Law enforcement’s role in fighting Vermont’s opiate addiction crisis pervaded a Vermont State Police ceremony Friday morning at the Statehouse.
Troopers and their families gathered to recognize officers promoted in the last year, as well as those who received awards.
Throughout the ceremony, reminders of the intimate ways in which police and drug addiction intersect daily wove through stories of the incidents that earned troopers their accolades.
“Although we need to treat the addicts who have this affliction, we also need to remember we cannot treat our way out of the problem,” Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn told a House chamber packed with men and women in uniform and their families.
Gov. Peter Shumlin often says Vermont “cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”
Earlier this week, Shumlin signed a bill that aims to divert drug addicts into treatment instead of, or in addition to, jail. He also traveled to Washington, D.C., to tout how Vermont treats addiction as a health problem.
Emphasized Friday was the role police play in enforcing drug laws and confronting crimes committed by addicts. Police say “not here, not now, not on our watch” to drug crimes, Flynn said.
Trooper Benjamin Katz received an award for his work against a rising number of people selling precious metals and jewelry for quick cash, often to buy drugs.
Members of the state police’s Drug Task Force received the Commissioner’s Award. The team performs undercover work on cases including doctor shopping. The Drug Diversion Unit investigated 236 cases last year, up from 82 in 2011.
Eight troopers received awards for saving lives, in incidents ranging from a man who was choking to several people attempting suicide.
Flynn, State Police Col. Thomas L’Esperance and Lt. Gov. Phil Scott presented the awards, shaking hands with officers and their families.
“Thank you for being awake on the roads in the middle of the night so the rest of us can sleep soundly,” Scott said in his opening remarks.
New Haven officers Sgt. Eugene Duplissis, 36, and trooper Matthew Daley, 34, received the top awards Friday: the Combat Cross and Purple Heart. Both were involved in a 2013 shooting at a home in Leicester.
Duplissis also received the Medal of Honor. He was hit in the head with shotgun pellets during the incident.
Also honored at the ceremony were two senior citizens who were members of a group of teenagers that in 1944 rescued the lone survivor of a B-24 airplane that crashed on Camel’s Hump.
Rolland Lafayette, 85, and Peter Mason, 86, were members of the Civil Air Patrol in 1944 and rescued sole survivor James Wilson, a gunner, who lay in the wreckage for 41 hours before the cadets rescued him by the light of a single flashlight.
The boys wrapped Wilson in parachutes and melted snow to quench his thirst, police said during the ceremony. They accepted the awards along with their families.
