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Dreams and Nightmares

Jonathan Calderon sitting on his mother's couch on a Saturday night, with a day pass from the treatment center.

Jonathan Calderon sitting on his mother’s couch on a Saturday night, on a one-day pass from the VIP treatment center, determined to turn his life around and become a health care worker and a devoted father. (HAN ZHANG/BronxInk)

Jonathan Calderon woke up on a hot June morning, wrapped in a wrinkled red and black blanket, soaked in cold sweat. It was his fourth night and fourth day crashing on his friend’s small couch without heroin. He had no money and no strength to go back to the street.

That’s when he logged onto Facebook on his friend’s phone. On the top of the news feed was a photo of his 7-month-old daughter, tilting her head in a smile. “Why am I here instead of being at her side?” Calderon thought to himself.

In his 24 years, Calderon, a Mott Haven native, had spent 14 years using and selling drugs, and the last four years doing heroin. Drugs, he said, once relieved his loneliness. Selling drugs even lifted him out of poverty, temporarily. But now, all he had was two knife-slash scars in his arm and leg, four tattoos and a broken down body. Calderon realized that he was about to condemn his young daughter to a life with an absent father on drugs. But he wanted to be able to participate in her childhood. He decided that he had to stop letting heroin control his life.

Calderon’s problem was not unique. Many of the city’s drug users and their families had endured even worse. Last year, 782 New Yorkers died of drug overdoses. Of those, 420 deaths involved heroin. In the past four years, the city had seen a steady growth in the death toll of drug poisoning, according to a study released this August by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

More than a quarter of those deaths occurred in the Bronx. During 2012, among every 100,000 residents in the Bronx, 8.8 died of drug poisoning involving heroin. From 2012 to 2013, 16.6 percent of the deaths happened in Hunts Point and Mott Haven, the neighborhood with the most heroin-related deaths in New York City since 2010.

In the country, an increasing number of young people started using heroin in the beginning of their adult life. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2012, 18 to 25 year olds accounted for 43.6 percent of illicit drug use. In 2012 alone, 156,000 persons started to use heroin, with the average age of initial use at 23.

Grow Up Fast, Smoking Weed

Growing up in Mott Haven to drug-addicted parents, Calderon had only met his father once and did not see his mother much before he was 12. He was shuffled between his relatives’ houses, feeling unwelcome everywhere. School wasn’t any better. He said he was bullied through elementary school to junior high, and dropped out of high school after only a few months.

He didn’t remember having a toy, or going to the zoo, or holding his parents’ hands. He promised not to let this happen to his own child.

“I had to grow up fast to defend myself in the street,” he said.

He smoked his first hit of marijuana at the age of 11. “Gimme some of that or I’ll tell your mom,” he remembered telling his 14-year-old cousin.

On his 12th birthday, he smoked his second joint with friends in a park near Westchester Avenue. The weed slowed him down and made him laugh. He liked it.

By 13, he was smoking several times a day and selling it. Street-smart and an early developer, he was pulled in by a gang in the neighborhood. Surrounded by 18 to 20 year-olds who gave him money and taught him how to sell drugs and to put down street fights, for the first time in his life, Calderon felt embraced and thought that it was love.

From a Pothead to a Pill-head

One thing led to another, and at 17, Jonathan discovered “Opana,” a prescription painkiller that was able to freeze everything out for him. After taking the orange-colored pill, he liked to run around while the surroundings faded out. In this blurry world, he felt relieved from the pain and stress of loneliness.

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warned that “crushing, chewing or dissolving” pills such as Opana ER “will result in uncontrolled delivery of active opioid and can lead to overdose or death,” and ordered the manufacturers to change the package labels, directing prescriptions only be given for “severe pain” instead of the formerly “moderate-to-severe pain.”

For this reason, in 2012, Opana ER, the long-acting analgesic, adopted a new formulation that resists being dissolved.

But back in 2006, when Opana ER first came on the market, Calderon didn’t know he could open up the pills and snort them. He only took “Opana” in pill form.

The same year, his street business went to a new level. He started to sell heroin in small bags with a star stamped on it.

At that time, Calderon said, all the heroin sold by local gangs had brand images stamped on the bags. The names were derived from a large range of things -“Blue Spider,” “Daddy Yankee,” “MySpace” and “Walking Dead,” to name a few.

His left hand still bears a tattoo of a star and a dollar sign.

In 2007, a bag of heroin cost around $10. A bundle of 10 bags cost $50 to $ 80. Sometimes, Calderon was able to sell about 15 bundles to up to 30 people in a day. A daily revenue of $500 was commonplace. On a good day, he could make $1000.

The money flipped his whole life around, from a street kid with no regular home to an 18 year old with his own place. He paid monthly rent of $500 for a basement studio in a three-story building on Cypress Avenue.

It wasn’t just the housing situation that changed. In a neighborhood where 41 percent of the population lived below poverty level, he often spent $150 on a pair of Levi’s jeans and $300 on Jordan sneakers. In fact, he had so many sneakers that he used to wear different shoes everyday for a month.

By 19, Calderon had saved up $10,000. Not able to put the street money into a bank account, he dug a hole in the wall in his closet to store his fortune behind his True Religion jeans and Polo shirts.

But the $10,000 saving was just a small token of what he had made. He spent most of them on clothes, liquor, cab fare. Some nights, with friends, he would spent $100 at nightclubs. He once squandered $1000 at Sin City Cabaret.

Every morning when he turned on his phone at 6 or 7 a.m., it would ring non-stop because addicts in the neighborhood had been craving heroin all night long. After taking care of the business, he would swing by a store to get cigarettes, rolling papers and marijuana in the street. Then he went back home, put on some music, usually Rap or R&B. He liked Meek Mill’s “I Am a Boss” and Trey Songz “Already Taken” the most. And then he would start to smoke.

Before noon he would have showered and put on some cologne and had his waist-length hair braided. He’d put on his dashing new clothes and sneakers, ready to show up on the street where he hung out with other gang members till midnight. Calderon enjoyed looking nice and being respected on the street. But sometimes his mind strayed from the non-stop chatter between gangsters about who had been beaten up or who had been killed.

“I wish I was born in another country where there was no drugs or violence, living a normal life with my parents,” Calderon said.

Live to Dose, Dose to Live

In 2009, a girlfriend showed Calderon a new way of taking “Opana.” He started to crush it into powder and snorted it. This could create “legal high,” the same as heroin, but via prescription narcotics.

From 2003 to 2012 in New York State, drug-poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesic increased from 186 to 914, reaching a peak of 940 in 2010, according to a study released by the state Department of Health. Most of the victims aged 45 to 64, the age group 20 to 44 being the second large. From 2003 to 2012, death toll of the later group grew almost five folds.

Like many other drug users who started with opiod analgesic but then switched to heroin, the more accessible, less expensive substitute, at 21, Calderon started to use the heroin he had for sale, after he and his girlfriend ran out of “Opana.”

One snort of heroin always brought him a rush of energy in his body and he would start to scratch– “the good itch” –all over his body. He could feel the excitement breaking through his normal shyness. After the burst of happiness, Calderon would go into to a deep sleep that he would try to fight away. On a given day, he would snort up to ten bags of heroin. He followed the voice in his head, “Go get it. Go get it.”

In about a year and a half, he used up all his savings. But the voice didn’t stop chanting.

He started to sell things, like his jewelry and AirJordan sneakers, until he was down to one outfit, and one pair of shoes.

Calderon began to cash in on his scrappy reputation on the street. Other heroin dealers loaned him 10 or 20 bundles. One person loaned him 50, expecting him to pay back $2,500. Instead, he snorted it all.

That was the beginning of his trouble on the street. Once he was slashed in one arm and leg. The wound opening didn’t heal for two weeks. He was 23.

By the end of 2013, Calderon was emotionally repulsed by heroin, tired of all the chasing, hunting and disappointing his family. But his body couldn’t handle withdrawal. In addition to the chills and the sweats, the fevers, compulsive vomiting and sometimes incontinence could drag on for days.

He had to get high to feel normal. He was sick of it.

“I don’t need my life back. I need a new life.”

Calderon knocked on his mother’s door, after four days this June at his friend’s.

“I need help, mom,” he said.

Having always blamed herself for Calderon’s addiction, the mother instantly broke into tears and hugged him.

The day after, she sent Calderon to detox at St. Barnabas Hospital, where he rested for about a week, getting health checks until all the remnants of heroin were removed from his system. Methadone was used to curb his cravings.

At the end of the treatment, Calderon was referred to a six to nine months residence treatment program at VIP Services where he participated in group discussions and various therapy sessions during the daytime.

Having stayed clean for more than three months, he started to go to classes at Eagle Academy to prepare for GED test. Beyond the test, he plans to be trained for a Primary Care Paramedic License with which he hopes to become a phlebotomist.

“I think by handling people’s blood and urine samples, I could help people dealing with their problems,” Calderon said that he had wanted to become a phlebotomist since he was 17 or 18.

His daughter is turning one in less than a month. Calderon is counting days – she may be one and a half year old when he finishes Primary Care Paramedic training, is out of the treatment center and on track for his new life.

“In a couple of years, when she’s grown up a little bit, I want to get a half sleeve tattoo with her name and face on it,” Calderon said, by then he would have removed the star and dollar tattoo on his hand.

He has his mother and grandmother’s name tattooed on his arm and neck.

On his other arm was a tattoo from long ago that says “Dreams and Nightmares.”

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Bronx Tales, Featured, Health0 Comments

Bronx Protesters Stood by Ferguson

Bronx activists gathered at Hunt Point Plaza to rally against police brutality.

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Partygoers Hospitalized After Gunfire at Bronx House Party

A house party on Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd. near W. 174th ended in shooting. One of the two victims is in critical condition.

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Bronx Borough President Endorsed Rob Astorino

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino received endorsement from Democratic Bronx state Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr.

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Grassroots Groups Rally for Open Discovery

Discovery for Justice members rallied in front of the Bronx Supreme Court. (HAN ZHANG / The Bronx Ink)

Protesters rallied for a fairer judicial process in front of the Bronx Supreme Court.                      (HAN ZHANG / The Bronx Ink)

More than 50 people rallied outside the Bronx Supreme Court on Monday morning, demanding changes to New York state law that, they claim, would make the judicial process more just and efficient. The revisions protesters championed would require prosecutors to share evidence they have gathered about a crime with the accused and his or her attorneys during the pre-trial “discovery” period.

The rally organizer, the reform group Discovery for Justice, was joined by other advocacy groups, labor unions, public defenders and elected officials.

Demonstrators called on the state legislature to repeal Criminal Procedure Law 240, which lays out the current rules under which the prosecution may withhold evidence from the defense until the moment a trial begins. They urged legislators to enact Criminal Procedure Law 245, which, they say, would expand access to information for prosecutors and defenders alike, reduce the high number of false guilty pleas in plea bargains, decrease the possibility of wrongful convictions, and speed up the trial process. New York is one of 13 states that has not adopted  such policies, known as “open discovery.”

“We need to make sure that our prosecutors and our defense teams are operating on the same playing field,” said City Council member Andy King, who represents District 12, the northeast section of the Bronx, and marched at the front of the demonstration. “It should be about justice. It should be about the truth. Not about who can win a case because winning a case doesn’t always hold the right person accountable.”

The council member said he was going to introduce a resolution urging the repeal of Criminal Procedure Law 240 at the City Council meeting on October 7.

Over the past 10 years, different versions of the revised law have passed the majority Democratic New York State Assembly, but expired without being taken up by the Republican dominated State Senate, according to public defender Susannah Karlsson.

Before Monday’s rally started, members of Discovery for Justice gave out out leaflets near Hostos Community College on East 149th Street in the Bronx. The flyers bore an image of a blindfolded man standing in darkness behind bars, his hands gripping them tightly. Bold letters jumped off the page: “Withholding evidence equals injustice. Open and early discovery of evidence equals justice.”

Lined up behind a ten-foot-long banner with the image of the blindfolded man on it, marchers left Hostos at 11 a.m. and headed toward the Bronx Supreme Court. They all wore black T-shirts with the same image on it. As they marched, the group chanted in English and Spanish, “The people, united, will never be defeated. El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido.” Waving his fist, King led the chants in a booming voice, his white shirt collar and bow tie showing beneath his black T-shirt.

About 15 minutes later, the group arrived at the Bronx Supreme Court on East 161st Street. On the steps of the somber, tall courthouse, also known as the Hall of Justice, representatives of unions, clergy members, and veterans gave speeches calling for an end to the injustice and unfair treatment of  innocent people. New Yorkers who had been wrongfully arrested or convicted and their advocates testified about the damages the current system allows and spoke of the urgency of an open discovery law.

Jeffrey Deskovic, who was wrongly convicted of rape in 1990 at the age of 17 and was exonerated after 16 years in prison, said that open discovery would have prevented his ordeal.

His attorneys never knew that there were three complaints filed against the medical examiner whose fraudulent testimony was key in wrongfully convicting him, Deskovic said.

In New York State, from 1963 to 2014, 16.73 per cent of all the cases of exoneration involved people wrongfully convicted because of evidence withheld through lack of open discovery, according to data complied by Dannielle Hille, a member of It Could Happen to You, an advocacy group working against wrongful convictions.

Inside the courthouse, Judge Robert Rorres expressed some caution.

“I believe in open discovery,” he said, “but we just can’t throw the door full open and turn over every piece of paper. There have to be some common sense and balance.” Judge Rorres said that medical records and material that reveals irrelevant misdemeanors should be handled delicately.

Opponents often charge that open discovery would reveal the names of witnesses and expose them to harm. A letter signed by Frank Sedita, the president of the District Attorney Association of the State of New York, asserts that open discovery would be “disastrous, especially given the increasing frequency of witness intimidation.”

Public defender Karlsson said the confidentiality issue should not be a hindrance to open discovery. “When there is a safety issue, we defense attorneys will probably consent to holding back sensitive information under certain circumstances,” she said.

 

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Crime, Featured, Politics, Slideshows1 Comment

Candlelight Vigil to Fend off Addiction and Stigma

The group walk and sing at sunset.

VIP members and others march in a candlelight vigil to support those fighting addiction. (HAN ZHANG / The Bronx Ink)

Wednesday night, about 75 people in Tremont joined a candlelight vigil organized by a local treatment center to honor people in recovery and those lost to drug addiction.

VIP Community Service, a non-profit organization providing treatment and housing in Tremont to people fighting addiction, invited its clients and their local supporters to join the walk. Most of the participants were men and women from its residential treatment project, a six-to-nine-month intensive recovery program. Some disabled members participated in a van.

About 65 per cent of VIP’s 1,574 clients are engaged in medication-supported recovery and 120 clients are enrolled in the residential recovery program.

Among all five boroughs of New York City, the Bronx has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths. The number grew  from 132 deaths in 2010 to 185 in 2013, according to data released in August by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The same study shows that the Crotona–Tremont neighborhood was one of the top five areas in the city for deaths caused by drug overdose between 2010 and 2013.

Maria Garcia, who lost her sister to HIV six years ago, expressed gratitude that the addiction treatment program helped her sister get her life back in her last days. She brought her seven-year-old grandson to the event.

Maria Garcia brought her seven-year-old grandson to the walk to show family support.

Maria Garcia expressed gratitude that the treatment program helped her sister, who died six years ago. (HAN ZHANG / The Bronx Ink)

“Family shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Instead, we should help, be united, guide them and support them,” said Garcia.

The vigil started at 6:30 p.m.  and lasted about one and a half hours. As participants walked along Arthur Avenue and around Crotona Park, others joined in along the way. The crowd sang “Lean on Me” and other songs.

“It’s such a beautiful scene,” said a neighbor, watching the group walk by the park at sunset.

The event created an opportunity for the clients to socialize and interact with the local community, according to VIP’s assistant vice president Carmen Rivera, the organizer of the vigil.

“We want to take away the stigma on former drug addicts and show that they can pull it together and be a positive influence in the neighborhood,” said Rivera.

In one contribution to the neighborhood, in August, VIP clients unveiled a mural, “Bridging Transformation,” created by 20 VIP clients who worked with local artists for six weeks.  Images of a shadowed man walking on a path that leads to an explosive cluster of bright colors enliven the side of  a five-story building on 176th Street in Tremont.

Tanesha Green, a mother of four who marched on Wednesday night, said that the treatment program helped her focus on recovery.

“The program is within you, if you are ready to do it,” Green said after the vigil.

 

 

 

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods0 Comments

No closure in cop sexual assault case

The parents of a Bronx girl who was sexually assaulted 16 months ago by an NYPD officer grimaced in the gallery yesterday when the judge announced that closure would have to wait at least another month.

Sentencing was expected Wednesday, Sept. 24, for Modesto Alamo, 38, who pleaded guilty in July to sexually abusing, forcibly touching and endangering the welfare of a 13-year-old girl. Alamo resigned from the police force upon his May 24, 2014 arrest. Instead, Judge Laurence E. Busching of the Bronx Supreme Court said he would issue a sentence and determine Alamo’s sex offender category Oct. 23.

Bronx Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Militano petitioned Wednesday for Alamo to be designated a Level 2 sex offender, for “moderate risk or repeat offense,” arguing that his betrayal of a position of trust justified the heightened classification.

Defense lawyer Solomon J. Schepps argued that the victim “was the one who established the relationship in the first place” through a series of non-sexual text messages. Schepps also claimed there is no precedent for holding police officers to the higher standard Militano endorsed. He encouraged a Level 1, “low risk,” designation.

It has been a “lengthy, stressful, disappointing process,” the victim’s mother said in the hallway after yesterday’s hearing. She added that her daughter, now 15, receives counseling and has changed middle schools since the incidents. Although the parents have been fixtures at Alamo hearings, they said they try to shield their daughter from news of the case.

“It is ridiculous that he gets away like it,” said the mother, who sobbed in the courtroom when the prosecutor described the abuse. “He was never in custody.”

Alamo arrived in court in a long-sleeve T-shirt and blue jeans, donning a baseball cap upon leaving the courtroom to obscure photographs of his face. Busching denied a special request from The New York Daily News to photograph today’s proceedings.

Schepps and Militano declined to comment.

In the criminal complaint, the victim is said to have referred to Alamo as her boyfriend. She initially reached out to Alamo for help with a bullying situation at school, Militano said in court and the two exchanged frequent texts for several weeks.The complaint states that Alamo visited her multiple times in her apartment lobby, first on New Year’s Day 2013, where he kissed her and groped her rear end. Alamo also sent the teenager lewd photographs via text.

The victim’s mother said outside court Wednesday that it was Alamo who initiated contact in November 2012 when he complimented a picture her daughter had uploaded on Instagram.

Alamo is released on bail of $1,500.

 

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Crime0 Comments

Bronx Man Charged with Murder of Wife with Scissors

On Monday afternoon, the light over the front door of the sealed house was left on.

On Monday afternoon, the light over the front door of the sealed house was left on.                 (HAN ZHANG / The Bronx Ink)

On Monday, a 56-year-old man was charged with second degree murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon after fatally stabbing his wife with a pair of scissors, according to police.

Around noon on Sunday, the wife, Cynthia Migliozzi, 57, was found unconscious and unresponsive in her Bronx home at 1581 Astor Avenue. With a puncture wound in her left armpit and shoulder, she was pronounced dead upon arrival at Jacobi Hospital, a few blocks away from her house.

The couple has lived in the traditionally Italian neighborhood of Pelham Gardens for more than 25 years, first with the husband’s parents, and then with the couple’s two sons, both of whom are in their early twenties. The family also kept a pug.

The neighborhood belongs to precinct 49, where the crime rate is the lowest among neighboring precincts. Last year, 10.06 crimes happened per 1000 residents in this area, lower than all but three precincts in Manhattan.

On Monday afternoon, the light over the front door of the sealed two-story, red brick house was left on and a silver Chrysler was parked in the weed-ridden yard.

To their neighbors, the family seemed friendly but not particularly social.

“They really kept it to themselves,” said Josephine Venditti, 73, who has lived in the house next door to the Migliozzis’ since 1977.

“Their jobs were a big question mark. I don’t think they’ve ever worked,” said another close neighbor who preferred to remain anonymous.“Martin was actually very well-spoken when he talks. I think he told me that he used to study pharmacy before drugs messed him up.”

Police said that Martin Migliozzi had nine prior arrests, mostly for drug possession. The motive is still under investigation.

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Crime1 Comment