SPRINGFIELD — Springfield City Councilors are working to resuscitate a state law that would dish out a two-year mandatory sentence to drug dealers standing within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.
Whether through an ordinance or home rule petition, members of the council’s Public Safety and Health and Human Services committees are brainstorming ways to recover this regulation during a time when overdoses continue to increase in the city.
Springfield Lt. Jamie Bruno said the 1,000-foot law for school and park zones was in effect over a decade ago until the state amended it in 2012. Now, in order to violate the law, drug activity must occur within 300 feet of a school zone and 100 feet within a playground, according to Bruno, and a threat of violence must emerge during the drug transaction.
Additionally, the commonwealth’s law states that there are no drug free zones in Massachusetts between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., according to At-Large City Councilor and Health and Human Services Committee Chair Brian Santaniello.
“It’s very challenging to use this drug free and school zone violation,” Bruno said of the current law. “There are no attachments as far as mandatory sentences or minimum mandatory and so it’s to the discretion of the court of how we’re going to impose a penalty for an arrest.”
Councilors at the Health and Human Services Committee meeting on June 25 were miffed about the fact that the current regulations seemingly invite drug dealers to the vicinity of schools and playgrounds. Ward 5 City Councilor Lavar Click-Bruce, who chairs the council’s Public Safety committee, said something needs to be done at the Springfield level.
“I’m not here to give drug dealers business hours,” Click-Bruce said. “I’m here to protect our residents in the city of Springfield, especially our young people.”
Councilors are exploring this issue in a time when non-fatal and fatal overdoses are above what they were when the city started keeping data in 2018, according to Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris.
She said fentanyl has been the “number one challenge” throughout the city and added that perpetrators are cutting the drug using a horse tranquilizer called xylazine.
“It’s not just the fentanyl, it’s what’s being used in order to enhance that high or cut that fentanyl,” Caulton-Harris said. “That is also a huge problem for the city of Springfield and probably across the commonwealth.”
The problems have been exacerbated by the fact that there is a shortage of detox beds on this side of the state, according to Caulton-Harris.
Conversations around a change in the state’s current regulations also come at a time when Parks, Buildings and Recreation Management Director Tom Ashe said there is an “alarming” amount of drug paraphernalia throughout the city’s parks.
He shared that the city could “fill a truck” with the number of syringes they find on a daily basis.
Click-Bruce, meanwhile, said one of the students he coaches at Duggan Academy found some needles walking through the neighborhood.
“It’s an alarming situation that’s going on in Springfield right now, and it’s not new,” Ashe said. “It’s sad at this point.”
Beyond those issues, the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office recently completed three major drug busts in the city, including one at Garcia Market and Angel’s Used Appliances that 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 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 cease 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.”
As the Law Department figures out what to do next with Garcia Market, councilors are tasked with finding a way to revive the pre-2012 law that issued a two-year mandatory sentence to drug dealers standing within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.
If the Public Safety and Health and Human Services committees decide on drafting a home rule petition, the petition would have to pass the full council and then get approval by the state legislature.
For councilors, anything is on the table, as long as the youth is safe. According to Ward 8 City Councilor Zaida Govan, that also means looking at the issue from not only a legal perspective, but also a social determinant one.
“People are affected by poverty racism, being unhoused … a lot of these social determinants affect the decisions that they make,” Govan said. “I’m wondering if there’s any way to address this issue in a multifaceted way.”
