Eagle Coach's Home a "Drug Emporium"

[mlr710]

Judge: Eagles Coach's Home a 'Drug Emporium,' Sentences Sons to Jail
Thursday, November 01, 2007

Nov. 1: Philadelphia Eagles football coach Andy Reid, center, exits a Montgomery County courtroom in Norristown, Pa.
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — A judge who sentenced Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid's sons to jail on Thursday likened the coach's home to "a drug emporium" and questioned whether his adult sons should live there, given their drug problems.

"There isn't any structure there that this court can depend upon," Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill said before sentencing Reid's son Britt to up to 23 months in jail plus probation.

"I'm saying this is a family in crisis," O'Neill said.

Earlier Thursday, O'Neill sentenced Garrett Reid, a drug addict and dealer who said he got a thrill out of selling drugs in "the 'hood," to up to 23 months in jail for smashing into another motorist's car while high on heroin.

O'Neill said that searches of the Reid family's house and vehicles found a long list of drugs, guns and ammunition.

While police found only weapons and ammunition — and not drugs — at the house, O'Neill apparently based his remarks on Britt Reid's statement that he once mistakenly grabbed a Vicodin tablet instead of health supplements out of a pill drawer at the home.

He said both boys had been overmedicated throughout much of their lives and that Britt got hooked on painkillers when he suffered a football injury in high school.

"It sounds more or less like a drug emporium there with the drugs all over the house, and you're an addict," O'Neill told Britt Reid.

Police found a shotgun and hollow-point bullets along with cocaine, marijuana and OxyContin, a painkiller, in the vehicle Britt Reid was driving during a Jan. 30 road-rage encounter, and later found a handgun at the house that they believe he had brandished at the other driver.

They found vials of heroin and steroids, more than 200 pills and a drug scale in Garrett Reid's car the same day, when he injured another motorist.

Andy Reid and his wife, Tammy, were in court but declined to comment. The judge said the parents clearly loved and supported their children and had tried many times over the years to get them help.

"Andy and Tammy are supportive of their son. That has been their position since this all began. He will not comment on it," Garrett Reid's defense attorney, Ross Weiss, said before the judge's comments.

Both Weiss and Britt Reid's attorney, William Winning, declined to comment after the hearing. Andy and Tammy Reid were quickly led through the courthouse basement, escorted by their personal bodyguard and sheriff's deputies.

Both sons lived at their parents' home in the suburb of Villanova at the time of their arrests.

Andy Reid took a five-week leave from the Eagles in the offseason to deal with his family's troubles. He has routinely declined to discuss his sons' legal troubles, but said he would not resign from the team because of them.

Eagles spokesman Derek Boyko said the team had no comment. The NFL also had no comment, according to spokesman Greg Aiello.

Britt said everything he did, he did without his parents' knowledge, but O'Neill questioned that.

Both Reids can apply for a special drug court program that would require them to report to authorities regularly, undergo rigorous drug testing and hold down jobs.

Britt Reid, 22, was sentenced to eight to 23 months in jail plus four years of probation on gun and drug charges. He can apply for the special drug program after five months.

Garrett Reid, 24, was sentenced to two to 23 months in the county prison plus one year of probation. He told O'Neill that he would apply to the drug court program.

"I am more than willing to do drug court ... if that's what it's going to take to get clean and sober," Reid said. "If you think that's what's best for me, I want to do it."

Garrett Reid, speaking in court and in a statement to a probation officer, said he made a fast descent into hard drugs and enjoyed being the rich kid who dealt drugs in poor, violent Philadelphia neighborhoods and in the tony Main Line suburbs.

"I don't want to be that kid who was the son of the head coach of the Eagles, who was spoiled and on drugs and OD'd and just faded into oblivion," Reid said in court.

His addiction persists, according to authorities, who found 89 prescription drug pills in Reid's jail cell Thursday morning. They believe he smuggled them in his rectum when he was jailed earlier this week.

"That's consistent with someone as severely drug addicted as he is," said the prosecutor, Senior Deputy Attorney General Marc Costanzo.

Reid's descent in drug use and dealing was steep, according to a probation report read in court. Reid said he didn't use drugs until he graduated from high school, then started with marijuana and alcohol at age 18. That was followed by prescription pain killers Percocet and OxyContin, and then cocaine and heroin.

By 20, he was in drug rehab.

Reid said he sold drugs to his friends and their parents in the suburbs and in a notoriously tough section of Philadelphia.

"I liked being the rich kid in that area and having my own high status life," Reid told a probation officer in a statement read by the judge. "I could go anywhere in the 'hood. They all knew who I was. I enjoyed it. I liked being a drug dealer."

He said in court Thursday that he has stopped selling drugs.

"I did get a thrill out of it," he said. "That was also part of the whole new world that opened up to me when I smoked that first joint."

The coach's two sons got into separate legal trouble on Jan. 30.

Garrett Reid tested positive for heroin and admitted having used it that day. He ran a red light in Plymouth Township and hit another car. Authorities found syringes with heroin and testosterone in his SUV.

Britt Reid pointed a handgun at another driver following a dispute the same day. He pleaded guilty to a string of charges, including carrying a firearm without a license, a felony.

[mlr710]

I'm sorry....I guess I'm just not in the sympathetic mood today...maybe its because i keep seeing these two GROWN *** MEN referred to as boys...have you ever seen Pacman Jones referred to as a boy? how about Chris Henry? Tank Johnson?

Maybe I don't have any sympathy because the head coach of an NFL team's HOME....his PRIMARY RESIDENCE...was called a drug emporium by a judge.....is Roger Goodell gonna hold him responsible for what happens in HIS HOUSE that he LIVES IN??? How the hell can they find that many weapons and that much drug paraphenalia and the owners of the home not catch charges??

Once again...Justice....and JUST US.

[Mr Gumbo]

Not only that, look at the difference in media coverage. Let's not forgot Mike Vick, although in the end we find out he was involved like we will find out the Eagles coach is involved too, but the dogs were found at a house he owned but didn't live at and they went after him so what's the difference here, it's his house. I'm also tired of them 22-24 year old men called boys like they middle school kids, that's some grown asz men.

[jacqui]

That is how they excuse the behavior by labeling the behavior as boys will be boys.
What a load of mans best friends droppings

[mlr710]

They had more drugs up in that house than a CVS and I'm supposed to believe that Reid and his wife had NO CLUE??? And its the house they live in TOO??? Yeah.....right. But like you said Mr. Gumbo....Mike Vick's name was on the deed and he gave his boys some money for their hustle and now he's going to prison....Andy Reid was flat out SUPPORTING drug dealers, but everybody wants to shed tears............whatever.

[Mr Gumbo]

And I bet that Andy Reid was responsible for some of those drugs, pain killers, etc. They full of shizt by the way they are painting him out to be. Let anybody in the NFL have something happen in a crib they own, hezll a crib they live in and watch how they would roast em. Mike Vick in the beginning they had no idea at all except for he owned the property and they were already on his case. This well be swept under the rug by next weekend.

[mlr710]

Sadly, I doubt ONE black sportswriter for ESPN or SI will even say a mumbling word about the double standard. Roger Goodell flat out TOLD Mike Vick it didn't matter, he was responsible for what happened at his property....all you heard from the lynchmob was that Vick HAD TO KNOW what was going on, no excuses....I swear.....this just some bullshyt to the highest level.