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March 1990 Community organizers, Tony Clark and Mark Svetz were approached by an HIV/ AIDS prevention outreach worker from the ARROW program in Willimantic. The outreach worker made the case and convinced them that an exchange program, although illegal, was a missing piece needed in local efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Svetz and Clark went to New Haven, Connecticut where an underground exchange had been started by activists, to meet with Peter Fischer, an ACT UP volunteer Fischer gave them a box of 100 new syringes. They came back to Willimantic, and visited a couple they knew who used injection drugs. They made an exchange which marked the start of Willimantic's first underground NEP.
March 1991 After a year of getting the word out, Svetz and Clark were trading about 200 needles each week. They are traveling to Vermont every couple of weeks to buy syringes from any of several pharmacies in Brattleboro and Bellows Falls, where purchasing is legal. Fund raising was getting to be a problem at this point, and the numbers were alarming to Svetz and Clark.
February 1992 Svetz was arrested for the first time. The arrest took place behind what is now the Victorian Neighborhood building on Main Street. Mark got into the back seat of a car to make a trade, when a cop car materialized from nowhere, officer Carl Caler made the arrest.Clark was also arrested a total of four times during the next couple months. On his fourth arrest he was charged him with prepossession of heroin. Following their arrests Svetz and Clark contacted University of Connecticut School of Law Criminal Clinic, run by Michael Sheldon represented the two. Sheldon worked a deal with the prosecutor which stated, if the law was changed, the charges would be dropped. Svetz and Clark began lobbying CT, legislature to change the law regarding possession of syringes. As a result of the arrests Svetz' s name and address appeared in the newspaper. People who used the exchange knew began to show up at his house and call him at all hours of the day and night. This combined with attendant publicity about the arrests became the platform for the marketing campaign for the exchange. Svetz and Clark were now trading between 600 and 800 syringes a week. June 1992 Connecticut legislature passed a new law making it legal to possess up to 10 syringes without a doctors prescription. The same law created needle exchanges in Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford, and provided for several additional exchanges in places to be designated later. Svetz and Clark sought such a designation in Willimantic.
March 1993 Willimantic was designated as a site for syringe exchange programming by the State Department of Health. July 1993 The State Department of Health provided $30,000 for the first year of leagal syringe exchange programing in Willimantic, CT, to be run by the Windham Regional Community Council.
Summer 1996 A young girl gets stuck with a syringe on a Willimantic street, and Prosecutor Mark Solak began a campaign to close the Exchange. Svetz and Clark believe Solak began this campaign because, he'd lost in his attempt to prosicute the two on paraphernalia/ possession charges. Sevetz still believes there was never any impropriety demonstrated on the part of the NEP, and that Solak used the scare tactic of the little girl getting stuck to launch a smear campaign against the exchange. Throughout the summer, events spiraled out of control. Svetz and Clark found themselves at the center of a huge controversy in town. Almost 15 years latter, that controversy remains the focus of much of WHRC's destigmatization and lobbying work. Summer 199
March 1997 The Willimantic syringe exchange program becomes the first legally established exchange in the country to be closed down...
October 2002 Five years after the Syringe Exchange program is shut down the "Heroin Town," series appears in the Hartford Courant. The Series wins a Pulitzer. Eight years latter, the community still struggles to break the stigma attached to the headlines... ``Our needle exchange went away, but not our heroin problem,'' town AIDS outreach worker Kathey Fowler said recently as she inspected an addict's shooting gallery a block from Main Street. She plucked five used syringes from the ground and carefully put them into an old coffee can she found...”-Hartford Courant, Oct. 24, 2002ro ``All of the problems blamed on the exchange still remain,'' said Robert Broadhead, a University of Connecticut sociology professor who studied the exchange's rise, fall and aftermath. Including a large and active illicit drug scene...''-Hartford Courant, Oct. 24, 2002 "This is a heroin town. Small, rural, open, friendly -- and hooked." -Tracy Gorden Fox, Hartford Courant Reporter, Oct. 20 2002
June, 2003 60 Minutes follows up on the Hartford Courant Series with, "Heroin Town, USA," expose. Willimantic is a drug-infested small town, with a population of 15,000-16,000 people, in the middle of Connecticut. In the middle, some say, of nowhere – unless you want to buy or sell drugs. It’s been so bad for so long that some people call the place Heroin Town. Spend some time there, and you’ll begin to understand why the war on drugs has been such a failure.” -Dan Rather
February 2009 Thomas Mcnally and Curtis Eheler were operating the exchange underground from their office at the Covenant Soup Kitchen. Without warning they were asked by their program director to sign a letter stating they'd cease all operations and affiliations with syringe exchange programming in Willimantic, or they'd be terminated.
March, 2009 Following the elimination of regular underground SEP hours at Covenant Soup Kitchen, IDU clients at the area homeless shelter where Chris Heneghan worked, began reporting extreme difficulties procuring sterile injection supplies. Heneghan called McNally and Ehler for a meeting to address critical deficiencies in HIV/ AIDS prevention programming resurfacing in Northeast Connecticut's Windham County. He proposed an increase in participatory action, and peer distribution of syringes, in place of the former fixed location. A call went out, for volunteer outreach workers to assist in the effort. The Windham Harm Reduction Coalition (WHRC), was formed. For the next eight months a core group of five volunteers split 30 outreach hours a week between them promoting and running the underground SEP.
December,2009 WHRC is exchanging between 2,500 and 3000 each month. The group is having difficultly meeting members demands for services. The group decides to begin public relations and lobbying work for the transition of the SEP from the the underground to a Sate Department of Public Health Funded program to ensure they'd have the capacity and recourses needed to best serve their members...
June 2, 2010 WHRC, and their supportive allies testify before Windham Town Council (WTC), on the evidence based need for SEP services in Windham, CT. WHRC, requests a letter in support of the restoration SEP programming in Windham from WTC be sent to the State Department of Public Health, to enable the group to apply for funding. WTC approves a motion to send write a letter in support of the restoration an SEP...
June, 7 2010 Town Manager Neal Beats forwards a copy to the letter WTC motioned to send the the state CT DPH on WHRC's behalf. The language in the letter is contrary to what was approved in WTC's June 2 motion. June, 8 2010 Town manager Beats agrees to meet with Heneghan,"off the record," to discuss the letter. In this meeting Heneghan requests a copy of the June, 2 WTC meeting minutes which outlining the motion of approval for the reimplementation of Willimantic's SEP. Heneghan is told the minutes have not yet been posted. Heneghan cites a town statue governing WTC business which sates, “official meeting minutes must be posted for public review within 48 hours after each meeting of WTC.” Beats responds with, "We're very busy, and there seems to be a difference of opinion among council members regarding what was or was not agreed on June 2nd. I suggest you listen to your elders on this, and give up on your idea of a syringe exchange program. You will not have the support of the town." June, 8 2010 WHRC holds a rally outside of town hall to call attention to WTC's deceptive political move to maintain a strong barrier against the reestablishment of an SEP in Willimantic. June, 9 2010 Willimantic Chief of Police Lisa Mariso Bouldock issues a statement to the Willimantic Chronicle, "There is a fine line between helping and aiding abetting. I want to make certain that such activity is not going on in this community..."
September, 2010 Chris Heneghan receives an e-mail from supportive ally and former First Select Woman of Willimantic Jean DeSmeat. It's a forwarded message from Willimantic Chief of police, Lisa Mariso Bouldock in which she states, “I've received several complaints of discarded syringes in Memorial Park. I've chosen to ignore the actions of the Windham Harm Reduction Coalition until this time. However if I receive any further complaints I am going to have to take action...” WRHC responds to the Chief's shots over the bow by publishing a letter to the editor the Willimantic Chronicle. In the letter we indicated Memorial Park is no longer an active outdoor injection site and has harbored little illicit drug activity in the past three years. We also published our phone number and asks community members to call if they found improperly discarded syringes in public areas. Stating we would come pick them up. We've received no phone calls to date...
October October 2009 – October 2010 Average Number of Regular Members: (WHRC Defines regular member as a person whom returns to the exchange for syringes, after receiving a starter kit) 47 Average age of Members: 39 Gender/Race: 41% White Female 22% White Male 18% African American Male 10% Latino Female 8% Latino Male
Services Provided: *Housing Referrals *Drug Treatment Advocacy *HIV/AIDS, STI Prevention and Education * HIV/ AIDS, STI Testing and counseling referrals *LGBTQ Suicide Prevention *Overdose Prevention * Syringe Exchange
