GREENFIELD — Amid complaints of speeding and excessive marijuana smoke downtown, the Public Safety Commission joined Mayor Ginny Desorgher and Police Chief Todd Dodge to discuss how, and to what extent, police should work to remedy the situation.
Stricter enforcement of the city’s public smoking ordinances and more signs on streets that receive a high number of speeding complaints were among the potential solutions pitched. However, although the city can legally issue citations for smoking on city-owned sidewalks and parks, Dodge said he would be hesitant to enforce these laws with tickets.
“I think there’s going to be torches and pitchforks if we tell people they can’t smoke downtown,” Dodge said. “We are relatively aggressive, I’d say, about kicking people out of the Veterans Mall for smoking, or out of Energy Park. If our officers encounter somebody smoking in public, they ask them to extinguish it.”
Cannabis enforcement
Public Safety Commission Chair David Moscaritolo brought the matter before Dodge and Desorgher, after he said two mothers approached him at the library complaining that they could not walk with their children downtown without smelling marijuana.
Dodge said that while incessant cannabis smoke is present in cities across the country, and he has also received complaints of the odor from local business owners, citations would not only be extremely unpopular, but difficult and costly to process.
“I’m not sure about citing people, but it’s like speeding tickets,” Moscaritolo said. “I want to make sure that if a young family’s downtown and they’re getting ice cream, they don’t have to sit there and eat their ice cream and have all this smoke in their face. If we can move these people along and educate them, that’s a good start.”
Desorgher noted that tobacco smoke also poses a public nuisance and contributes to cigarette butts left on the ground, explaining that she installed cigarette disposal receptacles in areas like the Veterans Mall. Dodge responded that while the receptacles might help mitigate litter, they also signal to smokers that the city is not enforcing its non-smoking areas.
The commission ultimately agreed that issuing citations for smoking marijuana would not be ideal or feasible, but a public awareness campaign asking residents not to smoke in front of children might help remedy the issue.
“Have [the Greenfield Business Association] create a program about safe streets for the kids. If you’re going to smoke, smoke away from the kids, smoke away from the mothers who are with their kids; make the business district the business district instead of the smoking district,” Public Safety Commission Vice Chair David Lanoie said. “The business association can probably do something with that in their advertising or their promotions of Greenfield businesses somehow … promoting things in a nicer way.”
Speeding complaints
Moscaritolo, noting that the Public Safety Commission, Police Department, Mayor’s Office and Department of Public Works routinely receive speeding complaints on a variety of streets in the city, asked Dodge about the system for processing them.
Addressing the commissioners, Desorgher explained that she has received complaints of speeding on High, Conway, Chapman, Crescent and Norwood streets.
“I don’t think, as a city, we have a good, uniform procedure for looking at [the complaints],” Desorgher said. “If it’s a signage problem, that’s one thing, but I would think that all of public safety would want to know where the issues are.”
Dodge, in response, explained that while, ideally, he would love to see a police officer on every corner enforcing speed limits, the department simply does not have the resources to monitor every area where speeding has been reported. Furthermore, he said many of the complaints he has received are not substantiated by data.
Recounting the story of a “chronic complainer” on Allen Street, Dodge said the department set up data collection on the street and found “virtually no” speeding there.
“The perception of what’s being seen and/or the desire of an individual might not meet what we can do,” Dodge noted. “I’d love to have a cop on every single street and slow cars down, but we just can’t do that.”
The police chief added that although the responsibility of enforcing traffic ultimately falls to the police, other city departments, as well as the state Department of Transportation (DOT), should be be involved with efforts to install speed signs and other traffic safety infrastructure.
Dodge said the police previously secured grant funding for radar speed signs and used to deploy “dummy cars,” or unoccupied police cruisers stationed on the side of the road to deter speeders. Although dummy car deployment was highly effective in the past, Dodge said the department does not have enough vehicles in its fleet to leave one out as a speeding deterrent.
Desorgher chimed in to note that, if the blinking stop signs work to slow traffic, she might consider finding funding to install more throughout the city. After the city installed a blinking sign near the intersection of Silver Street and Country Club Road last year, Moscaritolo said crashes have decreased significantly.
“We haven’t had an accident where someone has blown through Country Club Road thinking the road continues since we put the blinking stop sign up,” he noted. “I’ve noticed, when people see that blinking sign, they slow down. …It works.”