Police on drug prowl target green plates

“If there’s Vermont plates in Holyoke, they’re here buying drugs, they’re not tourists,” says Holyoke, Massachusetts Police Captain Arthur Monfette.

Police on drug prowl target green plates

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120130/NEWS01/701309965

Published January 30, 2012 in the Rutland Herald
Police on drug prowl target green plates

By BRENT CURTIS
STAFF WRITER

A high number of drug arrests involving Vermonters in one Massachusetts city has police there looking for green license plates.

Since the end of December, seven Vermonters have been arrested in Holyoke, Mass., on drug related charges, according to Holyoke District Court records and The Republican newspaper in Springfield, Mass.

The city, located less than an hour’s drive from the state’s southern border, is home to a mall that attracts many Vermonters.

But the city has also been a longtime destination for illegal drug users seeking cheaper drugs, especially heroin.

Police in Holyoke declined last week to comment on the recent drug cases or how law enforcement in that community was responding to the drug activity.

But in an interview with The Republican, Holyoke Police Capt. Arthur Monfette said, “If there’s Vermont plates in Holyoke, they’re here buying drugs, they’re not tourists.”

Reached last week, Monfette declined to comment on the cases or the perception of Vermonters who come to his community.

That a drug connection between Holyoke and Vermont exists is nothing new.

A decade ago, Rutland Detective David LaChance, a former member of the Southern Vermont Drug Task Force, says he can remember handling cases involving both drugs arriving from Holyoke and Vermonters driving to that city to purchase them.

“It used to be mostly Holyoke and Springfield,” LaChance said. “Now it’s mostly on the New York side but there’s still quite a bit of it from Holyoke.”

Most of the Vermonters arrested there recently hailed from communities along Interstate 91, including Brattleboro, Marlboro, White River Junction and Windsor. However, the two most recent arrests involved a woman from East Dover and a man from Wells.

But while drug trafficking between Vermont and Holyoke does occur, some state officials found the notion that every Vermonter visiting Holyoke was there to buy drugs a bit disturbing.

“As someone whose mother-in-law grew up near Holyoke and who often drove through that city to see her I know I would be concerned,” said Allen Gilbert, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont. “I wonder what pretext for stopping me they would have? Just having Vermont plates is not justifiable reason for a police stop.”

While police are allowed to make mass vehicle stops in certain cases — such as seat belt compliance checks — they are required to have probable cause beyond a hunch to believe that criminal activity is taking place or have evidence of some violation of motor vehicle laws to stop motorists.

As home to a children’s museum and the Volleyball Hall of Fame — the sport was invented in Holyoke in 1895 — Gilbert said he was surprised to hear police in the city making such blanket statements regarding visitors.

“I would say to any Vermonter going to Holyoke to look out because you might be stopped,” he said.

In Brattleboro, a community close to the Massachusetts border off Interstate 91, Police Chief Eugen Wrinn said his department has handled a number of cases involving drug trafficking that crosses the border and has coordinated cases with Holyoke law enforcement in the past.

Massachusetts license plates are a common sight in Brattleboro and drug related arrests involving residents of that state aren’t uncommon, he said. But he said out-of-state plates don’t make a person a suspect in his town.

“We’re one of the first three exits in Vermont off I-91 so sure there’s some drug traffic here but you don’t target Massachusetts cars,” he said.