[B]RATTLEBORO — A tenant arrested during a bust of local headline-grabbing drug house is back behind bars after allegedly using heroin on his way from prison to a recovery center.
Francis Macie, 44, was one of four people arrested Feb. 28 during a dawn police raid of a Brattleboro apartment at 33 Oak St. between a special needs school and a residence for single mothers and children.
Police thought they were done with Macie and three fellow occupants when they seized them as well as suspected narcotics and cocaine base, two digital scales, intravenous drug needles and a pistol with a full magazine of bullets.
But after Macie received U.S. District Court permission last month to move from federal custody to the Valley Vista residential recovery center in Bradford, he found a way to use heroin while being transported to the center, according to court records that don’t elaborate on how the defendant obtained or ingested the drug.
Once at Valley Vista, Macie was cited by a probation officer for “failing to engage” with the program.
As a result, U.S. marshals arrested Macie at Valley Vista on Friday and brought him to U.S. District Court in Burlington, where a judge ordered his detention.
Authorities had hoped the treatment plan would stop the addiction that allegedly led the defendant to let his apartment be used for the sale of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, as well as save tax money otherwise spent on more expensive incarceration. Although officials couldn’t offer specific cost-comparison numbers in Macie’s case, they pointed to studies that show rehabilitation can lower both short- and long-term expenses.
“Drug abuse treatment is cost effective in reducing drug use and bringing about related savings,” the National Institute on Drug Abuse concluded in a recent report. “The largest economic benefit of treatment is seen in avoided costs of crime (incarceration and victimization costs).”
But neighbors of 33 Oak St. questioned the plan from the get-go, especially when they learned Macie had asked to stay after treatment at a problematic Brattleboro apartment block on School Street where an acquaintance was charged last year with a drug-related assault.
A resulting court order setting conditions of release approved treatment but didn’t spell out a decision on the apartment transfer. When pressed, officials revealed prosecutors opposed that part of the request and Macie’s lawyer had withdrawn it.
Everyone arrested at 33 Oak St. has denied all criminal charges, although Macie admitted to violating the conditions of his recent release, court records show.
