HOLYOKE — Standing together with some of the city’s top law enforcement officials on Wednesday, Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia said he was proud to have grown up in a community “where people can find new hope and opportunity when down and out on their luck.”
“What I won’t tolerate, however, is the amount of drug trafficking that’s going on in our community,” Garcia said.
Garcia, Police Chief David Pratt and other top officers at the Holyoke Police Department were gathered for a press conference in front of the cream-colored, brick apartment buildings at 296 and 298 Elm St. The buildings, they said, have become the focus of drug dealing and the violence and intimidation that comes with it.
City police have for years called the buildings and area a “hot spot” for drugs and gang activity. And through a partnership with Massachusetts State Police, Pratt said police intend to increase their visibility in the area.
Police and the mayor held the press conference Wednesday to address recent reports of drug trafficking and violence in the city. Those include, just this month, a handful of arrests made at the building recently on drug possession and distribution charges. Just over a year ago, a 15-year-old boy was shot dead around the corner at the intersection of Walnut and Sargeant streets.
Holyoke Police Department Capt. Matthew Moriarty said that a recent, months-long wiretap, together with help from residents and landlords, resulted in “numerous arrests” being made at the 298 Elm St. apartment building, where he said police seized weapons and drugs. Elsewhere in the city recently, vehicles were shot on Bower Street and police say there was an “exchange of gunfire” in the alley behind 136 Sargeant St.
“It’s a continuing battle, yes, to fight off these drug dealers,” Moriarty said. “We are here to help the people who are in need, but when somebody decides … they want to push this kind of poison to our residents, to engage with these residents and the children in this neighborhood, we will go to all extremes to end that.”
The message Wednesday was largely centered around the cooperation between City Hall, the Police Department, state and federal law enforcement, residents and local landlords to address drug dealing.
“We’re bringing everybody in,” Moriarty said, urging city residents to use the department’s anonymous “text-a-tip” system to give police information. That included the landlords of the building, Arthur and Carrie Naatz, who were at the event and spoke about cooperating with police to make the area safe.
Pratt and Garcia also spoke about the other “wrap-around” resources that they said are available to residents who need help.
“We have programs for the addicted, we have programs for mental health, we have programs for at-risk youth, we have programs for citizens returning to our community that may have spent some time in our correctional system,” Pratt said. “For those people that just are going to try to poison our neighborhoods and are involved in gang violence — gun violence specifically — we at the police department are going to do what we have to do to take care of those people as well through the criminal justice system.”
Speaking after the press conference, Garcia said Holyoke is a “community of compassion” and that getting people resources is the priority, whether its those struggling with addiction or people “stuck in the web” of illegal activity and wanting a way out. However, for those “spilling this poison across our streets,” he said there is no place for them in the city.
Garcia — the first-ever Hispanic mayor in a city where more than half of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino — said that during his campaign last year, he focused his door-knocking efforts in the majority Hispanic Wards 1 and 2.
“Their concerns were not fear of police and police brutality,” he said. “They were asking: ‘Where are the police?’”
Garcia said that his administration is taking steps to get absentee landlords to work with the city to address the problem, and that as somebody who was born and raised in Holyoke, he understands that it’s a complex issue that needs to be addressed from multiple angles.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.