AN OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY REGARDING THE NEXT POLICE CHIEF

Dear Committee Chair Airasian, Vice Chair Izzo, and Secretary Piccirilli,

On Monday, September 11, you will meet to discuss and receive community input on the qualities needed in our next police chief.

I laid out the first part of my own input in Watertown’s Police Reformers Want To Choose Our Next Top Cop. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? While the subject of that post is random violence by individuals, the focus of this open letter is on large-scale crime of an organized nature.

I don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that you will be (and probably already are), on the receiving end of a loud, well-organized effort on behalf of a small group of residents to narrow those desired qualities in accord with their ideological beliefs.

Their intention, as we have heard during three meetings of the Committee on Public Safety, beginning in March of 2021, is to bring reforms to the Watertown Police Department that will expose and put an end to alleged racially biased policing conducted by the department.

At that time, only one of you – Councilor Piccirilli − was a member of the Committee. As they say, this is a brand-new ballgame. In conducting an official community discussion about the qualities needed in our next police chief, the opportunity to restore and reaffirm the true meaning of public safety is, for now, in your hands.

Public safety is not accidental and it’s not guaranteed. And the challenges to public safety are too often hidden from plain sight. If someone were to ask you: On a one-to-10 scale, how would you rate the threat of serious crime in Watertown? What would you answer?

I would define serious crimes as those criminal acts that have the potential to result in the physical harm or death of the victims.

I would bet that most residents would call it a 1, 2, or 3. How about you? Before answering you might decide to review the public police reports, which would be a good first step.

But public police reports purposely provide minimal information, showing us only the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a perfect example:

Dec. 29, 2022 at 9:53 p.m.: ”Watertown detectives who were in the parking lot of Target attending to another matter spotted a car with New Jersey license plates pull in. Then a second person walked over and got into the vehicle. The car pulled out of the lot and got onto Arsenal Street.

The officer observed the vehicle get stuck trying to make an illegal left turn into Arsenal Yards from westbound Arsenal Street. The car then headed west on the wrong side of the road.

Police pulled over the vehicle on Bond Street in Arsenal Yards. The officers asked the men what they were doing in the Target lot and one said he was meeting someone to collect $15,000.

Based on the officer’s experience and knowledge he suspected a drug sale was taking place. He got permission to search the vehicle and in the rear of the car he located a kilogram of a substance suspected to be fentanyl. A field test of the substance confirmed it was fentanyl.

Aneudy Richardson-Jimenez, 34, of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Socorro Alcantra De La Cruz, 34 of Jersey City, New Jersey, were arrested. Both face a charge of trafficking fentanyl.”

This particular report, as it appeared in Watertown News, provided more information than most others but it probably commanded very little of your attention, if you even noticed it at all.

Let’s go deeper. Did you find the mention of a kilogram of fentanyl alarming? I did. And so should every Watertown resident, especially every elected official.

1 kilogram = 1,000,000 milligrams. According to the CDC, as little as 2 milligrams is lethal for most humans.

So the two New Jersey men were carrying enough fentanyl to potentially kill 500,000 people. We often refer to those individuals as overdose victims. That characterization is dangerously inaccurate. In reality, they are victims of criminal poisoning.

Here’s a picture comparing a lethal dose of fentanyl with a lethal dose of heroin. It will tell you all you need to know about why fentanyl is so profitable and so lethal.

 Fentanyl has revolutionized the illicit drug industry because It’s so easy to hide so easy to transport, and so easy to combine with other illicit drugs to make them exponentially more addictive. If it doesn’t kill you it makes you a zombie, or in the eyes of drug traffickers, a valuable, repeat customer.

Here’s what the police report does not tell us:

Prior to the arrest, had these two traffickers sold drugs elsewhere in Watertown? Had they not been arrested as a result of heads-up police work and reckless driving, where would they be headed next? Do the two men have prior criminal records? Were they members or affiliates of a national street gang? Was Watertown a regular stop for them as well as for members of their distribution network? Did their arrest lead to additional arrests or investigations by state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies?

We are unlikely to have the answers to these and other pertinent questions until this case works its way through the court system, which might be years from now.

Why is that a public safety problem?

When critical information on serious crime is understandably unavailable to us, and when the information that is available is buried in a public police report that is noticed by a small segment of the population, it serves to reinforce the false perception that Watertown’s serious crime threat is at the low end of the scale.

It’s human nature. What we can’t see won’t hurt us.

Let’s take a look at one more police report, published in Watertown News.

July 25, 2023, at 11:48 a.m.: “Detectives from the Suburban Middlesex County Drug Task Force observed a man making a drug sale on Brookline Street. The man had been under investigation for a month. After the sale, police pulled the suspect’s vehicle over. They immediately noticed two tied-off corner plastic bags with a white rock substance inside the vehicle. The man was arrested and the car was towed to the police station for further investigation. A police search dog discovered a compartment inside the vehicle with 108 corner bags with cocaine and fentanyl inside. The substances were field tested and will be sent to the State Crime Lab for confirmation. Police said the bust took a significant amount of drugs off the streets. Bryan Jean Carlos Vallejo Perez, 28, of Boston, was arrested on charges of trafficking a Class B drug (cocaine), trafficking a Class A drug (fentanyl), and possession with intent to distribute a Class B drug (cocaine).”

On a trip to the clerk’s office at Waltham District Court, I found an additional police record listing the total weight of the fentanyl at approximately 16 grams and the total weight of the cocaine at approximately 36 grams.

Cocaine is considered a “party drug,” which, on its own is highly addictive. The addition of fentanyl (usually unknown to the users) takes it to a completely different level – a level where a lethal overdose is really a case of criminal poisoning.

Unlike the case in the first police report, this one shows the result of targeted police work. I would ask the same types of questions here, but again, it could be years before getting any of those questions answered. And, in this case, I would ask one more question:

How many ongoing investigations by the Suburban Middlesex County Drug Task Force are currently in progress?

As the designated monitors of Watertown’s public safety, wouldn’t that be useful information?

I don’t expect any of you to do this, but if you comb through the public police reports in Watertown, Waltham, Newton, Cambridge, Somerville, Boston, and the Massachusetts State Police, as well as press releases from DEA and DOJ, where convictions, sentences handed out by the courts, crime details, and gang affiliations are made public, you will likely see the same picture that I see.

While incidents of serious crime in Watertown are few, the actual serious crime threat is higher than most people think. Just how high, we may never know, but if we can get closer to that reality, we will be a smarter and safer community.

What do I want in the next police chief? I would like a chief who makes us more aware of the real threat level and gives us a view – even from 30 thousand feet – of how the Watertown Police Department monitors it and deals with it.

The next time drug merchants from Boston, New Jersey, or anywhere else are busted on one of our streets or in one of our parking lots for trafficking thousands or hundreds of thousands of doses of fentanyl poison, I would like the chief to go before the cameras and make that announcement for all to hear.

This kind of message warrants amplification, not just notification.  

Though he may only be able to show us the tip of the iceberg, the next police chief should make it a priority to periodically remind us that real public safety is not guaranteed and that it is not accidental.

We are right now at a critical tipping point. We can come to appreciate the need for robust policing to deal with the real crime threat or we can yield to those few who believe that we have more to fear from the police than from the criminals.

Bryan Jean Carlos Vallejo Perez, Aneudy Richardson-Jimenez, and Socorro Alcantra De La Cruz are three members of a “marginalized community,” victimized by a racist society who were racially profiled by a police department, riddled with systemic racism. Attention: future Human Rights Commissioners!

At your September 11 meeting, the police reform group will continue to try to dominate the discussion, lecturing you that: The next chief must have impeccable antiracist credentials. He must be willing to accept a citizens advisory committee. He must graciously answer to the Human Rights Commission. You, the members of the Committee on Public Safety, must understand that they, alone, occupy the moral high ground.

I know a few of these reformers, and I don’t doubt their sincerity. But their efforts are grossly misplaced. They are not living in Minneapolis, Ferguson, Baltimore, or Memphis. Here in the townish City of Watertown, where we are fortunate to have a well-hired, well-trained, thoroughly decent police force, these well-meaning reformers are downright dangerous.

You know this town better than they do and you know our police department a lot better than they do.

I ask the three of you to please stand up for the commonsense public safety of every law-abiding individual who lives here, works here, or visits here.

Your community needs you as never before!

 

Bruce Coltin, Marion Road

 

PS: In 2021 and 2022, Overdose deaths of teens tripled, and overdose deaths of Black teens surged five-fold.

PPS: In 2021 and 2022, synthetic opioid/fentanyl fatalities among children aged 14 and under rose faster than any other age group, and more than tripled in just two years.