BANGOR, Maine — Newly elected Bangor City Council members were briefed by department heads on the city’s doings Wednesday night, and they learned from Police Chief Mark Hathaway that there is a drug and gun pipeline connecting their city to New Haven, Connecticut.
“It’s shocking,” newly elected Councilor Joe Perry, a former state representative for the area, said Thursday. “There is no doubt that Bangor has a serious, serious drug problem.”
The pipeline was put into the spotlight in October when six gang members from New Haven were indicted on federal charges that include murder and racketeering involving guns, some that may have been purchased in Bangor in exchange for drugs.
The police chief described a web of Connecticut-based drug dealers who come to the area to prey on residents who have a taste for illegal street drugs, with heroin currently topping the popularity charts.
“It’s well-organized,” Perry said. “It’s a sophisticated operation and they are connected to New Haven, Connecticut. If you take one of their dealers off the street, they just replace them.”
Hathaway said police officers in both communities are working together to break the pipeline, with some New Haven officers in the Queen City this week, Perry said.
The federal Bangor-New Haven gun and drug running investigation dates back to 2010 when the six Connecticut men, identified by New Haven police as members of a gang identified as the “Red Side Guerilla Brims,” reportedly started to bring crack cocaine to Bangor.
“Bangor Police Department has built a relationship with the New Haven Police Department,” Hathaway said Thursday in an email. “This relationship began when New Haven Police investigators traveled to Bangor as part of an investigation they were conducting. It was during this time that we learned that guns purchased or stolen in the Bangor area were often finding their way to New Haven, usually in exchange for drugs.”
“We have utilized the expertise of the New Haven Gang Unit to educate our officers in recognizing gang related propaganda,” Bangor’s police chief said.
New Haven police Lt. Otoniel “Tony” Reyes, leader of the department’s major crimes detective division, said Friday that with “35 to 40 gangs in the city” his 520 officers know what to look for, and are all for educating other law enforcement officers.
“We had our intelligence detective and narcotics team go to Bangor and they did a series of trainings, most surrounding gang involvement and narcotic investigations,” Reyes said.
Drug dealers from New Haven are traveling to Bangor “to set up shop,” and to do so have made connections with local residents, he said.
New Haven is a city of around 125,000 residents that swells to 200,000 during the day. It’s located about halfway between New York and Boston and is also home to half a dozen college campuses, providing a diverse population.
“Back in 2011 we were the third most violent city in the country per capita,” Reyes said, adding that increased intelligence gathering and sharing with other agencies, increased indictments and quicker responses to the violence have helped to decrease crime and drop the homicide rate nearly in half in the last four years.
“It’s made a significant impact in our city,” the New Haven sergeant said.
The work and the partnerships continue, especially with the number of illegal out-of-state guns in the hands of gang members and other criminals, Reyes said.
“That is a problem with the influx from Maine,” the sergeant said. “It’s big business.”
Those indicted by the federal government last month purchased around 300 guns from Bangor, “And that is just from Bangor alone,” Reyes said. “It’s a big problem. The more we get off the street, the better.”
The rules for purchasing a gun in Connecticut are “a little tougher [compared to Maine], but anyone can get a gun on the street.”
Until the criminal pipeline is stopped, the partnership between the two police departments will continue, Hathaway said.
“The New Haven Police Department has been most helpful,” Bangor’s police chief said. “I anticipate we will continue to call on their assistance with respect to identification and background information on individuals that we encounter who claim to be from the New Haven area.”
Hathaway said other state and federal partners, including the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as other police department in Connecticut, have also worked on cutting the drugs and guns pipeline.
Over the last year, the partnerships have led to a number of arrests.
The ringleader of the Bangor-New Haven gun and drug running is alleged to be Jeffrey Benton, 30, formerly of New Haven, who was indicted Oct. 1 along with five other gang members on murder, racketeering and other charges in connection with gang activity, the U.S. attorney’s office in Connecticut said. Members of the gang, a sect of the Bloods street gang, are accused of killing six people and attempting to murder four others in 2011 and early 2012.
Benton is at Somerset County Jail awaiting trial in Maine on drug conspiracy and gun conspiracy charges. He’s accused of illegally acquiring at least 20 firearms, either buying them with cash or in exchange for drugs.
The guns were bought at Bangor-area pawn shops by people who lied about for whom the firearms were being purchased, many who traded the guns for drugs, according to a federal indictment in February against Benton and nine others, half who were from New Haven. Whether Maine guns were used in the Connecticut killings was not released by investigators.
In March, a trio of convicted drug dealers from Connecticut were arrested in Bangor on crack and heroin trafficking charges after an 18-month investigation by Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and Bangor Police Department who raided two apartments at 69 Ohio St. where 7 ounces of heroin, 4 ounces of crack cocaine, more than $15,000 in cash and three guns were found.
In June a Carmel woman admitted she was part of a cocaine ring with partners in New Haven, saying she sold half-gram bags for $50 and gram bags for $100 and sent the money to her drug dealer in Connecticut.
In September, four men and a woman were arrested during a heroin bust at an Essex Street residence after an MDEA raid.
What Perry learned from Hathaway’s presentation is that other crimes in the city can be connected to the community’s drug problem.
“Pretty much 100 percent of the property crime is drug-related,” Perry said, adding that Bangor is not alone when it comes to illegal drugs. “Hathaway said this is happening all over the country.”
Hathaway also talked about tapping Lewiston Police Department, which was awarded federal grant funds to battle that city’s drug challenges, for advice and he said partners will be needed to truly stop the drug pipeline.
“[Hathaway] talked about houses selling $10,000 a day in heroin,” Perry said. “They want to fight this at the source [and currently] it’s a losing battle. I don’t see how Bangor, Maine can do it on their own.”