Poughkeepsie Drug Epidemic, Two Different Police Responses.…

In 2001 while work­ing as a design con­sul­tant for Thomasville Home Furnishing in Poughkeepsie, I decid­ed to try my hand at busi­ness. I con­sid­ered long and hard; what kind of busi­ness could I invest the least bit of mon­ey in that I was the least like­ly to fail at? The fact is that I had no mon­ey to speak of and even less busi­ness experience.
Along the way, I had picked up some basic point­ers from some great Hudson Valley folks, like Fran Pamarico of Poughkeepsie Nissan, Vince Lamerillo of Vince’s auto­body, and John Zoitas of Westside Market On Manhattan’s west side, John was kind enough to hire me when I first arrived from Jamaica…
I decid­ed on a Barbering busi­ness, which I thought would not require a great deal of cap­i­tal, and, if oper­at­ed cor­rect­ly, stood a great chance of sur­vival and maybe even turn­ing a profit.
I won’t delve too much into the busi­ness, but I will tell you about Poughkeepsie. The city of Poughkeepsie had one main street that was blocked off, so motorists could not dri­ve through the lone main street. Some ‘astute politi­cians’ had decid­ed that the way to ensure that city res­i­dents shopped at the main street stores that were slow­ly dying was to pre­vent them from dri­ving through the main street. Of course, they nev­er both­ered to think that the west arte­r­i­al led to the Town of Poughkeepsie on the route nine cor­ri­dor where the South Hills Mall and the new­ly built Galleria malls were in full swing.
Shoppers no longer need­ed the small stores on Main Street; they had spa­cious cov­ered malls in which to shop.
Main street Poughkeepsie died a swift death, and the drug deal­ers came.

To be fair, the drug deal­ers may have been there before the death of com­mer­cial Poughkeepsie. By the time I moved to Poughkeepsie at the end of 1998, I did not go into the city. My then-wife need­ing her Jamaica ground pro­vi­sions, was less risk-averse. So she would go to the cor­ner of Main and Hamilton streets to pur­chase Jamaican sta­ples from Pancho, a Mexican shop­keep­er who claimed he was Jamaican. (Whatever hap­pened to Pancho)?
At the time, one could count the num­ber of Mexicans liv­ing in the city on one hand and have two fin­gers left over.
I thought a bar­ber­shop would be the ide­al invest­ment since the hair busi­ness was the only busi­ness guar­an­teed to receive sup­port from the black com­mu­ni­ty if you are a black investor. I also thought that it would offer men who had been on the wrong side of the law a sec­ond chance to get their lives together.
Ultimately, I would be forced into con­clud­ing that some of those same men were on the wrong side of the law and were impris­oned because they were not exact­ly mod­el citizens.
I knew noth­ing about cut­ting hair, but I had met an African-American mas­ter Barber with whom I became fast friends.
Phil would super­vise and run the shop, and I would con­tin­ue doing what I was doing at my job.

My first thought in 2001, when I decid­ed to invest in the city, was to speak to police offi­cers and get their per­spec­tive on what was real­ly hap­pen­ing. I had left my own Jamaican law enforce­ment career in 1991, and so at that time, I felt a kin­ship with police officers.….…..Tragically, my per­spec­tive on law enforce­ment in the United States has tak­en a decid­ed­ly 180-degree turn from how I felt about some of the offi­cers I met who patrolled the drug-infest­ed streets of Poughkeepsie in 2001.
I pulled up to an offi­cer at the petrol sta­tion on the cor­ner of Main and Rose streets and asked him what he thought about the city, was it get­ting bet­ter or worse?
Matt Nataro was not only a great police offi­cer; he was a Plumber and a super chill guy. Matt and I became great friends. Through our friend­ship, I was intro­duced to the major­i­ty of the offi­cers in the depart­ment, includ­ing Sergeant Wilson, who was even­tu­al­ly ele­vat­ed to the rank of captain.
Matt Nataro would even­tu­al­ly move on to join the Westchester County police; he would joke that his wife spent a lot, so he need­ed to make more money.
Based on Matt’s advice, I decid­ed to take a chance to rent premis­es at the cor­ner of Main & Rose. At the time, the city streets were main­ly tra­versed by drug deal­ers and drug users, and one could take their pick of avail­able com­mer­cial spaces-no one was start­ing busi­ness­es in that drug-infest­ed hellhole.
Some friends thought I was out of my mind, but I cal­cu­lat­ed that the city could not remain in that state for­ev­er. So I fig­ured that at $350 month­ly, I could tough it out until change arrived.
I told the land­lord that I would pay $350 month­ly; he said yes imme­di­ate­ly; I imme­di­ate­ly real­ized I should have said $250, and he would have been equal­ly will­ing to say yes. No one was rent­ing anything.
Around the cor­ner, on Rose Street from my new­ly mint­ed bar­ber­shop, the police would arrive in a large bus and bust the crack­house …some­times twice per week.
As soon as they marched out one group of deal­ers in shack­les, a new group would begin the oper­a­tion the same day.

I hired up to six Barbers at the time, and busi­ness was encour­ag­ing. I was not mak­ing mon­ey, but I felt com­fort­able know­ing that I had start­ed some­thing that was offer­ing a ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vid­ing a place for soci­etal­ly maligned men to work and avoid prison recidivism.
I had made it known that I did not want any drug deal­ing in front of my busi­ness, which did not sit well with one group of street hustlers.
Frankly, as a for­mer no-non­sense cop com­ing out of Kingston, Jamaica, I won­dered how it was pos­si­ble that there could be so much drug deal­ing hap­pen­ing in such a small city with­out the police com­ing down on the deal­ers with a sledgehammer.
Much to my cha­grin, I would learn from some cred­i­ble sources that some peo­ple who were sup­posed to stop drug deal­ing were heav­i­ly invest­ed in its pro­lif­er­a­tion. My heart dropped, and my atti­tude changed. Not against the guys I had become friends with; these were stand-up guys, but that some police offi­cers would stoop so low. I real­ized then that the very same greed that char­ac­ter­ized some Jamaican offi­cers was evi­dent in offi­cers in the good old USA.
One morn­ing after I opened the bar­ber­shop for the guys to begin work, I stood out­side in the warm morn­ing air sip­ping on a cup of cof­fee. The cof­fee and a cig­a­rette were oblig­a­tory after I opened up each morn­ing before leav­ing for my job. The cig­a­rette would even­tu­al­ly be dropped from the rou­tine a few years lat­er, but the cof­fee stayed.
It is hard to describe what main street looked like in 2001; you had to be there to ful­ly under­stand the sense of dere­lic­tion and hope­less­ness that pre­vailed. Old build­ings were board­ed up, and Drug-deal­ers were everywhere.
Main street vehic­u­lar traf­fic main­ly con­sist­ed of push­ers and users, police, and johns for the drug-addict­ed pros­ti­tutes who tra­versed up and down the strip day and night. It was not a black or white thing; it was both.
I heard loud voic­es com­ing from Rose street as if a group of men were argu­ing loud­ly; it did not both­er me; loud nois­es, fights, and gun­shots were commonplace.
I nev­er lost my sense of alert­ness, so I stayed poised and ready to react if I need­ed to. About twelve guys walked up to my bar­ber­shop and began curs­ing, “we been here sling­ing for years, ain’t nobody gone stop what we do.” I had seen these guys before, drug deal­ing lowlives who believed they could intim­i­date whomev­er they chose. One pulled up his shirt to reveal a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon.
I summed them up quick­ly and con­clud­ed that there would­n’t be that much pos­tur­ing if they had come to kill me; they want­ed to intim­i­date me and get me to back down from my drug-free zone around my busi­ness place.

One thing about me is that as a for­mer cop, I under­stand the lan­guage of the street, and I would nev­er argue with a group of men bran­dish­ing guns.
However, con­vinced about the right­eous­ness of my cause, I expect­ed to teach them a les­son first to do their home­work before attempt­ing to intim­i­date some­one like me. I told them, ‘wait, right here, I will be back. I jumped into my lit­tle hon­da and sped off to my house; I returned a few min­utes lat­er to find the streets desert­ed. The next morn­ing the father of one of the would-be gang­sters who oper­at­ed a drug house came to apol­o­gize to me. He tried to con­vince me that the guys were sor­ry and want­ed to make peace. I told him that as far as I was con­cerned, they were indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly respon­si­ble for the secu­ri­ty of my place of busi­ness; if a glass were bro­ken, they would be held accountable.
That did not mean going to the police.
I had no more problems.
Years lat­er, there would be a steady influx of Mexicans. Poughkeepsie was on the upswing; women were push­ing strollers on main street again. Empty build­ings were reha­bil­i­tat­ed, and life returned. Did I tell you that the main street became a thor­ough­fare? Yea that.….
I would even­tu­al­ly move my busi­ness fur­ther up Main street to a plaza and added anoth­er facet to it. I had moved from one busi­ness to two and was work­ing full-time for myself. Upper Main and low­er Main were always pris­tine regard­less of the upheaval, and white-owned busi­ness­es thrived on the book­ends. During the Christmas sea­son, trees and lamp­posts are adorned with beau­ti­ful lights, and peo­ple, most­ly white, wan­der about sam­pling the restau­rants and oth­er spots of inter­est with­out a care in the world. The mid­dle main street was left to its own device.

And then, the opi­oid cri­sis took over from the crack epi­dem­ic. In the ear­ly 2000s, the addicts were both black and white but most­ly black. Both deal­ers and users were picked up and cart­ed off to jail with equal ease and dai­ly frequency.
Nowadays upper Main street is a crazy house of drug addicts, the fire depart­ment and EMS are kept busy dai­ly deal­ing with cas­es of over­dosed addicts. Hoffman Avenue vehic­u­lar traf­fic belies the fact that it is a cul-de-sac. Motorists dri­ve up and park in my park­ing spaces, they walk down Hoffman Avenue and pur­chase drugs as if it is the most nat­ur­al thing in the world.
The police do not both­er them.
Do you care to ask the col­or of the push­ers and buy­ers? No? Okay then.
Curious as to the seem­ing lack of inter­est by the Poughkeepsie Police I reached out to the Mayor’s office last week to under­stand why the white peo­ple using and buy­ing drugs with such ease does not elic­it a response from the police? I also told them I was work­ing on a sto­ry and would appre­ci­ate a response from Mayor Robert Rollison before pub­lish­ing the article.
The Mayor’s assis­tant respond­ed to my voice mes­sage and assured me that the Mayor would give me a call the fol­low­ing day.
The fol­low­ing day she called to say that she had emailed me the Mayor’s response.
I thanked her, even though I expect­ed to ask hard ques­tions of the Mayor and would have pre­ferred a one and one conversation.
Here is Mayor Rollison’s response.

The City of Poughkeepsie is com­mit­ted to address­ing these chal­lenges that unfor­tu­nate­ly adverse­ly affect our neigh­bor­hoods. We use every resource at our dis­pos­al and the help of our law enforce­ment part­ners to address these problems.
Due to some of the changes in our Criminal Justice System in this State, it is much more dif­fi­cult to have a long-last­ing impact on mit­i­gat­ing an end­ing to these activ­i­ties. I want to be per­fect­ly clear on one thing, we are absolute­ly com­mit­ted to keep­ing this City, its streets and neigh­bor­hoods safe.
I know it is frus­trat­ing and upset­ting to so many and we appre­ci­ate all the help and sup­port from our cit­i­zens and busi­ness own­ers” said Mayor Rob Rolison.

I will wait.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, a free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.