Heroin, crack arrests in busy plaza

By George P. Hassett

Some longtime Davis Square residents recognized the old faces, others overheard brazen talk of drugs and money. Restaurant employees complained of finding needles in their bathrooms.

As summer began, the crowd – usually about a dozen or so men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, attracted further attention: citizens and business owners complained to police that they were selling drugs in the square’s busy center plaza, Statue Park.

“Clearly, there have been issues,” said Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz. “These folks are out of jail and they’re doing what they know how to do,” said Alderman-at-Large Jack Connolly, who works across the street from the park.

Last month, police made three drug arrests in the square, seizing heroin and crack cocaine. In each case, their investigations started in Statue Park.

If drug dealers usually try to avoid attention, this group courted it: sitting in rows across from Tedeschi’s convenience store, they regularly passed entire days in the busiest spot in the square.

“We had never seen that many people spending five, six, seven, eight hours in Statue Park all day,” Connolly said. People were complaining of overhearing drug deals as they crossed the brick plaza. “It was obvious to most of the people who are in the square everyday what was going on.”

In response, Somerville Police drug unit investigators launched an investigation into drug activity in an area associated more with Tufts University and young professionals than street level heroin and crack dealing.

On July 28, detectives busted Liban Ali, 18, of Cambridge, and Edward Conley, 43, of Woburn, after they allegedly followed the pair from Statue Park and witnessed a brief drug deal. Detectives allegedly found two bags of crack cocaine in Conley’s front pocket and a bag of cocaine on Ali.

A Malden woman bit a drug investigator’s finger and tried to swallow the evidence on July 20 after police allegedly learned that she would walk down Meacham Road and sell heroin. Angela Pisani, 38, was charged with assault and battery on a police officer and conspiracy to violate a drug law. She spit up one bag of heroin during the confrontation inside the Holland Street side of the Davis Square train station, police said.

On June 16, Detective James Hyde allegedly overheard an unidentified man tell David Goggin, “I would like to try a sample.” Investigators watched Goggin, 44, of Somerville, make a hand to hand exchange at a parking lot on Winter Street and found bags of heroin and assorted pills after they searched him, police said.