Vermont progressives are destroying public safety and harming Vermonters with their policies to favor criminals over law-abiding citizens and elevate race above common sense.
I was a criminal defense attorney for years in Connecticut, after growing up in an inner city environment in which drugs and gangs were widespread. Drug dealing is a profitable business enterprise, and the everse-racism of Critical Race Theory and Vermont’s “decarceration” and “decriminalization” policies are extremely favorable for the drug-dealing business community.
Indeed, profits are booming so much in Vermont that more and more out-of-state gangs are now fighting over Green Mountain turf. This will increase in severity until Vermonters acknowledge reality, and awaken to the threats of wokeness.
John Klar
In Vermont, arrests and incarcerations are often manipulated by progressives to label the arresting officers as racists in motive. Justice is not colorblind in this scheme, but the very opposite. Swarms of inner city drug dealers have flocked to Vermont in response. More victims result.
A small dose of common sense reveals why this is happening. Drug dealers are business people who operate in a dangerous, high-stakes black market that can be extremely lucrative. Like any business, they seek margins of return, and if they can sell a bag of fentanyl-laced cocaine or heroin in Vermont for three times as much as Springfield, Massachusetts or Hartford, Connecticut, it is well worth the drive. This is basic supply-and-demand economics, which cares naught for skin color.
But more, the profits in Vermont from heroin sales are much higher (covering gas and hotel expenses easily), but the likelihood of arrest is much lower. Vermont operates with a sizeable portion of its police positions empty due to “severe staffing shortages.”
Racial disparities in arrests — often blamed on police bias — reflect racial disparities in the demographics of gang-linked drug dealers who are committing these crimes: most fentanyl and heroin comes from Mexico through cartels, and is then passed through other gangs as a commerce network.
For the aspiring drug-dealing business operator, it gets even better. If arrested, they are given a slap on the wrist, a diversionary program, or perhaps even a dismissal, and sent back into business. The Vermont headlines reflect this clearly: repeat offenders are welcome in Vermont, including from New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. And they are increasingly apprehended in ever-more-rural communities; not just Burlington, Bennington and Springfield.
Fortunately there are law enforcement personnel in other states, and the federal government, who are still trying to protect Vermonters:
Two Springfield men were arrested by federal authorities Thursday following a lengthy investigation into trafficking of large quantities of heroin and fentanyl. Agents attached to the FBI’s Western Massachusetts Gang Task Force made the arrest Thursday evening after investigators said two suspects were seen receiving a large shipment of drugs at a downtown hotel. Abraham Heredia, 23, and Jose Heredia Jr., 34, were arraigned in U.S. District Court in Springfield Thursday on a charge of conspiracy to distribute. They were ordered held pending a detention hearing next week. After Heredia Jr. received a shipment on Congress Street in downtown Springfield, authorities followed his vehicle and made a traffic stop at the intersection of Maple and Avon streets. In Heredia Jr.’s pickup truck, they found approximately 1.6 kilograms of heroin/fentanyl.
That is a lot of heroin and fentanyl: 1,600 grams, at an average street price of $500/gram. A kilo of heroin is worth about $30,000 (likely much more in Vermont). These prices are an 80% decrease from 1980s prices as supply has exploded; which is why gangs flock to Vermont where they can command a higher return on their business investment.
John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.
We run Costco through the wringer to get a permit to pump gas and even limit the hours of business, yet drug dealers are often supplied a free place to stay on the state dollar, nor permits, no permit violations, no threats to close their business and even when put in jail for a short period they get to network with other dealers at the local jail cell.
Dealing drugs in Vermont is really easy and profitable, that why they do it! But if you were a store that used plastic disposable bags, or a restaurant that used plastic straws, or a gym that tried to stay open during COvid they would shut you down!
And guess what the homeless know the state will pay $60,000 a year to house them in hotel rooms, so where would you go if you didn’t want to work and do drugs? VERMONT of course!
VERMONT, here’s your sign.
That makes sense, Liberals are criminals as birds of a feather flock together
I would refrain from hanging the yoke onto the Progs alone. As Bernie says, let us be clear. We are in a war and the enemy is cloaked in sheep clothing within all political parties, within all government branches, and within all institutions, public and private. Infiltration, not invasion. The United States did not get overthrown without years of planning here and abroad.
The good news is the infiltrators are infiltrated. Even the enemy can’t tell who their enemy is now. All the information warfare with lawfare is coming out like a flood. War crimes are serious business. The desperation is at an all time high. All assets deployed. We are in the last stand here. So, we either flush them out, expose them all, and prosecute them all or get out of the way. The war is real.
According to Vermont progressive-think, anyone involved in the use or distribution of street opioids is a “victim of opioid use disorder”. If their activities are interfered with by law enforcement, that adds yet another victimhood to their societal status as a “justice involved individual”. If they came from a downcountry hellhole like Hartford or Springfield MA to Vermont to engage in selling deadly opioids, and they are a Person of Color, that adds further to their victimhood since they are now considered likely to be subject to police racial bias. If apprehended, their criminal activities are excused by the “rough upbringing defense” by our woke prosecutors, who we have elected. The peddlers of poison know all of this and know how to work it to their advantage. Anyone who votes for these woke elected officials has the blood of over 200 dead Vermont overdose cases a year on their hands. Liberals generally dont like Darwinism, but they sure can dish it out.
Yes, the prosecutors are such good defense attorneys that Vermont doesn’t need defense counsel anymore….