BELLOWS FALLS — “I can't in good conscience state that there are gangsters operating in Bellows Falls.”
That's what Police Chief Ron Lake said in response to rumors that had been circulating online about alleged members of a “White Russians gang” in recent arrests as part of a drug raid, and other allegations that some young people in town have joined gangs.
Lake cautioned that one can't judge on looks alone whether someone is a gang member or not. In the case of young residents people might see around town, he said, “they're not.”
“We know who the bad guys in Bellows Falls are,” Lake said. “We know who they are, and we know where they are.”
Recent media reports of gang activity in southern Vermont have fueled people's fear that gangs are present in Bellows Falls as well.
Gang activity has been confirmed with arrests in Rutland and Bennington. According to a Sept. 19 article in the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, “Most of the drug trade is controlled by the Bloods in Albany and Schenectady [N.Y.],” Urbanowicz said. “They're active here [in Bennington] and I tend to think everywhere in Vermont.”
Chief Lake disagrees with the latter.
“We had one guy who came up from New York City last year …who we arrested several times for minor infractions,” he said. “He told us he was a member of a gang in New York but we could find no evidence of that when we did a background check.”
“He was more of a 'wannabe' and came up here looking for something different. When he didn't find it and couldn't get anything going here, he went back,” Lake continued. He described the man as “practically homeless” and while he wasn't a gang member, he was arrested for vagrancy and vandalism.
Lake said he understands that citizens can be fearful of anyone they don't know, or someone who looks different from that which they are used to, but he is reassuring that the town is too small and the police presence too prevalent for anything to go on here without his knowledge, let alone gang activity.
“We're very fortunate that way,” he said
The look that alarms
Many young people, especially males, in the past decade or so, have adopted what is called a “gangsta” style of dress - the low-riding loose-fitting pants based on the ill-fitting clothes issued in prison. Gang members copied the style as a statement, not very different from “hippie” clothes in the 1960s - albeit from very different perspectives.
Prison tattoos became a status symbol on the inner city streets and morphed into what is now called 'body art' which includes excessive body piercing. This has widened the generation gap, playing on fears based on association with how someone is dressed, tattoos or body piercing.
The assumption that “if someone is dressed like a gangsta - they must be a gangsta” is often erroneous in today's Gen-Y fashion world, where young boys to men in their early 30s affect the gangsta clothing style. Bellows Falls and other Vermont communities are not exempt from this trend.
The truth is closer to a style of clothes than that the person sporting droopy drawers that shows underwear, tattoos or body piercing, is a gang member, at least in Bellows Falls, Lake said.
“If you stop and talk to any of these kids, you'd be surprised,” Lake said. “I talk to them. My officers talk to them. They're not gang members.”
Lake advocates educating someone before he resorts to an arrest for a violation.
He said that an officer seen talking to residents on the street - whether a young citizen who follows the style of his generation or a woman walking a dog - is “good for everyone involved.”
“It lets people know who we are, and lets people see us out in their community and so we are familiar to them,” he explained.
“If we need to tell someone they are doing something wrong, we'll do that first,” Lake said. “Then if it comes to an arrest, they'll know and have made the choice.”
Lake said the visible police presence on foot and in cruisers in a village the size of Bellows Falls should reassure people that he knows exactly what's happening in his village. Between neighborhood watches that have been established, people's willingness to report suspicious activity, and most residents knowing one another, little goes unnoticed, he said.
Drug issues exist in the Village, but they are of the homegrown variety, he noted.
“We've put a big dent [in that issue] in the past year with the drug initiative [begun a year ago],” Lake said.
As in the rest of the nation, the biggest drug problem exists around narcotics and opiates purchased legally at a pharmacy, then sold on the street.
“The medicine cabinet isn't usually locked,” Lake told The Commons last year.
Lake refused to talk about ongoing drug investigations but acknowledged his officers are working on several. While coverage has not decreased in the village, investigations take a little longer now as a result of cutbacks in overtime.
But “if I need the overtime, my boss [the town manager] okays it,” Lake said. “The safety of our residents is our first priority. That will never change, and we will do what it takes to keep it that way.”