Representatives of the Howell Police Department recently joined guest speakers, including a mother who lost her son to heroin, for a presentation about the horrors of drug addiction.
Young adults and their parents attended the event on Jan. 15 at Howell Middle School North.
“When I asked [Police Chief Ron Carter] about doing this, I told him I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it because this is a real danger,” Howell police Sgt. Chris Hill said. “I want people to get upset. I want people to cry because unfortunately we are seeing too many kids die.”
After Hill delivered his opening remarks, Carter read an email from a resident’s son that made the reality of the accessibility of drugs all the more evident to those in attendance.
“Dad, if you and I left the house at the same precise moment, I could purchase heroin as fast as you could purchase a gallon of milk at [a convenience store],” the email read.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent Douglas Collier stepped up after Hill and Carter, and showed the audience “the new face of heroin,” which included recently deceased celebrities such as Cory Monteith and Kriss Kross member Chris Kelly, along with arrestees in major local heroin busts.
“Unfortunately, we have the best heroin here in the United States,” Collier said.
He said much of the heroin that is present in Monmouth County comes from Philadelphia and is of a much higher purity than it has been in the past.
“Heroin was about 4 percent pure 40 years ago,” Collier said. “Now it is usually between 45 and 60 percent pure. The onset of addiction is much quicker, and overdoses can happen so much easier … and we are located between Philadelphia and New York City, so there is a lot passing through.”
While Collier spoke from the perspective of law enforcement, the next two speakers, Abby Boxman and former drug user Michael DeLeon, spoke of the firsthand horrors they have experienced.
Boxman’s son, Justin, 21, died of a heroin overdose on July 13, 2011. She said Justin attended Howell Middle School North and became a successful football player at Colts Neck High School.
In December 2007, Boxman was named to Greater Media Newspapers’ All-Freehold Regional High School District football team as a senior.
Following his graduation from high school, Justin went to Kutztown University, Kutztown, Pa., where he stopped playing football and started coming home more frequently, and “he went through a lot of money,” according to his mother. Boxman said she found out her son was using heroin after police officers found a hypodermic needle in the back seat of his car during a traffic stop in January 2011.
Six months later, he was dead.
“If you have a gut feeling something is not right with your child, then something is not right. You know your child more than anyone else in the world,” Boxman said.
DeLeon told a much different story. He said he grew up in Lake Mohawk in northern New Jersey, where a friend showed him cocaine.
“Kids do not get introduced to drugs through a stranger. It is their friends and family,” he said.
After he became an addict, DeLeon moved to North Carolina and then back to New Jersey, only to find his problems once again.
“I found drugs again the first day I moved to Belleville and I got involved in a gang,” he said. “I got a member of my family killed due to my addiction, and it didn’t stop me. Then, I almost got my wife and child killed.”
DeLeon said a drug deal ended with one person being shot. All five people who were involved in the crime, including DeLeon, were charged with first-degree murder. He spent 10 years in prison.
“I remember my wife driving me out of prison on the day I was released and looking at the prison in the side-view mirror as it got smaller as we drove away,” he said. “I told myself, ‘I am never going back.’ … I saw the warning on the mirror that says, ‘Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.’ That scared me.”
Capt. Andrew Kudrick and Lt. Tom Rizzo of the Howell Police Department offered information to those in attendance.
“Howell is 63 square miles in size and is home to 55,000 people. You might not realize what is going on in different parts of town,” Kudrick said. “Everything is behind closed doors when it comes to drugs, there are no big open-air markets. I know personally it affects every economic level. I have found drugs in dirty diapers in the dingiest places and in the most affluent parts in town.”
Rizzo noted the unpredictability of what drugs that are purchased on the street can contain.
“I am sure I can go out on a limb and assume that [the person] making up the drug is not a pharmacist,” he said. “It is mixed with chemical derivatives. I have seen powdered bleach, battery acid and methamphetamines mixed in with heroin.”
Rizzo said heroin found in Howell has been as high as 70 percent pure.
“We are seeing heroin in a frequency we have never seen before. The pipeline is Interstate 195 and we are dealing with Trenton as a source. If your child is going to Trenton, do not let him go,” the officer said. “Even worse, Neptune is becoming bigger for stash houses, and it is starting to come into here.”
Contact Greg Kennelty at [email protected].