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Thurs news roundup: Graft, deer, crime, controversy

May 9th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty
Photo: Garry Knight, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

Photo: Garry Knight, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

Lots going on today. Some of what we’ve been covering in the newsroom:

Vermont has just become the sixth state to grant driver’s licenses to migrant workers — Sarah Harris has a great story today on how some local farmers, and migrant workers, are feeling about the new law.

In the ongoing corruption scandal that’s rocking New York state these days (in a slow but horrifying kind of way), nine more senators have been named as potentially involved in various kinds of graft. Interestingly, this information has come via a wire that convicted ex-senator Shirley Huntley (also corruption) wore at the request of prosecutors back in 2012.

Unnerved by all this? Well, try not to run over a deer. The Thruway Authority and state police Troop T have issued their semi-annual “antler alert” to remind people that deer are quite active in May and June, and may be showing up suddenly right in front of you as you’re driving, unsuspecting, down the road. Suspect the deer. SUSPECT THEM.

And Essex County’s new bar closure rules are raising some questions about, interestingly, the separation of church and state.

Elsewhere in our region, the St. Lawrence County District Attorney’s office is losing to assistant prosecutors, WWNY-TV reports. Amanda Nissen, who just finished prosecuting three Ogdensburg men for murder, will leave for a job with the state Police Counsel’s office. Jonathan Becker will be moving to Otsego County to work as an attorney. The DA’s office is expecting to replace both, although a county hiring freeze means they’ll have to get approval.

And a controversial halfway house in downtown Potsdam isn’t being built quite yet: New Hope Transformation Ministries, which plans to build the house, is still looking for funding to build on a Market Street lot (story from the Watertown Daily Times.) The house, the paper reports,

would provide a temporary home for women recovering from drug addiction. Those who have completed a rehab program would be eligible to spend six to 12 months at the home, learning job skills while cooking and cleaning for themselves. The home is to have beds for 12 women.

If the state’s Homeless Housing Assistance Program grants the organization the money it’s looking for, the house could open in 2014. The idea of a halfway house in this location has come under fire from people who live near the property (it’s been vacant since 1992) and are worried about an increase in crime. The Planning Board approved the project in October.

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“Officer-involved shooting” in Winooski, VT

April 25th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

The crime scene in Winooski this afternoon. Photo: Sarah Harris

Vermont State Police are confirming that a police officer in the city of Winooski shot a man this afternoon around 2:00. Our Champlain Valley reporter Sarah Harris is at the scene and has given us the following information:

The shooting was on West Allen St. in Winooski, which is kitty-corner to Winooski City Hall. Police have cordoned off the crime scene, and they’re waiting for officers from the northeastern Vermont town of St. Johnsbury to come look at the scene of the crime (state police say since an officer was involved in the shooting, it’s their policy that an outside department look at the crime scene.)

Ed Ledo, criminal division commander for the Vermont State Police, confirmed the shooting. He says two police officers were present, and one shot an adult male. His condition is non-life threatening, he’s in the hospital now.

Police say they’re not ready to talk about the incident now, but they will be making a statement later tonight.

Sarah will check in with more information when that happens, and we’ll have more on this story tomorrow morning on the 8 O’clock Hour.

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Mental health funding and fears in O’burg, Watertown

April 19th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

Image: maps.google.com

Hello! As the bombings in Boston earlier this week continue to be investigated (and everyone I know from home makes the best of being locked down), life goes on in the North Country. Many of us have friends and relatives in Boston, and apart from keeping in touch with them we’re spending even more time than usual obsessively monitoring news sources (a friend in Boston, I’m told, has access to a police scanner and is really keeping up with events, and I just found out my husband has also tuned into the scanner from home.)

With the Boston events amply and better covered by NPR than I can do here, I’d like to turn now to something that I didn’t get a chance to write about earlier this week when I saw it in the paper.

The Watertown Daily Times reported Tuesday about ongoing concerns that changes to the state mental health system could mean the closure of the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center. This after the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) announced on Thursday, April 11, that the Ogdensburg facility would be one of the ones the OMH will visit on its upcoming “listening tour” to let communities know “about our vision and help shape the future.”

The St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center. Photo: New York state Office of Mental Health

The OMH is making changes, that article reports, because of an expected shift to Medicaid managed care it’s expecting in 2014, and because the state believes its system has too much inpatient capacity and “not enough emphasis on community-based treatment and support.”

North Country officials are quite worried about what this might mean for Ogdensburg’s Psychiatric Center. While the OMH hasn’t identified which centers it plans to close, it has proposed a new catchment area that would stretch from Northern New York all the way down to Binghamton. So the OMH’s move is raising concerns about people currently in residential care getting pushed out, and people who need care not getting it because facilities are too far away.

In the earlier article, North Country State Sen. Pattie Ritchie told the Times that because of a 12-month notification period before the OMH can close a psychiatric hospital, there’s time to fight any proposed closures. Apparently four facilities were proposed for closure in 2013-14, but none of those was approved by either the Assembly or the Senate.

Ritchie told the paper why she thinks keeping the Psychiatric Center open is critical:

We keep saying we need more treatment available for mental illness, but I hear from people every day that they have family members who have to wait six months to see somebody…Now we’re looking at potentially closing a facility down when there’s nothing close by here.

The OMH information system will be at noon on May 15, at the Psychiatric Center’s Unity building (that’s at 1 Chimney Point Drive). Officials have said it’s a positive that this meeting is happening here, both because it will give them the chance to make the case for the Psychiatric Center, and because it will give OMH officials an on-the-ground sense of just how isolated our region is and how much of an ask it would be for patients to travel to, say, Syracuse or Albany for care.

The Psychiatric Center has about 68 inpatients and runs an array of outpatient services. About 500 people work there, and the center’s also home to a secure mental health facility that houses sex offenders.

On a related note, the Watertown Daily Times is reporting today that Family Counseling Service of Northern New York, which provides individual, marital and family counseling, will receive a $30,000 loan from the Watertown Trust (aka the Watertown Local Development Corp.), which in various ways works to help finance local economic development projects in Watertown.

Family Counseling Service sees more than 1,000 people a month with 17 employees. The loan will keep the agency afloat until it can receive reimbursements for services it’s already provided. It comes as the organization’s started talks about merging with Credo Community Center for the Treatment of Addictions, another Watertown organization. The Times says if this (or any) merger does take place, “the entire loan would have to be paid.”

More information about the possible merger may be available in the next few weeks.

 

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How the North Country experienced the Boston Marathon bombings

April 16th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

The Boston Marathon route yesterday. Photo: Aaron “Tango” Tang CC some rights reserved

Yesterday’s really shocking and horrifying bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon continue to be a mystery, and I’m not going to go into it here except to send you to NPR’s ongoing coverage of the story. There’s been some really excellent coverage of these blasts in various media outlets, and there’s been some really horrible stuff coming out.

For example, just a few hours after the bombs exploded, talk radio host Alex Jones was calling the bombing a “False Flag” operation on Twitter (here’s Jones’ Twitter feed), saying the goal was to discredit the Tea Party and expand the reach of the TSA. Now, I’m not going to make any statements here about that actual assertion, but if this doesn’t seem like insensitively using a tragedy to advance one’s own political agenda, I don’t know what does.

Salon, whose article I just linked above, also has an excellent roundup of the bombings’ bringing out the worst in pundits and others: Using them to play cheap politics, misrepresenting the scale and nature of the violence, maligning Muslims, and other classy moves.

But as I said the bombings are also bringing out the best in many, including in the media. Here’s some of comedian Patton Oswalt’s Facebook comment on the bombing, which has “gone viral,” as the kids say (read the whole thing here):

I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out…This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

The Boston Marathon is a major international event (I heard a reporter on the BBC yesterday refer to it as the “pinnacle” of marathoning, something of which I wasn’t aware growing up in Boston), so the people at the marathon were from all over, including the North Country. Today on the 8 O’clock Hour, our reporter Julie Grant talked with Canton native Laura Monroe-Duprey, who was running the marathon yesterday (you can see the whole interview here) with her husband. In essence, Monroe-Duprey told Julie that although the scene felt “a little like a war scene”, strangers helped her as she made her way away from the bomb site, and she felt “really lucky” to be OK.

Others from the North Country made it into the local papers today, and their stories bring home just how much who is hurt and killed in these kinds of violent acts is based on chance. Among them were Norwood native colleen A. Cotey, who, the Watertown Daily Times reports, had just finished the marathon and was about a block away from the finish line when she heard the first explosion. She was unharmed.

SUNY Plattsburgh biological sciences professor and marathoner Nancy Elwess was about 20 or 30 yards from the finish line when the bomb went off. The Plattsburgh Press-Republican reports in a story on locals in the bombing that she wasn’t injured beyond some small cuts and a ringing in the ear.

Keith Benoit of Plattsburgh had finished the race and was on a bus headed back to the race’s starting point in Hopkinton, Mass., when the bombs went off. He didn’t know what had happened until he got a frantic call from his wife, Holly.

Others got in touch with friends and family in the North Country, and, as the paper reports, people seem to be OK, if more than a bit shaken. Let’s count our blessings on that one as the news continues to roll in.

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To tackle drug crime problem, Massena drafts nuisance law

April 11th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

Massena, NY. Photo: Gary Stevens CC some rights reserved

I just can’t stop writing about Massena, or more specifically about how the village is trying to deal with what appears to be a burgeoning drug crime problem.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the village’s planned acquisition of an unmarked Humvee for crimefighting and prevention purposes. Many commenters on this blog were wary of such efforts. Today, WWNY-TV is reporting a quieter sort of effort to fight crime in Massena (although, some might argue, one of which people may be equally wary): Village Mayor Jim Hidy is putting the idea forward that Massena should have a public nuisance law, “giving landlords a mechanism to evict problem tenants or alleged drug dealers.” Hidy told WWNY that the village would have the power to take control of properties in which more than two “infractions” had occurred:

If there’s more than two infractions – two or more infractions – that we have to respond to at one of these residences, whether they’re residences that are rented units or are owned by individuals, this law will empower the community to take those properties and hold the owners accountable.

Under the law, people who rent under false pretenses (as well as property owners) could be held accountable for recurring problems.

Village police chief Timmy Currier is also involved in the drafting of the law, and says his main goals are to drive drug dealers (who are thought to be using local rental properties as sites for drug activity) out of the community; and to develop intelligence on those who remain, so they can build court cases and get convictions against them.

Now, this law’s still in the process of being drafted (village officials will be meeting with their attorney on Friday to work on it) so we can’t say for sure exactly what’s going to be in it. But here’s why I said before that people might be wary of such a law: If not written and enforced carefully, categories like “problem tenant” and “alleged drug dealer” are both vague and fuzzy. If someone’s an alleged drug dealer, does that mean they can be evicted from their home without a conviction? Will this law enable landlords to evict tenants they simply don’t care for, or hold landlords responsible for activities they can’t be reasonably expected to control?

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for the law when that language does become available, and will pass it along to you.

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A big week for meth in the North Country

April 10th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

Correction: In the original post on April 10, we misidentified the location of a meth-related arrest. The arrest was in Saranac Lake, not Gabriels. The error is corrected below. 

Hello! So apparently it’s been a big week for methamphetamine in the North Country, or at least for arrests on meth charges. On Tuesday, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise reports, a Gabriels man was arrested when police pulled him over at about 7 in the morning, for not having a front license plate. They smelled pot and alcohol and asked him if he had any of the former. The man admitted he did, but apparently passed the police the wrong baggie: This one contained three 1-gram packages of meth.

In a move that I can’t believe I’m writing about rather then seeing on “Cops,” he then tried to grab the bag back and run away, but instead he was arrested and searched (at which time the police found the marijuana he’d been holding, as well.) There’s more on the charges he’s facing in the paper.

This is the first meth arrest Gabriels Saranac Lake has had in the last few years, village police chief Bruce Nason told the paper, but there have been several in nearby Clinton over the last few weeks, and, Nason is quoted as saying, “it looks like it’s moving our way, unfortunately.”

In fact the Clinton County town of Altona saw two arrests on Tuesday when police raided a home that they suspected contained a meth lab run by a husband and wife team. That’s according to the Plattsburgh Press Republican. That investigation is ongoing, but it’s not a small one: According to the paper,

The Adirondack Drug Task Force, Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Customs and Boarder Protection Border Patrol were among those investigating, with Altona Volunteer Fire Department standing by at the location.

Oh, and while we’re talking meth, the other day the Press Republican reported (in a story about several other drug arrests in the area) that the Clinton County Assistant DA, Douglas Collyer, had announced a standard sentence for first-time offenders caught making meth: It’s four and a half years.

 

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Arrests and allegations in NY corruption sweep

April 2nd, 2013 by Martha Foley

Former state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith is at the top of a list of politicians arrested today in a federal probe of corruption in New York politics. The AP reported Smith’s 6:30 came at  this morning.

Our Albany correspondent, Karen DeWitt is chasing the story as it develops, and we’ll have her report in the morning.

This afternoon, The Albany Times Union reported US Attorney Preet Bharara detailed…

an elaborate chart detailing the alleged vectors of money and favors — with, he noted, “Malcolm in the middle” — quoted from many of these statements before calling the case yet another sign of “the public corruption crisis in New York.”

The TU’s Capitol Confidential bloggers have much more, including excerpts from the long complaint filed by Bharara. Here’s one,  Queens City Councilman Dan Halloran, speaking with an  FBI agent:

“That’s politics, that’s politics, it’s all about how much. Not about whether or will, it’s about how much, and that’s our politicians in New York, they’re all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can’t do anything without the f—ing money.”

And here’s the New York Times story: Lawmakers Charged in Plot to Buy Spot on Mayoral Ballot

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Afternoon Read: Unmarked Humvee for Massena police

March 28th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

Hummer H-1. Photo: SoulRider222, CC some rights reserved

Police are still investigating yesterday’s gun incident in Massena, and it seems that there’s some connection between the three people arrested yesterday in said incident, and a February kidnapping attempt. That information from North Country Now.

It was with incident fresh in my mind that I read today a rather surprising article in the (Potsdam/Massena) Daily Courier-Observer. The article describes a new tool that the village police department is set to receive to “fight area crime”: It’s an unmarked Humvee with high-resolution surveillance cameras (there’s more detail on how the surveillance functions will work in the article.) The department plans to use the Humvee to keep an eye on “areas of suspected criminal activity.” To be clear, this is the same police department that is investigating the above gun incident.

A few things about this struck me. First, how will the village pay for this? Second, will it be useful? And third, are there civil liberties issues here? I’m not here to make a judgment on any of those issues, but I will pass along what the department told the paper:

1. The Humvee won’t cost the department much. They’ve bought the equipment using a $5,000 Byrne Justice Assistance Grant. That’s a federal program that describes itself as “is the primary provider of federal criminal justice funding to state and local jurisdictions.” The village got the Humvee through through the Department of Defense Excess Property Program, which “provides surplus DoD equipment to law enforcement agencies for use in counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism activities.” Drugs appear to be the primary concern here.

2. Will it be useful? Well, clearly this is not a stealth vehicle so (presumably) one of its primary remits will be to let people know they’re being watched and presumably have a chilling effect on crime. But that’s just my speculation.  Local officials seem to think it will catch people in the act, making it easier to build cases against them and encouraging “harsher actions” from local judges and St. Lawrence County DA Nicole Duve. Massena Mayor James F. Hidy is quoted in the article as follows:

It’s going to play a great role in the community toward ridding Massena of its undesirables…We’ll have an active surveillance of what’s going on in certain parts of town, and pinpoint individuals who are selling drugs or buying drugs, and when we have video of these people, we can bring them over to our courts.

3. Are there civil liberties issues? The word “undesirables” does raise my hackles a bit, as does that contrasted (further down in this post) with “law-abiding citizens”, and I’m certainly interested to see the reaction in Massena. Oh, and the village PD has recently installed seven surveillance cameras at village parks and intersections.

But Massena village Police Chief Timmy J. Currier says “law abiding residents shouldn’t worry that their privacy may be compromised:” That’s because the cameras and Humvee will only be monitoring public areas and homes where “ongoing criminal activity is suspected of occurring” (presumably they’ll get appropriate clearances before using the cameras to look into homes.) Curry says although the cameras may make people uncomfortable, since they’re in places where people don’t have expectation of privacy, the cameras aren’t going to violate constitutional rights.

To the contrary, says Mayor Hidy,

I think in the areas we’ll be putting these cameras, the law-biding citizens will appreciate the efforts to clean up their neighborhood of criminals…I think everyone should welcome any tool we have to deter what’s going on in the village.

Well, I guess we’ll see!

 

 

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Shooting and standoff in Massena ends with three in custody

March 27th, 2013 by David Sommerstein

Massena, NY. Photo: James Lazio CC some rights reserved

Three people are in custody after a drive-by shooting in Massena led to a six-hour standoff with police.

According to a village police press release, 19 year-old Devian Fletcher allegedly approached a vehicle in a driveway yesterday morning and fired a 22 caliber handgun at two people inside. Neither person was shot, but one was injured by broken glass and treated at Massena’s hospital and released.

Fletcher then fled to Liberty street and holed himself inside a home. WWNY-TV’s John Friot reported on the scene that police used a bullhorn to communicate with the alleged shooter and at one point lobbed a “concussion grenade” at the home. Police chief Tim Currier says Fletcher was taken into custody with assistance of state police negotiators around 7 in the evening. Police did not release the names of two other people taken into custody.

According to WWNY, an attorney for Miranda Green confirms she was the person injured in the car. Green is charged in an attempted kidnapping that took place last February in Massena.

Village police say the investigation is ongoing and the county district attorney is still determining what charges will be brought.

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Breaking: a shooter apprehended in Massena

March 27th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty

Update, 2:46pm: A Massena village police dispatcher says at least one person, who has yet to be identified, has been apprehended and is in custody in what’s being described as a drive-by shooting. WWNY-TV’s John Friot is reporting police have surrounded a house in which another man appears to be holed up. Friot says police lobbed a concussion grenade into the home.

Update, 1:30pm Massena village police now say that there were minor injuries to one person, and they’re still at the scene. NCPR News Director Martha Foley spoke with a dispatcher, who said Liberty Avenue was not the correct location, but would not specify where the incident took place.

***

An incident in Massena that was initially described as a shooting took place this afternoon on Liberty Avenue, WWNY-TV reports. It’s not clear what happened, but police have been seen around the property with weapons drawn, and WWNY has been told that no one is dead, and there’s no threat to the public.

This is according to a “local reporter” who spoke with the police. They’re investigating, and we’ll have more on this as we know.

 

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