Twins Arrested in SWAT Team Bust

maida-brothers-1024Last night we heard a report of a big police operation on or near Ohio Place and Westbrook. The source said there were SWAT officers, a crime scene investigation team and more. We did not see any announcement from the Sheriff on this but we did find an arrest that fits the location.
First, the area mentioned was Ohio near Westbrook. As you can see from the map below, it’s between 441 and Lyons, just south of Yamato and just north of New England Blvd. The red line indicates the section of Ohio Place in question.
ohio-place-2
Two people commented that they figured a guy named Nick, or Nicky, would be involved. Sure enough there was an arrest of a man named Nicholas on Ohio Place, booked early this morning. One commenter referred to a twin. Sure enough, another man with the same last name, address and date of birth was booked at the same time.
Pictured at the top are the booking photos of Nicholas and Paul Maida, both 29 years old. Nick was arrested on several different charges including selling methamphetamine, a few other drug charges, possession of a weapon or ammo by a convicted felon, obstructing police, destroying evidence and larceny. He is still in the jail at the moment. Paul was arrested on two counts of possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and was this afternoon without having to post a bond.
Paul has had several court cases but they were generally not serious. Nick’s problems date back in the court system as early as 1999 when he was only 14 years old, adjudicated guilty on several offenses including reckless driving and attempting to elude the police.
nick-maida-1999
He has had several other incidents in court, including a felony burglary charge in 2006 for which he was sentenced to a year in jail but may have served only a month or so.
nicholas-maida-2006
That jail time may also have covered another felony for trespassing in 2005.
Then in 2007 he was charged with robbery, armed burglary, grand theft and aggravated battery. Three of those charges were dropped and he appears to have spent several months in jail on the robbery charge.
He moved on in 2008 to another burglary and this time appears to have been sentenced to a just short of 5 years, but got well over a year of “credit time”.
maida-2008
Since that time he hasn’t had anything up until this latest incident. That is likely due to his time in prison. HE was released in August:
nicholas-maida-release
We do notice that many of the charges in the past and present were drug offenses. The drug war has been a colossal failure and we suspect that our prohibitionist policies contributed to Mr. Maida’s propensity to commit other crimes. We also wonder whether our state prison system did anything meaningful to rehabilitate him, treat any mental illness, or prepare him for life after release. Whatever was done apparently didn’t help much, as he committed these new offenses only a few months after his release.