Violent crime has increased markedly in Bennington in the last six months, Police Chief Paul Doucette told the town Selectboard Monday, and he asked citizens to help police keep up with it.
Doucette’s update to the board included two major drug raids. The first, in April, led to seven arrests on charges of fentanyl possession and trafficking, and illegal possession of firearms. Another raid on July 1 resulted in seven arrests as well.
Doucette said violence in Bennington has been rising for the past six months, with stabbings, drive-by shootings and gang activity. Doucette said much of the gang activity is spilling over from Massachusetts; the state border is just one town to the south.
Police are asking residents to help police keep track of incidents, so they can respond accordingly.
“We don’t have law enforcement out all over the place all the time, and we really need the community to make these reports,” Doucette said.
The Bennington Police Department website says the department has 40 people, both sworn police officers and civilians, serving the communities of Bennington, North Bennington and Old Bennington.
Both Bennington and the state need better answers for dealing with drug addiction, Doucette said. He said drug addiction is prevalent not just in Bennington, but across the entire state, and it’s not enough to distribute Narcan and naloxone, drugs that can revive people after overdoses.
“Simply using Narcan or naloxone is not the answer,” Doucette said. “They have to have treatment after the fact.”
Efforts are being made along those lines, said Todd Salvesvold from the Bennington section of Vermont’s Hub and Spoke program. He told the Selectboard the Vermont Department of Health launched the program in an effort to help curb opiate use across the state.
Spokes are outpatient clinics that offer immediate short-term help to people in the communities they serve. Hubs offer higher-intensity treatment for people with complex addictions. So far, there are over 75 spokes across the state, but only nine hubs.
Salvesvold said that, while opiate abuse and overdoses are on the rise across the state, the problem seems to be bigger in southern Vermont than farther to the north. According to Doucette, that could indicate drug activity is spilling over the Massachusetts border into southern Vermont.
While the spoke and hub program can offer immediate help to people suffering from opiate use, it’s not set up to provide long-term treatment, Salvesvold said. He believes the state needs to be able to offer long-term treatment to people with drug addictions if it’s going to succeed in curbing the issues seen in Bennington and across the state.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the Hub and Spoke program.
