Mayor Sarno comments on the fatal shooting and drug activity incident on Westminster Street
Friday, July 6, 2018
Mayor Domenic J. Sarno states, “First of all, my thoughts and prayers go out to the effected families. Donte King was just arrested on stolen and loaded gun charges on July 3rd and promptly let go by our court system. Oh, I know some judges and defense attorneys will say, ‘Mr. Mayor, you don’t understand the bail system, its only supposed to be to make sure a violent repeat offender comes back to court’ – well, Mr. King did, but now it’s to do with a fatal shooting – ‘what the hell does it take to hold and keep these repeat violent offenders off our streets and out of our neighborhoods!’ Our brave and dedicated ‘men and women in blue’ work so hard with all our community partners to keep our Springfield safe and clean – this is at times demoralizing – we’re doing our job – I ask the courts to do theirs. I wonder at times, if some judges are more prone to protecting and coddling violent repeat offenders than protecting our law abiding citizens. To the state legislature – pass my bail review legislation and question judges before someone else gets killed by a violent repeat offender.”