On the afternoon of Feb. 16, 1990, Sheriff Michael Ashe and armed correctional officers commandeered the Roosevelt Avenue armory to protest overcrowding at the York Street jail.
SPRINGFIELD -- Sheriff Michael J. Ashe Jr. is stepping down after 42 years on the job, and his resume is packed with numerous accomplishments and innovative programs.
And then there's the time when he and several armed correctional officers took over the National Guard Armory in Springfield to protest overcrowding at the old York Street Jail.
Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno called the takeover a brilliant move that demonstrated "intestinal fortitude." Political consultant Anthony Cignoli called one of the most daring moves by a politician he can recall.
"It was a Teddy Roosevelt move," Cignoli said.
John Larivee, president and CEO of Community Resources for Justice, a Boston organization that studies criminal justice and correctional issues, said Ashe's legacy will live on through the several vocational, educational and health care programs he introduced at the Hampden County jail over the last four decades.
But in the end, he said, Ashe is most likely to be remembered for the armory takeover.
Ashe, asked during a recent interview with The Republican for his recollections of the takeover, shrugged. Circumstances at the jail at the time simply left him with no choice, he said.
"It was a last resort," he said. "Let's keep in mind, it was the last thing in the world I was thinking."
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The facts of the tale are this:
On the afternoon of Feb. 16, 1990, Ashe and a van loaded with 17 inmates from the York Street Jail and several correctional officers armed with shotguns showed up at the National Guard Armory and commandeered the building.
The move was to protest both the dangerous overcrowding at the 102-year-old York Street Jail in Springfield, and what Ashe describes as foot-dragging by politicians in building a modern replacement.
The move not only caught armory staff off guard, the element of surprise also trickled upward to the state Department of Corrections, the governor's office and even to the Pentagon.
Ashe was threatened with arrest for criminal trespassing, but ultimately was never charged.
At the time, funding for a new jail at a site in Ludlow had been approved but the permitting and design process was unresolved. Ashe's takeover placed the project on a fast track, and a new, $73 million jail opened 18 months later.
While present-day Ashe takes an aw-shucks attitude about the takeover, it was at the time at big deal. Suddenly Ashe, his jail and the issue of overcrowding became a national news story that received ink in the New York Times and airtime on the nightly news.
In Ashe's office on Liberty Street hangs a framed copy of a Time magazine article about the takeover. The headline reads, "The Sheriff strikes back," and the article calls the takeover "an act that brought a flush of pride to beleaguered lawmen across the country."
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When Ashe recalls the armory takeover, he points out that it did not occur in a vacuum. It was part of a decades-long struggle to get someone -- anyone -- to pay attention to outdated and dangerously overcrowded conditions at the York Street Jail.
Articles in The Republican archive show that Ashe had been raising the issue of overcrowding and the need for a new jail at least as far back at 1980.
The York Street facility, constructed in the 1890s, was designed to hold 256 inmates. But by the 1980s, with the War on Drugs well underway, York Street was packed to the point where inmates were practically being shoehorned into the place.
"We probably had up to 600 or 700," he said.
At the time, the jail and the Sheriff's Department were under the oversight of the Hampden County Commission. The county commission form of governance across the state was eliminated in 1997.
Every Wednesday for several years, Ashe would attend meetings of the county commissioners and report on jail overcrowding. And at every meeting, he recalls, he received "lip service" in return.
"It was passing the buck. No one was confronting the issue that we were faced with," he said.
Ashe in 1988. That year he announced he would not accept new inmates at the York Street jail, which housed 724 at the time.Dave Roback / The Republican file
Eventually the courts got involved. Ashe was under a court order to hold the jail population at 450 inmates. The jail was still required to accept inmates sent over from the courts, however.
"For a long time, for every one inmate coming into the jail, I had to discharge somebody," he said. More and more, inmates were being released several months before completing their sentences, he said.
"On one hand we had overcrowding," he said. "On the other hand we were releasing people onto the streets who shouldn't be released."
In the months before the takeover, jail staff explored several alternatives to easing overcrowding. They looked at getting inmates transferred to other jails without much success. They considered installing large Army tents, equipped with heaters, in the fenced-in jail yard.
They even explored using surplus Navy vessels as temporary housing for inmates. They figured boats could be docked on the Connecticut River near the York Street location, staffed with correctional officers, and the inmates given bunks down below. That plan was scuttled when officials realized there was no way to get Navy boats from Long Island Sound past dams on the river.
"Finally I said, 'I've got to do something. I've got to call attention to the issue,'" he recalled. "And that's what I did."
Days before the takeover, two sheriff's deputies were held in contempt for several hours at Westfield District Court when they refused a court order to return an inmate to the jail. Judge William Conant at the time suggested the sheriff commandeer the state police training academy in Agawam or a state armory.
Little did he know that, two days later, Ashe would do exactly that.
Ashe recalled that the armory takeover sprung out of the realization that things could not continue as they were, and there were really no other viable options.
The entire plan hinged up a little-known state law that gave sheriffs the authority to do what they needed to do to restore order in times of "imminent danger of a breach of the peace." The law was passed in 1696, a full 80 years before the Declaration of Independence.
On a Friday before the long President's Day weekend, Ashe and his van full of inmates pulled up at the National Guard Armory. Ashe knocked on the door, sent the inmates inside, and then delivered to the commander this message:
"Whereas, it appears to the Sheriff of Hampden County that there is an imminent danger of a breach of the peace due to insufficient prison space in this County, and that reasonable and prudent steps must be taken in order to preserve the peace and quell such danger, and to preserve order among and between the prisoners duly remanded to the custody of the Sheriff. Now, therefore, the Sheriff of Hampden County deems it necessary that these quarters be used, temporarily, as a prison, until such time as is necessary to quell such danger, and that you provide such reasonable and necessary assistance to the Sheriff of Hampden County as he may request."
He told The Republican that the key to the whole plan was that he brought inmates with him. The 17 inmates, all low-risk, nonviolent offenders who were nearly finished with their sentences, were hand-picked for the action, he said.
"I had my team all lined up. We knew the key to taking over the armory was not just my knocking on the door, but obviously placing inmates inside the building," Ashe said.
The fallout was immediate. The armory commander, Gen. Chester Gorski of the 26th Yankee Infantry Division, called for Ashe to be arrested for trespassing. So too did Charles V. Barry, then the Massachusetts secretary of the Executive Office of Public Safety, which was in charge of all state armories.
Then-Gov. Michael Dukakis initially declined to speak publicly on the issue. But days later he responded, "We can't have a situation where every sheriff who has a problem takes over an armory. There's a better way to deal with the situation."
Ashe, years later, recalls the governor being furious. "His whole team was in an uproar," he said.
Attempts recently to contact Dukakis, now in his 80s and a professor at Northeastern University, were unsuccessful.
Accounts from the scene of the takeover described it as being tense. Armory personnel and correctional officials glared at each other from opposite ends of a hallway, and Springfield police, armory personnel and Sheriff's Department staff argued over jurisdiction of the property.
At one point, Gorski ordered a piece of heavy equipment to block the front gate to prevent Ashe from bringing in any more inmates. Goski would later compare the surprise and speed of the takeover to "a Gestapo action."
Because the action was planned on the afternoon of a three-day weekend, the earliest anyone could be able to file a complaint against Ashe in district court would be the following Tuesday. That would give Ashe three days of headlines, three days of news coverage about overcrowded conditions at the jail.
On the fourth day, letters from ordinary citizens began to appear in the Letters to the Editor column in the morning newspaper.
"Hooray for Sheriff Mike Ashe! It's about time someone had the gumption to stand up to the 'do nothing but consider it' politicians we have in office," read a letter from Martha J. Fish of Agawam. "If Sheriff Ashe ever decides to run for president, I volunteer to be one of his campaign organizers, free."
By the time the case made it to court after the long weekend, the trespassing threat disappeared. Judge George C. Keady Jr. allowed the inmates to stay at the armory until March 12. He also ordered the sheriff's department and the armory staff to cooperate with each other.
Ashe and Gov. William Weld announced in 1991 that the Holyoke Armory would be used as a temporary jail.The Republican file
The state then authorized the Sheriff's Department to use the National Guard armory in Holyoke. The gym at the York Street jail was also fitted with bunks for as many as 70 inmates.
As a practical measure, removing 17 inmates would do little to ease overcrowding at York Street. But as a symbolic gesture, Ashe admits the takeover was huge.
"I was hell bent for leather. You've got to understand that no one was listening," he said.
Sarno was working as an aide to then-Mayor Mary Hurley at the time of the takeover. He answered the phone when Ashe called to give the mayor a heads-up about it.
Twenty-six years later, Sarno can laugh easily when retelling the tale. But he recalls that at the time things were pretty tense. Sarno said when he delivered the message, Hurley's one-word response was equal parts question and exclamation: "What?!" Hurley would later speak publicly in support of the takeover.
Cignoli at the time was working as an aide for Paul Caron, the Springfield state representative whose district was the Pine Point neighborhood where the armory is located.
At 5:30 on the morning of the takeover he was awakened by Springfield state Rep. Anthony Scibelli, who called him to tip him off. His message was "Kid, you better be ready." Cignoli's instructions were to go to the Pine Point Community Center and field questions from the public about the armory being used as a jail.
But, Cignoli said, once residents understood that it was Ashe involved, they seemed more comfortable. Cignoli said he would learn this was due to Ashe's skills as a politician and a communicator. Ashe had earned a reputation as sheriff that allowed people to cut him some slack, Cignoli said.
In the days after the takeover, Ashe met several times with people who lived near the armory, and even went door-to-door to reassure people, Cignoli said.
"Every promise he made in the neighborhood, he kept -- every one," he said.
Sarno said when he looks back he still marvels at the degree of guts shown by Ashe.
"It was a brilliant strategic move," he said. "I can't say the street version but it took a lot of intestinal fortitude at the time."
Cignoli said the armory story resonates with people on this end of the state because of how Ashe spun it.
"Boston was not listening," Cignoli said. "It was a classic case of Western Massachusetts not being heard."
It could have been disastrous for Ashe, Cignoli said. He could have been arrested and prosecuted for trespassing. If he had been, he very likely would have been forced to resign or could have lost his seat in the next election. Politicians rarely take a stance that carries that degree of risk, he said.
Ashe, he said, "put it all on the line."
