects arrested before for K2.
Police Chief Anthony Campbell revealed that information during a Friday morning press conference outside of City Hall with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Mayor Toni Harp, and a cohort of city police and fire personnel.
Campbell and Asst. Chief Herb Johnson also announced that the city’s detective bureau executed a federal search warrant on Thursday night and made the arrest of a third individual who they believe is responsible for distributing the bad K2 to the two street-level dealers arrested on Thursday.
(Chief Campbell and Mayor Harp held another press conference later Friday afternoon in which they revealed information about the two suspects arrested by the city in relation to this week’s K2 overdoses. See more below.)
“It is our hope and our prayer that we have come to the end of this crisis, or things are at least leveling off,” Campbell said, noting that he had not heard of any additional K2-related overdoses happening on Friday.
Asst. Chief Herb Johnson.
He said that police presence on the Green will remain high over the next few days, with 12 to 15 officers patrolling the upper and lower Green looking to deter any new dealers from filling the void left by the three who have been arrested. He said this weekend’s police presence will be less than the 25 to 30 officers on site over the past two days, but will still be significantly more than the three to four officers usually assigned to the city’s central square.
Johnson said this is not the first time the department has dealt with overdoses related to K2 mixed with ABM-FUBINACA, a version of which was originally developed by the drug company Pfizer in 2009. Johnson said the department dealt with several overdoses related to this same combination of chemicals a few months ago.
“We are treating this as a medical situation,” Campbell said. He said that the police have not been arresting the victims of these overdoses because the police often find the drugs near them, not on them, when they have passed out or are vomiting or convulsing in response to the ABM-FUBINACA. Furthermore, he said, the police are treating the people succumbing to these overdoses as victims of a public health and medical emergency, as opposed to the perpetrators of a criminal outbreak.
Harp: Fasano bears part of the blame.
Mayor Harp said she has received a commitment from the commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHS) to send two recovery specialists to spend 12 to 15 hours a day on the Green, helping people suffering from substance abuse disorders.
“Often many of the people who overdosed were also on methadone,” Harp said. She said local methadone providers have to make sure that their treatment protocol only provides methadone to people “if they’re clean.” She also called on methadone providers to not just provide methadone, but behavioral treatment services as well.
“It’s important that we just don’t give people medicine and expect them to take care of it on their own,” she said.
Chief Campbell reiterated that synthetic cannabinoids, not synthetic opiates like fentanyl, seem to be responsible for this week’s waves of overdoses. He said emergency responders initially applied Narcan, a treatment for opioid overdose treatment, but that many of the victims did not respond to that treatment.
Blumenthal: Synthetics are the new scourge.
“The new scourge are the synthetics,” Blumenthal said. “Synthetic marijuana like K2, and synthetic heroin like fentanyl. These new synthetics are killers.”
He said amateur chemists mix these synthetic drugs with other contaminants, often leading to fatal overdoses.
He called on the Trump administration to put aside tariff feuds and trade wars and focus instead on cracking down on synthetics coming across U.S. borders primarily from countries like China and Mexico.
“We need a major national commitment like a Marshall Plan,” he said. He argued that the federal government has underfunded cities like New Haven, “because this emergency is every bit a threat to national security as any kind of threat from abroad.”
Cameras out for Friday’s press conference.
Mayor Harp also repeated that she considered State Sen. Len Fasano of North Haven, the state’s top elected Republican lawmaker, out of line yesterday when he issued a statement criticizing the city for knowingly letting the Green deteriorate into a place where so many overdoses can happen.
“He bears some of the blame,” Harp said about Fasano, saying that he is one of the legislators who pushed a state budget that stripped the city of $9.4 million in state aid last fiscal year.
“He’s got to understand that when we have almost all of the treatment facilities in our region,” she said, “when we have all of the homeless shelters, when we have all of those services which we gladly provide, that we need support from the state.”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Friday morning’s full press conference.
Two Arrested; No New ODs
Mayor Harp and city, state, and federal officials at Friday afternoon’s press conference.
On Friday afternoon, Chief Campbell and Mayor Harp held another press conference on the second floor of City Hall during which they shared information about two of the men the city has arrested in relation to this week’s K2 overdoses.
They did not share information on the third suspect, who was arrested on a federal warrant.
Campbell said that the police arrested a 37-year-old New Haven man on a violation of probation warrant and on on-site charges of possession of a controlled substance.
“He was not arrested in relation to the K2 sales on the Green at this time,” he said, “but we are working to see what connections he may have to the Green for this particular incident.”
Campbell said the man had K2 on his person. He was also charged with possession of a controlled substance based on what else was found on him when he was arrested.
He said this man was arrested in February for selling K2 on the Green and received a five-year suspended sentence with two years of probation.
Chief Campbell.
Campbell said the city police have also arrested a 53-year-old New Haven man. That man was arrested on a K2 sale warrant from the same February drug operation that resulted in the arrest of the first suspect. This man was found with 32 bags of K2 on him when he was arrested by the police, Campbell said.
The police chief said this 53-year-old man has been identified as one of the dealers of the K2 that caused the waves of overdoses on the Green.
Campbell also said that, as of 1:30 p.m., no new K2-related emergency medical transports had been made from the Green throughout all of Friday.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Friday afternoon’s full press conference.
I'm going to suggest that in response to this crisis, the City it might be best to simply close the Green for the next week or so.
Nothing against the NHPD, but the uniformed officers aren't doing anything. Yesterday the "patrons" are still drinking, doing drugs, littering, dealing, passing out, urinating, etc. — despite the enormous police presence.
If anything, we need plainclothes officers, and real arrests to encourage the drug addicts to go home. (Yes, most of them have homes.)
If the Proprietors put forth and published simple rules, that would be a big help:
And by all means, give the Town Green Special Services District managerial control!