CapeCod.com – A Wareham man has been indicted on a manslaughter charge related to a heroin overdose in what a local prosecutor says is a first-of-its-kind case in Plymouth County.

Steven D. Foss, 33, of Wareham is accused of selling the heroin that Paige Lopes, 25, also of Wareham, overdosed on in February.

When Wareham Police arrived on the scene on February 21, Lopes was already dead. In addition to the manslaughter charge, Foss was also indicted on five counts of heroin distribution and one count of possession with intent to distribute heroin.

He was arraigned Tuesday in Brockton Superior Court and was ordered held on $50,000 bail.

Tuesday’s charges allege that Lopes purchased $80 worth of heroin from Foss, ingested the drug and died.

It is the first time the Plymouth County district attorney’s office has filed manslaughter charges in connection with a heroin-related overdose death, according to Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz.

Wow. This is a tough one. On the one hand, if it’s my family member that ODs then I’m probably completely on board if they charge the dealer with manslaughter, but holy shit is this a slippery slope.

By this logic, don’t we need to charge every single employee of the tobacco companies with manslaughter? They are manufacturing and selling a drug that is known to kill people. Aren’t they just as guilty as this guy?

What about a doctor that prescribes opiates for pain and the patient overdoses? Will we start charging doctors with manslaughter?

I realize that we are at a desperate point with heroin and desperate times call for desperate measures, but this could put some people in jail that don’t belong there. Think about this scenario…

What if a heroin addict is in withdrawals, they are suffering, they manage to manipulate someone who loves them into getting them heroin to end the suffering and they OD. Did their loved one commit manslaughter?

Sure, there will be some clear cut cases where the drug dealer is a scumbag that preys on addicts, but there will also be many, many cases where the person responsible for providing the victim with heroin loved them more than anyone else on earth. I just don’t think I trust our court system enough to hand them that broad of a brush stroke when it comes to something as serious as charging people with manslaughter.

Heroin dealers are scumbags, no doubt about it. So maybe make the penalty for selling heroin more in line with the penalties for manslaughter. That way the distinction is made at the law enforcement level instead of the court level. There’s a big difference between a real heroin dealer and some dude who is the one who gets the heroin for his group of friends.

If we just start charging everyone that gives someone something that kills them with manslaughter, McDonald’s won’t have any employees left in a few years and every liquor store owner will be behind bars.

P.S. Locking up street level dealers, no matter what the charge, isn’t going to stop anything anyway. There are ten more lined up to immediately take their place. Maybe we should be talking about the real root of the problem? Maybe we should think a little longer before destabilizing entire foreign regions with acts of imperialism in order to impose our beliefs upon people that simply don’t share them?

Maybe, just maybe, the well being of our children at home should be more important than liberating people that hate us? Liberating them and giving them the freedom to sell us heroin? Maybe then we could stop asking our local police to keep cutting the heads off of the weeds that are popping up all around us while our federal government waters their root systems? Or whatever, let’s just keep watching the Kardashians and hope it all goes away soon.

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As a Falmouth guy I was about to get all butthurt about this, but then I realized that it must have been made by high school kids. The Canal Cup? Sand dunes and inferior sports teams? High school kids for sure.

Then I remembered that high school kids are way cooler than me and I got all butthurt again. What a bunch of little pricks with their zest for life and their whole lives ahead of them. Oh well, I guess I’ll go buy a $7 camping chair to make myself feel better about being a schlub from the town of Walmart, Cape Cod.

P.S. How great is it that no matter how much shit we give each other as towns, we all share a sacred bond in our hatred of anything over the bridge.

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photo: Tyler Bradbury

ACK – A strange-looking fish believed to be a denizen of the deep-water ocean washed up on a Madaket Beach Monday evening and was photographed before being coaxed back into the water.

The fish, estimated to be about seven feet long, is believed to be a giant oarfish, the world’s longest bony fish. The fish is found worldwide, but is most common in tropical to temperate oceans. It normally ranges as deep in the ocean as 3,300 feet but up to 66 feet.

This is why I hate swimming in the ocean. People ask me all the time how I can be born and raised on Cape Cod and not like swimming in the ocean, well from now on I am carrying around a picture of this thing.

There is simply no reason I can think of to put myself in the same neighborhood as that sea serpent on purpose. Just because we were born surrounded by the ocean doesn’t mean it’s something we should be frolicking around in. Last time I checked we aren’t equipped with flippers, gills, or blow holes, and that’s enough proof for me.

You know what else we were born surrounded by? Outer space. But that doesn’t mean we should just wander around different planets half naked after drinking booze in the sun all day. The ocean is full of straight up aliens. It is not our natural environment and we simply don’t belong there.

Don’t get me wrong I’ll jump in to cool off, but the whole swimming for recreational purposes thing is just bananas to me. I love being ON the water, but I’ll stick with boating, jet skiing, tubing, or whatever keeps me above the aliens and firmly atop the food chain. I’d much rather count Turkeys and Plovers as my enemies over Oarfish and Jaws.

Here come the “you’re not a real Cape Codder”comments. Bring it on. I’ll challenge anyone to a Cape Off anytime… anywhere.

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WL – For the past 15 years, boat shrink wrap has been a popular way to protect vessels throughout the winter months but has largely ended up in the waste stream. However, through local recycling efforts at the Woods Hole Sea Grant Program and Bourne Integrated Solid Waste Management Facility, the material — also known as number four low-density polyethylene — will be on its way overseas to be converted into new construction material.

Jeffrey Brodeur, community outreach specialist at the program, explained that efforts to re-use the plastic have largely stepped up in the last five years and he said his offer to provide a free drop-off site to gather the material is to just one way to help the process along.

“We have a 30-yard roll-off container – basically a giant Dumpster – on site for the next month and we are hopeful we can collect a lot of shrink wrap as the boating season begins,” Brodeur said. “This is the first real attempt at this project so we are starting slow and, depending on how it goes, we hope to expand next year.

“We are working along with Cavossa Disposal Corporation in Falmouth, that will help us bring the material to Bourne. This is also really an education effort because a lot of people don’t know what to do with the boat shrink wrap and they end up just rolling it up and throwing it away. We want to help teach people that it can actually be re-used to make some pretty incredible things.”

To dispose of shrink wrap, call Jeffrey M. Brodeur, communications and outreach specialist at Woods Hole Sea Grant/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, at 508-289-2665. For more information, go to: www.whoi.edu/seagrant or www.facebook.com/woodsholeseagrant.

Well this is one of those ideas that makes so much sense it’s hard to believe nobody was already doing it. There is a boatload of shrink wrap on this peninsula. The only way this would make more sense is if they teamed up with the SOLO corporation and turned all of the shrink wrap into drinking cups that could be sold back to boaters at a discount.

This could be the most symbiotic relationship in boating history. We could have the boaters save all the SOLO cups as well as the shrink wrap. That way we could use the same plastic to cover our boats in the winter that we used to drink rum and cokes out of all summer. I think I just came up with the most genius idea the boating world has ever seen. It’s a perfect plan.

Oh I’m crazy you say?

Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?

It’s impossible you say?

Is it? Or is it so possible that your head is spinning like a top?

It can’t be you say?

Can’t it? Or is your entire world just crashing down all around you?

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CapeNews.net – Dude Guy, 37, of Rockland was in Barnstable District Court on Wednesday for a jury trial on charges of larceny over $250. He was found guilty and received a sentence of one year suspended probation to end on April 21, 2017.

On September 25, 2014, police responded to Stop & Shop on Route 6A where a manager had reported a shoplifting incident. The manager told police that he had seen a man leave the store with a cart full of toilet paper, but that the man had not come from the registers. He followed the man into the parking lot where he saw the man packing a lot of food into his car. When the man realized he was being approached, he got into the driver’s seat and took off. The manager was able to recover some of the food, which was a large quantity of packaged meats and shrimp, valued at about $250. He believed that the thief had gotten away with about $200 worth of meat and shrimp. He was able to obtain the vehicle’s plate number.

This guy suffers from the worst case of Needagirlfrienditis I’ve seen in a long time. Bro, there is more to life than eating steak tips and taking shits. It’s time to grow up and mix in a vegetable or two. Go on match.com or do whatever you need to do to get yourself a lady friend to do the grocery shopping. Someday you’ll realize that yeah, fat free Ranch dressing is disgusting, but not nearly as disgusting as dying from a heart attack in county jail because you couldn’t stop stealing T-bones and Charmin.

In reality the rest of us guys are just jealous. Single Guy is eating 100% meat kabobs for breakfast and meanwhile we’re arguing with our gals about how we liked it when she got preserves for our greek yogurt more than the fresh fruit because it’s “sugaryer”. Sure, we’d like to eat ribs 3 times a day, but not having to go to the grocery store just becomes more important later in life. High School is over my man, it’s time to grab yourself a cold glass of -12% milk and get on with your life.

P.S. For all of you PC people about to give us shit for perpetuating gender roles, you know what else perpetuates gender roles? Lions. The women get all the groceries on the Serengeti too, send the lions an angry email.

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Everyone remembers the day Officer Jared MacDonald was shot in Bourne. Cape Cod native Jim Decatur wrote the song “Help’s On The Way” as a tribute to both Officer MacDonald and all of the other officers that sacrifice themselves to protect and serve.

“Help’s On The Way” is now available for download on iTunes with proceeds going to the Officer Jared MacDonald Relief Fund. I’m pretty sure downloading a great tune written by a local musician and simultaneously donating to a great cause falls firmly into the “no brainer” category.

CLICK HERE to download the song in iTunes.

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CapeCodTimes.com – The ride-hailing service Uber is scouting the Cape and Islands, gauging interest among potential riders and drivers in the company expanding its reach into the area.

Since mid-April, Uber has posted job listings for drivers on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, as well as in Falmouth.

“We’ve been operating in the Greater Boston area for several years and know that the Cape is a popular destination, so we’ve been running ads to test the market’s viability,” Uber spokesman Craig Ewer said Monday.

Local cab drivers often feel threatened when Uber makes a move into a new market. The company operates on a different price structure that can be less expensive for riders, depending on time of day and location. It uses a free smartphone app to connect the nearest available driver to the customer looking for a ride.

“A lot of cab drivers have approached me trying to find out what’s going on,” Bruce Watts, a former Nantucket fire chief who now runs his own company, Chief’s Cab, on the island. “The rumors are flying and some people are very upset.”

Watts estimated that there were 60 to 80 cab drivers on the island. He told of one who had tried working for Uber only to receive about a quarter of what he usually got for a trip from Quidnet into town.

“They’re really taking a bite out of people’s incomes,” Watts said of Uber.

Paul Moore, president and owner of Falmouth Taxi has decided to take the “if-you-can’t-beat-‘em” approach, launching a free, interactive digital dispatch system app, which went live on Monday.

“I’ve had a long time to research this and think about this and have decided that I can sit and worry about it, or get in the game,” Moore said. “I’m getting in the game.”

Using the Falmouth Taxi app, riders can order a cab in Falmouth, Mashpee or Bourne, or at Logan or T.F. Green airport, as well as several Boston hospitals. Falmouth Taxi will acknowledge the request, dispatch a cab, text the rider the estimated time of arrival and text again when the cab has arrived at its destination.

The app is available now for Android devices and will be available from the Apple Store in mid-June.

I know that’s a bit of a long one for The Real Cape but I suggest reading the entire thing. It represents two distinctly different attitudes in business on the Cape and Islands.

On the one hand you’ve got all the old boy network cabbies that are getting all butthurt and freaking out about big bad Uber and their newfangled interweb apps. As if Uber dropped spaceships out of the sky and started using alien technology against their rickshaw operations. It’s not fair, they have magic buttons!

Then you’ve got the owner of Falmouth Taxi, who rationally points out that Uber has been around, and succeeding, for years. So instead of waiting for this to happen he actually took a proactive approach, adopted the technology that has made Uber successful and provided a service to his customers that will keep his company competitive no matter how the marketplace changes. Novel idea huh?

This reminds me of when all the gas stations on the Cape shut down because they couldn’t make the EPA changes that they were warned about for ten years. I don’t want to hear any complaints from cab drivers, America is a free market system. You knew Uber was coming for years now, if you decided to hide your head in the sand that’s nobodies fault but your own. Maybe they should take a cue from Falmouth Taxi. Just because we are on the Cape and Islands doesn’t mean we should have to call our taxis with a couple of tin cans tied together with string. Take Danny DeVito out of the dispatch cage and send him to the Apple store for an iPhone will ya?

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