Police crack cocaine ring
Boston Police and Massachusetts State Police report arresting 33 people on charges they ran a drug distribution ring out of the Theater District, focusing mainly on crack cocaine:
Intelligence received indicated that many of the suspects involved in this activity Downtown originated from all parts of the city with gang affiliations and prior arrests or convictions for drug distribution or acts of violence.
Gang connections? Of course.
Because of the location, officials dubbed the four-month investigation Operation Curtain Call. Suffolk County DA Dan Conley waxed poetic in discussing the arrests:
The poet WH Auden said that all good drama has two movements – the making of a mistake and the discovery that it was a mistake. These defendants, having learned the error of their ways, are leaving this stage for good.
Click on the link above for a list of those arrested, who come from Dorchester, Roslindale, Mattapan, Chelsea, Cambridge, Framingham, Medford, Somerville and Washington, DC. A 14-year-old from West Roxbury was among those arrested - for possession of an illegal firearm and possession with intent to distribute marijuana in a school zone.
Near a school/park?
Seems like they're stretching the intent of this law here to get longer sentences. Generally these people are out there selling late at night to club goers and local addicts. The fact that it's close to a school or park (not sure which one they're talking about, really) is almost definitely incidental. Not that I'm crying for them, though....
The school zone law has little to do with schools
The school zone charge is a joke, since it is very hard *not* to be within 1,000 ft of a school/park in an urban city. The law was originally intended keep drugs away from schools. In reality, a school zone charge is used as a bargaining chip by the prosecution: the charge carries a minimum two year sentence, so defendants are heavily motivated to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for the prosecution dropping the school zone charge.
I was on the Middlesex Grand Jury several years ago. We got a lot of these charges, especially from Lowell. They were usually very straightforward and so after a long morning of listening to testimony about a rape/assault/embezzlement, we could look forward to dispatching several easy drug cases in a row in the afternoon.
For some reason the school zone violation was always charged separately from the original violation. We would only be presented with the school zone indictment if we first voted to indict on the base charge of possession w/ intent. This led to a rather comical pattern: an officer would come into the courtroom to testify about a drug deal. After about 2 minutes of testimony he would leave the room and we would indict the defendant. The ADA would come back into the room to see how we voted. If we voted to indict, the ADA would send the officer back into the room. Then the ADA would ask the officer "was the defendant within 1,000 feet of a school or park?" The officer would always say "yes," and give the name of the school/park. Sometimes it would be a former park, or an abandoned school, or something ridiculous that was technically still covered by the law. So then the ADA would present an indictment for the school zone violation. The ADA and the officer would again leave the room. Within 10 seconds we would issue the indictment for the school zone violation and call the ADA back in. Then we moved on to the next case. Often the same officer would present several cases in a row.