Police: Man chewed up, spat heroin bags

 http://www.vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/RH/20140606/NEWS02/706069948

By ERIC FRANCIS
CORRESPONDENT

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Police said a Perkinsville man chewed up and spat out small bags of heroin after an officer arrested him for violating curfew.

Joey Bergeron, 32, pleaded innocent Thursday to heroin possession and two counts of violating his release conditions. He was then released from White River Junction criminal court on the same conditions, including a 24-hour house arrest that he allegedly violated Wednesday morning.

Springfield Police Sgt. Anthony French said he saw Bergeron near a redemption center on Route 11 that morning with a bag of cans and bottles. Curfew conditions allow Bergeron to leave his grandmother’s house only for legal or medical appointments.

“Bergeron advised he was helping his grandmother return bottles and cans and was going to the hospital but then decided not to,” French wrote in his affidavit.

“I asked why he was going to the hospital and he said he had symptoms of the flu and his stomach wasn’t feeling well,” French wrote. “Bergeron was shaking and had something in his mouth that made it difficult to speak.”

The sergeant handcuffed Bergeron and put him in the police cruiser. “I could still see he had something in his mouth,” French said.

Bergeron denied he had anything in his mouth, the affidavit said, but in the space of 6½ minutes he repeatedly spit out small bags “as far as he could and in different directions.”

French said he collected the chewed-up pieces of “approximately 13 bags of heroin.”

A field chemical test registered opium residue on the bags, he said, and Bergeron was jailed until his court appearance Thursday.

Bergeron, who completed an inpatient drug treatment program earlier this year, was already awaiting trial on five felony and six misdemeanor charges including driving a car without the owner’s consent, petty larceny, trying to elude police and lying to police.

Judge Karen Carroll, who conducted Thursday’s hearing via phone from a judicial gathering, said that since Bergeron had already posted several thousand dollars in bail she could not hold him pending trial.

“That is not what bail is for, to prevent someone from violating conditions of release or being charged with new offenses,” Carroll said.

Bail is for ensuring that defendants appear in court, she said, and Bergeron has done that.