Retired cop’s mission: Show kids stark reality of drugs
Educational video depicts life,
and death, of a local drug addict
Retired Middletown Police Detective Mike Slover comes face to face with Richard “Richie” Johnson each time he shows a video plea he requested from Johnson not long before he died of a drug overdose.
The stark, searing reality of one face, one look, one person’s life is worth a thousand DAREs to Michael Slover. Dare is a verb to this practitioner of alternative substance abuse education and prevention, not an acronym.
The retired Middletown police detective’s message: Dare to take a harsh look at reality. Dare to know the face of it. Dare to look inside and face demons when denial is not an option.
"I have no robot. I have no dog costume. I have no puppet show," says Slover of his Middletown grassroots program, Crossroads at Croydon Hall. "I’m a person who knows the streets because I’ve listened to the people I’ve arrested and heard what they’ve done with their lives. If you teach kids the honest, ugly, real truth about drugs, they won’t do them. Puppets aren’t real. Robots aren’t real, and dogs don’t really talk. Somewhere along the line kids have to make contact with a real person — not in an assembly but … eye to eye."
Slover made contact with that real person more than 10 years ago, and the encounter changed his vision of cleaning up the streets. That all-too-real person was a dying drug addict named Richie Johnson, who overdosed in 1989.
Johnson’s face has remained permanently etched in Slover’s mission-oriented mind. Ever since Johnson’s death, he’s shared his insights with kids. He also gives them a stark glimpse of Richie Johnson himself, preserved on videotape only a few weeks before he died. This is part of his substance-abuse-education program so proudly steeped in reality.
A narcotics officer since 1975, Slover knew Johnson as a "barefoot, blond-haired, blue-eyed Belford kid who was just like anyone else starting out," he said. "I was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Belford kid too. Our lives just took different paths. It could’ve been me. It could’ve been anyone." Slover was a cop with a different goal in mind until he looked behind the embattled facade of Richie Johnson.
Johnson was about 12 years old when Slover first came to know him. Johnson would usually smile and wave as the rookie cop patrolled the area. But eventually, Johnson began ducking at the sight of Slover.
In the early 1980s, Slover was a narcotics officer and Johnson was doing and dealing drugs. "I started arresting him, though, when I first became a cop (in the late ’60s) for underage drinking when he was about 13," Slover said. "Before long, it was pills, then heroin, then weapons for holding up stores to get drug money." Over the years, Slover said he locked him up at least 14 times.
Well into the first 15 years of his career as a cop, Slover admits he was a glutton for the glory of policing. He liked to see how many arrests he could get and loved to bask in his own hard-earned, hard-nosed success. Then one day the more profound, buried purpose of his life resurfaced. That was the day he reached out to Richie Johnson.
"I always sort of had a soft spot for Richie," Slover reminisced. "He was never mean, a little cocky, but actually quite charismatic. He would never hurt anyone except himself. I knew that, and it really started to affect me after years of arresting this likable drug addict."
By the time Johnson reached his 30s in the late 1980s, his addiction had not only possessed, but ravaged him, Slover recalled with a twinge of pain.
Johnson’s life had become a startling spiral downward, and Slover remembered all too well how it happened: Johnson joined the Army at age 18, only to be booted out for drug abuse. He had robbed stores for drug money. He had sold drugs for drug money. He had done everything and anything for drugs. His body was riddled with track marks from needles. He was an addict whose life knew no rhyme nor reason other than a jagged needle and the fleeting euphoria of being under the influence.
Johnson’s arrests became a joke to the addict, while Slover started to feel more somber.
One day in September 1988, Slover passed Johnson on the road in Belford. That day would turn out to be a pivotal moment in both of their lives.
As Slover waved from his patrol car, he saw Johnson duck, as if hiding something, and began a high speed chase with his adversarial friend.
He ended up pulling Johnson over in his own driveway. Slover searched the car and found narcotics.
As Slover placed Johnson under arrest, he noticed open lesions all over his body and was struck with fear and remorse for this beleaguered friend and foe of the law. Slover got Johnson into the police car and started driving toward the hospital. He pleaded with him to get help, if for no other reason than to have his lesions treated.
After a long talk, Johnson refused help, knowing that he would soon die either from AIDS or the drugs that controlled his life. He knew he had gotten AIDS by sharing dirty needles and said he would rather die from drugs than from AIDS. Slover respected that and asked instead for a gift from Richie.
Slover wanted Johnson to make an impromptu video in which he would talk about his life and plead with kids not to do drugs. The only thing Slover asked Johnson was not to use profanities.
Slover recalled that Johnson cried at the request, but through his tears, a smile broke out, and he asked, "You mean I can actually help someone before I die?" And he unknowingly did just that with a unique approach to combating substance abuse that Slover took to the kids and still does.
Johnson was still high as he made the video, as he had "booted up" only hours before, Slover said. Cigarette in hand, he speaks from the heart, in a raspy whisper, struggling to get his slurred words out.
"My name is Rich, and I have a story I’d like to tell you guys," the video begins. "I started out … just normal, just like any one of you guys."
Lifting his shirt to show track marks and his pant leg to show lesions, he continues, "Drugs. This is ulcerated tracks. The next step is gangrene. … I just hope I can give you guys a message. I don’t want this for none of you. … I know I’m gonna die. … I love you all."
He talks for just over 10 minutes, and looked forward to traveling to schools with Slover to preach his message, but that part of his mission was never accomplished.
Only four months later, on Super Bowl Sunday 1989, Detective Slover was summoned from home to the crow weeds of the Belford docks to identify a body.
It was Johnson, barely recognizable, his face contorted from drug-overdose-induced seizures.
As startling as it was, Slover filmed the scene and ended the video with it.
Richie Johnson died, but his message has thrived and has shaken many a kid to the core. "Their jaws drop every time when they start to see the video," Slover said.