After All Things

Research and discovery

Four people charged with election fraud in Bridgeport were in court today. Suffolk law enforcement take down an island-wide drug operation. Connecticut’s first mental health crisis center opens in New Haven. An upcoming federal report will detail the impact of offshore wind on marine life. And the latest from WSHU’s Off the Path.

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 29 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Oh, my first car that was an old dented Dodge Dart. I'm Bill Buckner, your host for All Things Considered. Didn't have a name. No, I never gave a name to my car. I mean, I called it names, but I won't repeat those. Your car can turn into All Things Considered, and WSHU's local news. Go to WSHU.org and find out more. Four people charged with election fraud in Bridgeport were in court today. Attorney Kenneth Krieski represents Nielsa Heradia, who is one of the people accused of mishandling absentee ballots during the 2019 mayoral election. Krieski says the case likely won't be decided until next year. I don't think the case will be ready for anybody to put a value on it yet. And when I say put a value on it, the judge will be able to look at it and say, "Well, I think it's worth this, or the prosecutor will be able to look at it and say, "I think it's worth that." And I don't think I can look at it and put a value on it for my client yet. I don't have enough information, and the process requires us to have as much information as possible. Lawyers for both sides agreed to push the next court date to October 17th because they need more time for research and discovery. You're listening to After All Things, WSHU's Daily News and Culture Update from the Long Island Sound region. Suffolk Law Enforcement takedown an island-wide drug operation. Connecticut's first mental health crisis center opens in New Haven. An upcoming federal report will detail the impact of offshore wind on marine life. And the latest from WSHU's Off the Path, those stories and more are ahead. I'm Sabrina Garone. ♪ Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney unveiled three drug trafficking indictments today. He says law enforcement has taken down a massive operation that spanned from Brooklyn to Montauk. WSHU's Desiree Diorio reports. Tierney says the charges against 29 people include distribution and possession of narcotics, like cocaine, fentanyl, and crystal meth. Plus, the attempted murder of two police officers and the assault of a third officer. Law enforcement seized hundreds of thousands of dollars of drugs, guns, and cash. Tierney called it a major blow to the illicit drug trade on Eastern Long Island. Desiree Diorio, WSHU News. A rapid response mental health center is now open in New Haven. It's the first of its kind in Connecticut. WSHU's Molly Ingram has more. For people experiencing mental health crises in Connecticut, the emergency room is often the only option for stabilization. But a transformed three-story home in New Haven called the Rest Center aims to change that. Jim Ferralis is the president of Continuum of Care, which runs rest. It is staffed by licensed clinicians, nurses, case managers, and peers with lived experience. Who help connect individuals to the resources they need in order to transform their circumstances and move forward on a path of recovery. The center has ten recliners for people to recover in, with a few beds for those who need to stay a bit longer. There is no cost to patients who may be experiencing substance use issues, mental health crises, or homelessness. The City and Connecticut's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services help cover the cost. Molly Ingram, WSHU News. A Connecticut commission that works with the state's 119,000 disconnected youth held its final public forum in New London this week. Canterbury first selectman Chris Lipka is one of the 119 K commissioners. He says his region is one of the hardest hit in the state. We're going to have to really work together as a region, because not one of our small towns are capable of taking this on our own. So it's going to have to be a regional effort relying heavily on our nonprofits which are strapped already at the capacity for what they can take on, but working with them to address this issue of the disconnected youth in Connecticut. The commission has traveled across Connecticut to meet with businesses, nonprofits, and more than 250 young people to better understand the issues they face. It will be presenting a report to the state and the legislature in October. ♪ A favorite vacation spot for folks in our region was once a place where pirates were welcomed with open arms. The latest from WSHU's Off the Path is ahead. ♪ Local support for After All Things comes from Hartford HealthCare, the only health system in the Northeast with all its hospitals receiving A grades for safety from the LeapFrog group, the nation's leading independent safety watchdog group, HartfordHealthCare.org. ♪ Test scores and attendance were up in Connecticut K-12 schools in the last school year. Math and science scores increased across all grades for the second year in a row, but they're still lower than before the pandemic. Student attendance also saw its second year of improvement. English test scores, on the other hand, continue to flatline with no significant improvement. A review of Suffolk County's budget submitted to lawmakers predicts a $40 million deficit in sales tax revenue by the end of the year. Suffolk is expected to collect about $2 billion to keep the counties operating and capital budgets running. The county legislature needs to pass the budget by November, which goes into effect in January. The federal government is issuing a new report on the ways vineyard wind could affect whales, turtles, and other protected species. Jeanette Barnes reports the document should be published within the week. The National Marine Fisheries Service expects no North Atlantic right whales to be killed or seriously injured by the installation of remaining turbines for vineyard wind, but noise could temporarily disturb the whales' behavior, according to a summary of the opinion provided in advance. Gibb Brogan of the Conservation Group Oceana says marine fisheries could pursue a recommendation it made two years ago to create a buffer between critical whale habitat and turbines. We think that that is the way to find the coexistence between responsibly developed offshore wind and the recovery of North Atlantic right whales. The government's Greater Atlantic Spokeswoman Andrea Gomez says the conclusions about vineyard wind have not changed. For the New England News Collaborative, I'm Jeanette Barnes. There was once a place in colonial America where pirates were welcomed with open arms, at least for a while, and that place was Newport, Rhode Island. Davis Donovan tells us how Newport became an unlikely pirate haven. It's the latest installment of WSHU's Off the Path. Newport, Rhode Island was founded in 1639 on principles of religious tolerance. We are standing really in the center of historic Newport. Patricia Drizlein is a docent with the Newport Historical Society, and she hosts walking tours of downtown. The beautiful Green Park ahead of us is the Town Green. Today we call it Washington Square, in colonial days it was called the Parade. We can see the steeples of St. Paul's United Methodist and Trinity Episcopal. Down the street is Turo Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in America. Newport's religious tolerance made it one of the most diverse cities in the colonies and one of the richest. Many of the fellows who come here are merchants with important trade connections around the world. But then England started to pass new taxes in the late 1600s. They were brutal tariffs called the Navigation Acts, meant to browbeat the colonies into total reliance on Britain. What some Newport fellas would figure out how to circumvent British taxation was you just anchor your ship a little further along the coast. You wait to the dark of night, you scoot your goods from ship to shore. It's called smuggling. And they had another way of making money, privateering, where a captain gets a license that allows him to attack and rob foreign ships. It was really sketchy. It's basically legal piracy. And oftentimes a sanctioned privateer could cross that line into piracy without recognizing it. People in Newport didn't care what you called it. What happened out at sea wasn't their business. The state and city leaders even issued bogus privateering licenses, knowing full well they were giving them to pirates. The pirate trade was welcome to the colonies and everyone made money off it. That's local historian Gloria Merchant, author of the book Pirates of Colonial Newport. The merchants made money. The people that bought goods at a steep discount made money. Because of the Navigation Acts, London managed to limit the amount of cold hard cash that came into the colonies. Pirates brought in that cold hard cash from their booty, from their prizes. And of course they spent it. They spent like drunken sailors because that's what they were drunken sailors. One was a guy named Thomas 2. He robbed ships in the Indian Ocean with a phony privateering license in the 1690s. And it made him powerful friends. The governor really liked Thomas 2. Apparently the man 2 was charming and elegant and good company and entertaining. So all of that played in his favor of course. And he was really successful on his first voyage to the Indian Ocean. Two and his shipmates sailed back into Newport Harbor with more than 23 million dollars in today's money. They could have retired wealthy at that time and just let it go. But they were they were men of fortune. They were gentlemen of fortune. They liked it. They enjoyed. They enjoyed the chase. They enjoyed the challenge and the excitement of the life. The short but merry life as they called it. So Thomas 2 and his crew sailed out again for another big score. He did not survive that second voyage. He and his crew ambushed an Indian ship and two took a cannonball to the belly in the fight. But some of his fellow pirates resisted the urge to go back to sea for more blunder. Instead they decided to remain on land and they became some of the city's most powerful residents. That's on the next off the path from WSHU Public Radio. I'm Davis Donovan. Thank you so much for listening to After All Things, supported by Hartford HealthCare, for the latest news from Long Island and Connecticut. Listen on the radio, stream online at WSHU.org or download the WSHU app. That's also where you can get more great podcasts from WSHU, like off the path, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, reach out to us with any thoughts or story ideas. Our email is news@wshu.org. I'm Sabrina Garon. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll talk to you tomorrow. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]