High School Disruption Leads to Drug Dealing Charges

A Dorchester man was arrested and charged last week with possession of crack cocaine after choosing to yell at a Charlestown High School Student while officers stood nearby.

According to a police report, officers had gone to the school for an unrelated reason when, around 11:20 a.m., Benjamin Tate of 281 Bowdoin Street in Dorchester started yelling threats an obscenities at a female student near the school’s entrance.

Officers tried to calm Tate, asking him to lower his voice and stop yelling threats. When that failed, they ushered him outside the building, but Tate’s behavior continued as he cast racial slurs at an African-American officer.

As a result, officers arrested Tate and took him to the District 1 police station for booking.

While at the booking desk, officers found “a clear glassine bag containing several individually wrapped glassine bags with what appeared to be a white, rock-like substance” in Tate’s “right front sweat pant pocket.”

Tate told officers that the material wasn’t his, that he was holding it for someone.

Officers counted seven bags of the white substance. As a result, they charged Tate with possession of a class B substance with the intent to distribute it in a school zone.