Here we go again. The new year dawned in Hartford New Mexico a week ago with a double homicide on Francis Avenue in Parkville, normally a pretty quiet street. One of the two suspects, 20-year-old Jose Medina, was caught after a harrowing car chase with a sizable stash of heroin and other drugs in his car.
It's not yet known if the slayings were, in the all-too-common phrase, "drug-related," but lethal violence around illegal drugs has been a scourge of Hartford for more than three decades. Despite the best efforts of two generations of police officers as well as prosecutors and others, it continues.
Although overall crime numbers are down somewhat, the specter of violence inhibits growth and economic development. For example, a New Jersey developer bought and rehabbed 10 handsome apartment buildings on Bedford Street in the North End, spending more than $5 million, but has had all kinds of trouble renting them because of drugs and related gunplay in the area.
Because there are at least a quarter million people receiving methadone from clinics, it is uncertain how many of these individuals may be addicted to the drug.
Deaths attributed to alcohol dependence in America are highest for blacks, although a higher percentage of blacks than whites abstain from using alcohol.
Methamphetamine addicts will often refrain from eating or sleeping for days while they binge, or run on the drug.