News

Underage Drinking Parties: Police Chief Proposes New Program That Offers Education in Lieu of Arrests

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To this point, officers arriving on the scene of an underage drinking party in New Canaan generally gather information about violations—someone is hosting the party and providing alcohol, or somebody is in possession of alcohol—and issue a few infraction summonses or make a few arrests. The balance of kids at the party who have been drinking will leave the scene with no accountability. Under a new initiative that New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski is designing—with support and feedback from the state’s attorney of the Stamford-Norwalk Judicial District—those kids’ names are recorded for possible participation in a “diversionary program.”

“The next step is I am writing to the parents saying, ‘Your child was at this party consuming alcohol, we can charge him or her with X,Y or Z—which is a fine and license suspension and has potential consequences on your insurance—or you can attend this diversionary program,’ ” Krolikowski said Wednesday during the regular monthly meeting of the Police Commission, held at NCPD headquarters. To be taught by volunteering psychiatrists trained in addition, the program would be attended by parents and children, and run through two 2-hour sessions—likely on a Saturday, the chief said—with a focus on drug and alcohol education. Those in charge of the program would “explain the consequences of early abuse of alcohol and drugs, and what that can lead to,” Krolikowski said.

Around Town

‘We Never Want To Say No’: State Eliminates Funding for Kids In Crisis, Jeopardizing Services

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One day after school last week, a New Canaan teen phoned the Kids In Crisis 24/7 hotline because a friend here in town appeared to be suicidal. Familiar with Kids In Crisis because of its TeenTalk program at New Canaan High School, the adolescent connected with caseworker (and TeenTalk counselor) Ed Milton. Within minutes, he met with the troubled youth, performed a full assessment, secured a psychiatric evaluation and resolved the issue by referring to an outside agency. The interaction between a New Canaan teen and Milton—a fixture at NCHS who has earned his position as a trusted adult for scores of local adolescents, such as the friend in this case, by connecting and engaging with them—emerges far more frequently than locals may know. Through TeenTalk last academic year, Milton served 149 NCHS students in individual counseling sessions, according to Kids In Crisis, and cases can touch on everything from family conflict and domestic violence to depression, alcohol and substance abuse, peer and social issues such as bullying, divorce, depression, stress, anxiety and suicide—sometimes resulting in youths spending a night in a bed at the organization’s Greenwich campus (families to this point have not been charged for the service, as the state has been helping by paying a per diem—more on that below).

News

‘We Should Be Able To Do That’: Police Eye Unannounced K-9 Sweeps for Drugs at NCHS

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As part of a wider effort to address drug use among New Canaan youth, police say they’re trying to find a way to bring the department’s new K-9 unit into the high school for unannounced sweeps of the building. Asked at Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting whether K-9 dog Apollo found any substances during an exercise where he swept through NCHS hallways just prior to the start of the academic year, Police Chief Leon Krolikowski answered: “Suffice to say there are drugs in the school as we speak, no question—and there always have been and always will be.”

“It is just our job to disrupt that and make people think twice if they are going to bring drugs on campus,” the chief said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “That is our intent. We are working with the superintendent where there is some kind of policy where we are able to go, unannounced, and check for narcotics.”

Asked at the time of the K-9 sweep whether unannounced visits by Apollo could become part of NCHS policy, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said the school board was reviewing its policies and was committed to making its schools drug-free. Police Commissioner Paul Foley said at the meeting that Krolikowski had the “total support” of the commission to make unannounced K-9 sweeps at the high schools.

News

Police K-9 Unit Sweeps New Canaan High School for Heroin, Other Drugs in Training Exercise

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New Canaan Police K 9 Apollo at NCHS
The New Canaan Police Department’s newly deployed K-9 unit swept through New Canaan High School’s hallways Wednesday morning, sniffing lockers during a demonstration and training exercise that could yield a more regular effort to use the drug-sniffing dog to combat substance abuse among local youth. Apollo, a German shepherd dog that since completing training in July has worked throughout town with NCPD Officer David Rivera—making his public debut at the Family Fourth at Waveny and already helping police with drug arrests in town—spent more than one hour sniffing lockers up and down NCHS hallways. The keenly sensitive, drug-sniffing dog successfully detected marijuana and heroin planted by NCPD officers during a tightly controlled test, and is able additionally to detect crack-cocaine and cocaine, among other drugs, Rivera said. “Once he tells me he is entirely sure, that’s when I am good with it,” Rivera said during the session, as a leashed Apollo in sweeping the lockers throughout the hallways stopped and lay down in front of those where School Resource Officer Jason Kim had planted the drugs as a test. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi, Police Chief Leon Krolikowski and NCHS Principal Bill Egan followed Rivera and Kim through the school.

News

Town Councilman: Heroin Has Killed Six Young People from New Canaan

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In the past 18 to 24 months, five or six young people from New Canaan overdosed and died from heroin, says Town Council Member E. Roger Williams.

The deaths occurred almost entirely outside of town, after the young people had entered their 20s and had moved to places like Wilton, Norwalk and Stamford, Williams said — but he said the introduction into substance abuse tended to happen when the young people were teenagers growing up in this town. “In the last year and a half, we’ve had six of our children die,” Williams said at a Town Council meeting on Wednesday. After the meeting he amended that statement — he meant to say five or six young adults, and the deaths may have started as much as two years ago, he said. He was reluctant to provide any details, citing the embarassment and concerns of the grieving families, but he said the source of his information was a reliable person in the community who had kept count of the deaths. Williams spoke immediately after hearing a brief report from fellow Town Council Member Penny Young, chairman of the council’s Health and Human Services Committee, that town officials and local groups were working in a revived “New Canaan Coalition” to focus on helping the town’s youth.