Busted: City seizes drug paraphernalia, Viagra from 14 Roxbury convenience stores
Seized crack pipes. Photo by BPD.
Boston Police and the mayor's office today announced the seizure of crack kits and other illegal material from 14 convenience stores in Grove Hall and along Dudley Street and lower Blue Hill Avenue:
These paraphernalia "kits" which were being sold in local markets for approximately $2.00 consisted of a singular glass tube, and a cut piece of Chore Boy (copper scrubbers) placed in a paper bag.
But wait, there's more:
Officers located and seized two illegal poker machines being operated out of local store, Villa Sombrero (Dudley Street). Officers also seized a large inventory of individually packaged Viagra pills being illegally sold from numerous targeted stores. Lastly, officers recovered more than 70 EBT cards complete with PIN numbers from the La Borinquena Market (Dudley Street).
Officials say the push is part of the city's overall effort to crack down on problem properties. In a statement, Thomas Menino said:
Today's action was based on work done in collaboration with the Problem Property Task Force and the area’s Neighborhood Response Team efforts to crack down on properties that have been a plague on the neighborhood and keeping the neighborhood a clean, well maintained community that everyone can feel safe and proud to live.
Stores issued summonses out of Roxbury District Court:
- Caribbean Liquors, 527 Dudley St.
- La Borinquena Market, 524 Dudley St.
- Villa Sombrero, 543 Dudley St.
- Brown Food Market, 559 Dudley St.
- La Gran Parada Meat Market, 561 Dudley St.
- Liriano Market, 64 Blue Hill Ave.
- Central Convenience, 218 Blue Hill Ave.
- Stop n Save, 310 Blue Hill Ave.
- Estrella Market, 342 Blue Hill Ave.
- Millenium Market, 496A Blue Hill Ave.
- Buck N Up, 5 Washington St.
- Dudley Convenience, 2359 Washington St.
- New Family Supermarket, 205 Humbolt Ave.
- Warren Food Mart, 394 Warren St.
Comments
Holy crap
14 different stores were doing this?
Kudos to BPD.
Looks like Chihuly glass
MFA could host an exhibition...
Brown Food Market?
That sounds downright unappetizing.
Crack pipe selling stores or Walmart?
Are these the stores that will be put out of business by Walmart? If so, bring on Walmart.
Yeah! Because EVERYONE who shops at Walmart is drug free:
http://www.krmg.com/news/news/local/drug-bust-walmart-21st-and-yale/nCwy6/
http://www.wvva.com/story/15514288/robbery-arrest-at-walmart-results-in-drug-bust-tazing
http://www.i-dineout.com/pages2011/Bust.2.16.2011.html
http://www.annistonstar.com/view/full_story/7344818/article-Five-nabbed-in-drug-bust-in-Jacksonville-Wal-Mart-parking-lot
A social epidemic?
How much does this sound like the Prohibition period?
Photo is misleading
The photo is very pretty, but those aren't the kind of crack pipes being described in the article. If you click through to the BPD page, the kits they're describing look like this.
More on this phenomenon here.
not just for crack
great for snorting coke!
Sounds like they seized a whole lot of stuff
I'm going to assume that the fact they included the photo along with the ones of the crack kits, the Viagra pills and the slot machine (or whatever it is) means the artful pipes were also among the seized items.
WHDH has a video panning
WHDH has a video panning across the table showing all the paraphernalia including these artful pipes.
Thank you! It looks like
Thank you! It looks like they took smoking paraphernalia in general (if the photo w/ the story is what they also took).
Is there a laboratory in the Boston area
... that doesn't have those kinds of items in stock, or the tools and facilities necessary to produce them?
so, who owns these?
There's only a couple of owners of convenience stores and bodegas in the city, so...who owns these?
ALLSTON
good job by BPD and inspectional services on the other hand the last thing the city needs is for these mom and pop stores to close in this economy.
Can you imagine doing this in Allston where not only do they sell the above items but the stores that sell graffitti vandals the tools that help immortalize the street artists.
How many viagra pills will disapear from the evidence room?
You Don't Have to Imagine
They did it last year:
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/allston_brighton/2010/12/shop_reopens_after_raid_drug_p.html
Great now I have to go to
Great now I have to go to Hyde Sq. to get my crack pipes.
Which of course, leads to the question
Will the new Whole Foods "serve the community" by offering the same $2 glass tube and brillo kits? Or will they only offer the gentrified colored glass pipes shown in the photo?
WF sells only organic, free
WF sells only organic, free trade 'shrooms.
Ha ha spot on.
Ha ha spot on.
*eye roll*
Because the trying to catch murders and drug dealers in this neighborhood are less important.
Seriously, I think the effort could have been spent elsewhere. What does this do? Not a single thing. Crackheads are just going to get their gear elsewhere. It doesn't stop a thing.
I can guarantee ALL that stuff will be back in those stores within a week, except now you'll have to ask for it as it'll be kept out of sight.
so the cops should have
so the cops should have ignored this? What else should they ignore?
Nope
But I think their time could be spent elsewhere. This is just cop 'dog and pony' show for the public to show that they are working. It solves nothing and only shows the police 'flexing' their muscle because they can.
Now how many people were murdered in same section of Dorchester and Roxbury this year? And how many of them been solved? I don't even look up the exact numbers to know that its the solved crimes is only a small fraction of them.
I'm not disagreeing that what they were doing is illegal (since Boston has asinine laws about paraphernalia) however I just feel energies could be focused on other things than busting some shops selling some pot and crack pipes. How about just getting the drugs off the streets instead...
Patching-up-the-windows theory?
I think it's fine that they're going after this sort of thing (as long as drugs are still illegal, which I don't agree they should be). They're finding the places that are disregarding laws and community safety and decency; pretty high likelihood that these places are also looking the other way regarding more serious crimes, and they're probably not doing much of the pro-community sort of stuff that other businesses in the area do (sponsoring events, etc.) if they're not ashamed to sell crack pipes.
Here is the thing cybah.
You have about 3,000 cops, inspectors, investigators, etc for the city of Boston. You can't have all 3,000 focus on the most serious issue (murders). And you never know what you can find on these types of raids. You might get a few names, or a few people on warrants, or some other information in the drug trade. You also might get some money from the fines they might collect on these violations.
so there were 70 something
so there were 70 something murders in Boston last year in a city with a population of over 600 thousand and you want the cops to disregard everything else and just key on the murders? You should go to some of the communtiy meetings around the city and see what they complain about, it's not the murders.