Reducing Springfield's crime rate has been on Dom Sarno's mind a lot these days; it's the cornerstone issue of his campaign to unseat Mayor Charlie Ryan this fall.
Last week, it became personal for Sarno. Late one evening, while waiting to pick up her son outside a Boston Road restaurant, his mother-in-law was carjacked. A man pulled her from her car, threatened to kill her, and then drove off, Sarno says. "Crime hits home," he told a reporter a couple of days after the incident.
Sarno argues that the key to reviving Springfield's flagging prospects is public safety. If people feel safe, he believes, the city will be able to retain businesses and residents and inspire new families and companies to move in. He's already called for the hiring of 40 new cops, paid for with a portion of the $22 million the city's Finance Control Board intends to borrow from the state for economic development.
Sarno's latest anti-crime effort would allow certain criminals to be banned from certain parts of the city. Based on an ordinance in Santa Cruz, Calif., his proposal would allow law enforcement officials to issue stay-away orders to keep specific individuals from designated neighborhoods. While the Santa Cruz law has mainly been applied in the downtown area, Sarno envisions a local version applied anywhere it's needed in the city, whether downtown or in troubled areas like Old Hill or Hollywood. It would apply, he said, to repeat violent offenders: "gang-bangers," drug dealers, people convicted of gun violations.
"We have to be more aggressive. There are undesirable elements on the street," Sarno said. "They're terrorizing our neighborhoods and business district areas."
Holly Richardson thinks a lot about crime, too. She's a veteran activist who works with Arise for Social Justice and Out Now, a gay youth organization; she's also been active in the years-long campaign to stop the construction of a new women's jail in Chicopee.
"I understand people's concerns in the neighborhoods," Richardson said last week. "Of course people don't want dangerous levels [of crime] outside their homes." But, she added, as the "war on drugs" has proven, creating more laws to put more restrictions on more people has failed to make our streets safer; it's just led to more people being labeled criminals.
To get to the root of the "crime problem," Richardson believes, the conversation needs to go a lot deeper. Who gets arrested, and why? What happens to society when entire communities—people of color, poor people—become the main focus of law enforcement efforts? Are there better ways of treating problems like drug addiction than locking people up people? What happens when people find their criminal pasts forever get in the way of a productive future? And how many of these problems could be dealt with by investing in troubled neighborhoods, rather than by shuffling people in and out of the (multi-billion dollar) prison industry?
Sarno's proposal, Richardson says, "feels pretty dangerous to me." She wonders how the term "violent offender" would be defined and specifically worries about Sarno's repeated use of the term "gang-bangers," which she hears as code for young men of color.
Richardson is not the only one concerned about the proposal; the ACLU has already voiced concerns that stay-away orders violate civil liberties. The District Attorney and city Law Department have questioned whether such a law could stand legally.
Sarno says he's not looking to target any group. "These are people who put themselves in that situation: the criminals," he said. "Law-abiding citizens seem to think that criminals have more rights than they do." If the proposal won't work as a city ordinance, he added, he'd like to see it handled through the courts and the DA's office, perhaps with stay-away orders added to parole conditions.
Meanwhile, Richardson urges people to consider the "violence" that really hurts the city. When a homeless person is found dead on the street, she said, "that's violent to me."
And what about the one-time "public servants"— Frankie Keough, Gerry Phillips, the Asselin family—convicted of crimes committed while they were employed to help the city's poorest and most vulnerable populations? "When these guys are released, will they be banned from downtown?" Richardson asked. "Because what they've done is violent to me." "
—mturner@valleyadvocate.com
