News
The seedy heroin market of Massachusetts may be seeping into sleepy Hanover, and fraternities and sororities should be on the lookout for related burglaries, according to local law enforcement officials.
Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone said that teens and persons in their twenties and thirties, who obtain heroin from a largely Hispanic market in Massachusetts, are targeting rich environments in the area.
Robberies have already been reported in Lebanon, West Lebanon and Newport, and Giaccone said he has reason to believe these burglaries were heroin-related, due to intelligence from other area police departments.
In a meeting last Thursday addressing social chairs of coed organizations, Captain Frank Moran informed fraternity and sorority social chairs of increased heroin use and of armed robberies in pursuit of money or goods that could be sold to obtain the drug.
While houses might start locking their doors or use lead pipes and bicycle chains to protect personal belongings -- as Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity intends to do -- most members said they were not overly worried.
"Seeing as we have nothing of any real value in our house, and none of us deal or use heroin, I don't see Alpha Delta being a prime heroin junkie target in the near future," Alpha Delta fraternity social chair Adam Cohen '05 said.
Thus far, fraternities have not experienced break-ins that they attribute to heroin.
"We've had brothers from other fraternities try to break in and steal things, but I don't think they were under the influence of that particular drug," Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity social chair Andy Aranda '05 said.
In related news, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, responding to a growing substance abuse problems and a lack of area treatment options, plans to begin an intensive outpatient program for substance abuse treatment.
