Police say they found about 33 pounds of cocaine and nearly 14,000 pressed fentanyl pills, as well as a significant amount of counterfeit money, in the home of a Springfield man.
“This very significant narcotics supplier to both the Knox Street and Sycamore Street gangs is a continuation of our efforts in arresting, disrupting, and dismantling these highly dangerous and lethal drug trafficking organizations, who drive fear and violence in our community,” said Hampden County DA Anthony Gulluni. “With this interception of almost 14,000 of these pills, countless overdoses were surely prevented.”
More than a dozen of the members of one of those gangs, the Knox Street Posse, had been the first bust of that county’s DA’s office’s new “S.A.F.E.” unit — the Strategic Action and Focused Enforcement Unit — Gulluni added in a statement, and that takedown led to a further “lengthy investigation” that landed police at the door of 81 Bessemer St.
That’s the home of Alonzo Williams, 51, who on Dec. 23 appeared in Springfield District Court to be formally charged with possession of a firearm without a license, trafficking in fentanyl over 200 grams, trafficking in cocaine over 200 grams, trafficking in cocaine 18-36 grams and possession to distribute a class A drug.
Williams is being held on $75,000 cash bail and is scheduled to return to court on Jan. 24.
Police had been granted a warrant to search his car and residence on Dec. 21. The next day, police pulled him over and allegedly found 136 grams, or about 0.3 pounds, of cocaine on him. They then searched his house and allegedly found 13,900 fentanyl pills, about a pound of raw fentanyl, a gun and about $190,000 in counterfeit bills.
It’d all be worth more than $2 million on the streets, according to the DA statement.
According to the CDC, the synthetic opioid fentanyl is about 50 times stronger than heroin, and, as the Herald previously reported, could kill an average-sized man with merely a dusting present in a dose of heroin or cocaine.
