By Juste J
Philip Seymour Hoffman was a great actor; he starred in many films and played an array of memorable characters. His death has left his friends and family reeling, looking for answers as to why he over dosed and how they could have prevented his dying. I am at a loss however over the countless news pieces written about the scourge of heroin on America’s streets, as if the drug has not made a dramatic comeback in the cities and countryside of the US over the last decade.
I am at a loss as to why the New York Police Department made his death a major crime as if hundreds of junkies don’t overdose every year in NYC; nameless, poor and without fame, with neither words nor press conferences ever given in their memory. I am at a loss as to why his overdose made the NYPD go on a manhunt for his drug dealers when there are drug dealers that service NYC’s communities of color while the NYPD waits months and sometimes years to bring up cases.
The alleged drug dealers were caught a mere THREE days after the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, THREE fucking days. While l admittedly know very little about the investigative prowess of the NYPD, I do think that three days is a very quick timeframe to catch any alleged perpetrator. This wasn’t the First 48 with some poor kid in the interrogation room crying and diming out his homies. Something just does not feel right about the amount of attention given to the death of this West Village junkie.
I say this not to sully a reputation or to in any way diminish the impact of his death to his family and friends but this is some bullshit and we all know it. I thought that New York was getting away from this sort of feeling with the election of a new Mayor; that we were getting away from the tale of two cities that Mayor De Blasio campaigned against. But the handling of the overdose of a famous junkie just shattered that apparent pipe dream. Maybe I’m over reacting.
Maybe this is an isolated case and that because of Hoffman’s death, more will be done to help the not so famous junkies in Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and other parts of Manhattan. Maybe this will give a voice to the voiceless who struggle with addiction every day and help the ones left behind when their sons and daughters and husbands and wives, mothers and fathers who over dose somewhere far from the cameras.
Maybe other families and friends will get the satisfaction of seeing the dealer who fed the habit of their loved ones arrested promptly. Heroin overdose deaths have been on the rise all over this city and country. One famous actor’s death did not start it and I doubt that it will end it. I am just hoping that we get to a place where our society attempts to treat all drug deaths as a problem not just the famous ones.
