A 26-year-old former Batavia resident who was charged with multiple crimes in Genesee County over a 10-month span will spend nearly seven years in jail.
Brett Myers Blair, who has lived in Batavia and Bergen, admitted in January to a charge of burglary, 2nd, and agreed to cooperate with law enforcement in clearing several criminal investigations.
Besides the crimes investigators suspected Blair committed, Blair also admitted to several uncharged crimes.
Judge Robert C. Noonan said Blair coming clean on his criminal activity enabled him to arrive at a plea deal that substantially reduced the charges against him but did not warrant reducing the maximum sentenced available for burglary, 2nd.
Last week, Blair was sentenced on a felony charge in Monroe County to two to four years in state prison.
Blair will serve his seven year sentence on the Genesee County charge concurrently with the Monroe County conviction.
While in prison, Blair must pay more than $3,000 to four victims.
He will also undergo treatment for substance abuse.
"I realize there have been a lot of victims and I’ve changed a lot of lives as result of my actions and I’ll never be able to take that away, including from my mom and my son," Blair told Noonan.
"I'm truly sorry for the crimes I committed," Blair added. "When I'm using drugs, I'm a totally different person from the person I normally am. I got caught up in something I couldn't get out of. Now I can just make myself better with the time that I'm given."
Within Genesee County, Blair's apparent criminal activity goes back to at least March 2009 when he was accused of possessing hydrocodone following a traffic stop.
In early October, Blair was accused of trying to steal a 50-inch plasma TV from Kmart.
When Blair reached his plea agreement in January, the Genesee County Sheriff's Office released information on five other crimes Blair was accused of committing.
Nothing good ever comes from
Nothing good ever comes from drug use. Hopefully he can do his time and make himself better as he says. I wish him luck and prayers.
I think you mean nothing good
I think you mean nothing good ever comes from drug "abuse." Drugs can be fun recreationally. Haven't you ever sat around a burn pit with a bunch a friends imbibing one of the most common drugs, alcohol? I'm pretty sure that many people have figured out that partaking a bit of green material around said burn pit can also add to the good times. There's a difference between living life and being abusive. :-)
To each his own, Doug. It
To each his own, Doug. It just scares me how easy use becomes abuse, and how truly remorseful people become for getting into trouble after becoming "hooked". How often do we hear someone say their personality was changed and they became someone they aren't because of drugs? While I have seen many whose lives and the lives of others have been destroyed due to alcohol, I think most can partake without becoming addicted. It is the other drugs of which I speak...the ones like cocaine and crack and crystal meth which can be addicting after one use. There may be some who will argue but I have read this a few times and believe it to be true. Not worth it when you think of the potential to destroy your life and the lives of your parents/children. Hard not to feel sorry for this guy and others who fall in the trap.
I'm more worried about people
I'm more worried about people becoming hooked to cigarettes, to be honest. Sure, all of the hard drugs pose problems for those who become involved with them but cigarettes destroy more lives every year than alcohol and all other drugs combined. Tobacco "is" an addiction and it's deadly. Ever watched someone go through nicotine withdrawals?
23 years ago I quit smoking cigarettes after realizing that the joke was on me. I was being fleeced by the tobacco industry at the expense of my very life. A pack of cigarettes at that time cost something like $1.10 per pack and I was smoking more than a pack per day.
I'm not trying to argue with you about how bad drugs can be for some people. They absolutely do assist in destroying lives, not only of the person abusing them but of the people that love the abuser. I think the abuse starts with a pre-existing behavioral problem, though.
I don't think there are enough options available for people who get caught up in drugs. Their only contact for help is usually with the police and the court system. Those options are rather poor because they're told to straighten out their life or go to jail. They often have no idea how to straighten out their life and often don't have the resources available to do so.
Not everyone has the skills they need to get themselves out of trouble once they've fallen into the pit. That has go to be the biggest problem with drug abuse.
Frank Zappa said it himself (even though he was a hypocrite) that the band rules were "no drugs while they were on tour or in the recording studio." He didn't like being around people while they were using drugs because it changed their personality. He said this while puffing away on his drug of choice, tobacco. Tobacco essentially killed him even though he was in denial about it. He said that tobacco was his vegetable and didn't exacerbate his prostate cancer. Talk about a classic case of denial about drug use!
I never did "get" the
I never did "get" the "genius" of Frank Zappa. Maybe you had to be tripping on acid or something to truly appreciate it, I have no clue, but some of my friends like him a lot. The only line I remember from his songs is "watch out where the Huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow," which is rather clever in its crude way. He also named his children really dumb names, like his daughter "Moon Unit."