I have been writing much lately about heroin with the backdrop of Hartford's Park Street which is one of many epicenters of the current heroin epidemic. Today, I am going to briefly change the backgrounds. Instead of Park Street with its back drop of bakeries, bodegas, Spanish restaurants, and young tattooed men, with crooked baseball caps, standing in the doorways minding their own business, we are going to your typical elderly housing/assisted living facility. Imagine a room of geriatrics in the common room, with their walkers on tennis balls or canes at the side of their chairs. Imagine perhaps also a 50 gallon aquarium, with clean bubbling water and a large lazy fish or two.
Now let us focus on our subject -- a Caucasian woman of 62. She is obese, maybe two hundred sixty pounds, her hair is grey and tied back behind her head in a pony tail. Her clothing is threadbare and could use a laundering. She has two canes beside her with which she walks slowly and painfully on skinny legs that can barely support her girth. Instead of the fish tank, she and her mates are watching The Price is Right.
The host challenges a contestant to guess the price of the next item -- not a toaster or blender or even a new TV. Â The item is --wallah! -- a bag of heroin.
While the contestant ponders on TV, the guesses start from others in the common room. $50, $100,
Our heroine shakes her head. Well, it depends, she says. The going rate is $5. If you are buying a bundle and you're a good customer, your dealer might give it to you for $4 a bag if the junk's not primo. Course if you're a sucker, or live in the suburbs, and your friend/dealer is jacking the price he paid on Park Street like that mutherfucker Monte did to me for six months so he can afford his own habit, you might be asked to pay more.
I said I would change backdrops so I am going to do that again. Let's lift the geriatric common area backdrop up, and then lower behind a new backdrop. Lower Albany Avenue in Hartford. Six in the morning. Still dark. Our old lady and her canes sit on a concrete barrier near the bus stop. She fell walking down the avenue and her leg is killing her. 10 of 10 pain. It doesn't help that she's been up doing crack cocaine all night. When my partner asks her about her medical history, she says arthritis and cardiac arrest. The cardiac arrest was from an overdose earlier in the week in the South end. She says her chest is still sore from the CPR. They intubated her and also gave her Narcan. (Hopefully not after the intubation).
We ask her if she remembers what the bag of heroin she overdosed on looked like. She says it was white -- no stamp. She says she bought it from a King, who was not her regular dealer. She only bought two bags and it knocked her out. She says it was white heroin. We show her the pictures of some of the bags we have been seeing lately. She nods her familiarity with some and others she says she has not seen. She says the generic one was particularly strong and there is also a potent batch going around in yellow bags with no markings.
We ask her how a 62 year old woman from the suburbs came to be buying heroin in Hartford. She says she has bad arthritis and the medicine her doctor gave her was expensive and after awhile, didn't help. Â Â Monte, the maintenance guy who sometimes sold her Percocets offered her heroin. He wanted $10 a bag. She learned she could get it herself for $5 a bag. A girl in her beauty salon with tattoos gave her a beeper number she could call for a hookup, and she'd take the bus in to meet the man. $5 a bag was cheaper than $30 for a Percocet 30mg. Â Of course now she is homeless (she maintains a friend's suburban address for her mail), has hep c, and sore ribs from the CPR she got on the day she couldn't find her regular dealer, and ended up getting the white heroin from a Latin King.
I ask her how she knew she bought it from a King. The Latin Kings used to boldly wear their colors-black and gold, but they have gone somewhat underground now so as not to stand out to law enforcement or the public (should they want to use a stolen credit card or commit another nonviolent crime). Better for business. They still control much of the drug trade in the city. By the tattoo on his arm, she says. A lion with a crown. Plus everybody knows the Kings rule the Park.
Street gangs tone down use of colors, tattoos
I bet she would beat her old neighbors in the elderly housing common room at Heroin Jeopardy.
Yes, Alex, I'll have gangs for $400."
Their colors are blue and red?
Who are the Los Solidos.
Drug Administration for $500.
Skin popping.
What is injecting drugs under the skin rather than in a vein?
Packaging for $300.
5 Bundles
What is a brick?
She could buy a lot of $5 bags with her winnings.
Plus some crack cocaine to share with the old North end dudes she was partying with last night.
* Recently several drug dealers have been charged with murder for selling drugs that caused a fatal overdose as the guy who boasted of his "KD" stamp found out last April (see below Hartford article). Some dealers have responded by going to blank bags so it is harder to be linked to the killing powder. Â Some have speculated it may eventually lead to the demise of stamped bags.
Prosecuters Charging Drug Dealers in Heroin Deaths
After Two Deaths, Feds Charge Alleged Hartford Heroin Dealers
