Residents of senior citizens building charged with a crime

Older readers will feel really old in reading this article. Several residents of a New Jersey senior citizen residence have been charged with a crime and scheduled to appear for preliminary hearings. The charges have to do with drugs and prostitution.

Police charged one man with allowing people to enter his apartment to use drugs and engage in acts of prostitution. He also got a criminal charge of possession of drug paraphernalia and maintaining a nuisance. In the same man’s apartment, a woman was found with a drug pipe and arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia.

The building is run by the Englewood Housing Authority. About six others were issued no-trespass orders to the building. Police say that the drug users ranged in age from early 50s to their late 70s, and consisted of residents and outsiders. The drug identified was crack cocaine. However, despite the willing description by police of supposed illegalities, there was no criminal charge related to crack cocaine or other drugs other than the paraphernalia charges.

The Englewood police charged that lack of security to the building allowed everyone to come and go freely. Police had been receiving complaints and eventually sent undercover agents to investigate and identify the responsible persons. Uniformed patrol officers will now be doing their patrol time inside the building. However, the lack of details or drugs found against those charged with a crime leaves the question of whether the charges are supportable in court.

In New Jersey as elsewhere, when a person is charged with a crime, the police must go forward and present sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The arrests in this case are relatively minor in comparison to the shock value of the charges. Although there are charges of paraphernalia, there are no charges of possession. Although there are references to prostitution, it’s unclear if anyone was actually arrested for participating in such acts. The rest of the story will have to wait to see if the authorities have any more evidence other than the less than persuasive items reported so far.

Source: CNN Justice, “Drugs, prostitution alleged at New Jersey senior citizen building,” Lorenzo Ferrigno, May 15, 2013