STEVEN J. NIKIEL
WESTFIELD – City detectives have won another small battle in their ongoing struggle against the tide of heroin use in the city with a pair of recent arrests which will, at least temporarily, disrupt the narcotics use of a circle of users who sent an emissary over the mountain to buy their drugs.
Det. Sgt. Stephen K. Dickinson explained, in a recent interview, that the bulk of the heroin used in the city is sold in Holyoke to addicts who will buy as much of the drug as they can fund in the Paper City and bring it back home where they sell what they don’t use themselves to their circle of friends and fellow users.
Dickinson said that at the beginning of the month many addicts have cash but, since most addicts don’t have the resources to support both their habits and a vehicle, getting to the drug marts in Holyoke to spend their monthly income can be a challenge.
So, when one person can secure a ride, he said, his or her friends and acquaintances may entrust their cash to that courier to buy their heroin.
Dickinson said that the economic dynamic is no secret so, on the first of the month, officers from the Eastern Hampden County Narcotics Task Force set up surveillance on a person who they suspected might make a buying trip to Holyoke, Steven J. Nikiel, 37, of 8 Conner Avenue.
But, their efforts were in vain.
However, in a report filed in Westfield District Court, Det. Timothy Grady details how city detectives set up surveillance on Nikiel again two days later when their patience was rewarded.
Grady reports that detectives saw Nikiel walk from his home to a Franklin Street gas station where he got into a 2001 Toyota Corolla operated by Ronald Markett, 36, of 171 Elizabeth Avenue.
“I have come to know Markett through past narcotics investigation,” Grady said and reports that four officers followed the men, in three unmarked vehicles, to a Holyoke apartment complex.
After a short stop at the apartment complex, Nikiel returned and the officers followed Markett’s car back toward Westfield.
Grady reports that as the detectives followed the car they observed “movement within the vehicle consistent with that of using narcotics” and saw what appeared to be a heroin packet being thrown out a window.
Det. Brian Freeman, who said that he was in a car passing Markett’s on the turnpike when he saw Markett apparently waving at him.
“We thought they had recognized us,” he said but said that he soon realized that the heroin packet had stuck to Markett’s fingers and he was shaking it off when he appeared to be waving.
The detectives had arranged for a uniformed officer to be standing by on Southampton Road and Officer Juanita Mejias pulled Markett’s car over at the bottom of Clay Hill.
Grady reports that when the officers approached the car they saw a on the center console “a blue colored baggy and a white plastic straw that based on my training and experience I know to be a heroin packet.”
Grady reports Markett said that the contraband was his and “he had used the items while driving back when he sniffed heroin.”
Markett told Grady that he had known that Nikiel was going to buy heroin and said he had been given “two bags of heroin from Nikiel for payment of the ride to Holyoke.”
Nikiel was found to be in possession of four bundles of heroin containing 36 individual bags of heroin.
He told Grady that “the heroin is not his but for other people he knows.”
On Friday, Markett was arraigned in Westfield District Court on charges of possession of a Class A drug and conspiracy to violate drug laws and was released on his personal recognizance pending an October 29 hearing.
Nikiel was arraigned on a charge of possession of heroin with intent to distribute and was held in lieu of $500 cash bail pending a hearing on the same day.
