Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni addresses the media at a May 27 press conference in his office, sharing details of three major operations that disrupted dangerous supply lines of drugs in our region. One of those drug busts occurred at Garcia Market and Angel’s Used Appliances, which led to 19 arrests as well as the seizure of thousands of grams of drugs. The city is working on further legal action against the market and other businesses that pursue illegal drug trafficking activity.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
SPRINGFIELD — Following a two-year operation that put an end to illicit drug trafficking at the Garcia Market on 344 Orange St., the city is looking for ways to prevent the illegal activity from happening again.
At a May 27 press conference, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni announced that a wire investigation spearheaded by thev Hampden County Narcotics Task Force and Strategic Action and Focused Enforcement Task Force outside of the market and the adjacent store, Angel’s Used Appliances, yielded 12,000 grams of cocaine and 530 grams of fentanyl.
The investigation — which occurred between October 2022 and October 2024 — led to the arrest of 19 individuals who face a range of charges including drug trafficking, firearm possession, child endangerment and stolen property offenses.
According to police, the owners were not arrested following the operation.
Since the drug bust, Mayor Domenic Sarno and a few city councilors have lambasted the market for allowing the drug trafficking operation to happen, especially in a neighborhood where many of children reside.
In a statement, Sarno said the business now needs to close.
“I have no patience nor tolerance with these poison dealing, gun-toting violent offenders and their business fronts are not welcomed here in Springfield,” Sarno said. “In turn, I have requested City Solicitor Stephen Buoniconti and Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris to pursue a seize and desist order to move to shut down this ‘den of iniquity’ in the name of public health and safety for the good of our neighborhood residents and businesses of the area and beyond.”
The City Council’s Public Safety subcommittee conducted a meeting on June 16 to discuss possible avenues of punishment against Garcia Market following the drug bust.
At the meeting, councilors inquired about whether the Health and Human Services Department could levy some kind of disciplinary action onto the business. Caulton-Harris responded by saying that the HHS department does not have the power to do that because the market is currently in compliance with the city’s food code.
She said HHS initially found several food code violations at the market after a May 21 inspection, but the market had addressed almost every issue by the time HHS returned for another inspection on June 9.
As of press time, the only thing the city needs to check now is if Garcia’s food management certificate is in place.
“We can’t legally pull a permit when the store is in compliance with our part of the inspection,” Caulton-Harris said. “And right now, what we have found, is that [they] have no violations in terms of their food permit.”
With HHS having little jurisdiction over the matter, the council and the city at large are looking to law enforcement for a possible plan of action that stops these types of businesses in their tracks.
Springfield Police Lt. Jaime Bruno said there is currently nothing the Springfield Police Department can do to prevent Garcia from opening its doors, but he shared that there is the possibility of working with the law department on language that would prevent illicit drug activity from happening at businesses in the future.
“Maybe it’s something that we would have to speak with the law department to try and come up with some type of language that would assist us in trying to shut down these businesses that are doing illegal practices,” Bruno said. “Certainly, the individuals that have been involved in this drug operation have been arrested at this point … and the illegal activity that we had uncovered previously has ceased.”\
Although there is currently no concrete punishment plan, Buoniconti said the law department is currently working on some course of action against the market.
“We have a plan for Garcia,” Buoniconti said. “I can’t disclose that to you yet.”
Councilors, including Victor Davila and Lavar Click-Bruce, hope a plan is in place sometime soon.
“I will be asking a legal opinion of the law department of ways in which we can either close or suspend these locations because I just don’t find it acceptable that this is happening,” said Davila, a member of the Public Safety committee.
Click-Bruce, who chairs the committee, agreed that something needs to be done and shared that the Forest Park Civic Association expressed concerns about several issues plaguing the market over the years.
“We are all in agreement that something needs to be done,” Click-Bruce said. “We can put our heads together, working with the law department, to try to come up with some solutions moving forward. So that way, if this was to occur again, we will have something in place where we can address it immediately.”
Reminder Publishing will have more on the story as it evolves.
