A police report shows Barkyoumb sold cocaine twice in his car in a parking lot in Chicopee and then arranged a sale of 55 grams of cocaine in a Springfield South End parking lot.
Paul BarkyoumbUpdates stories posted Sunday at 4:40 p.m. and Monday at 12:58 p.m.
SPRINGFIELD – When Paul C. Barkyoumb was a Holyoke narcotics officer, he wrote countless police reports to trigger the arrest of drug suspects.
Now Barkyoumb finds himself the subject of the type of report he used to write. And while he used confidential informants in his police work, a confidential informant was used in events leading to his own arrest for cocaine trafficking.
The police report shows Barkyoumb sold cocaine twice last week in his car in the parking lot of Blockbuster on Memorial Drive in Chicopee and then arranged a sale of 55 grams of cocaine in a South End parking lot in Springfield, collecting $2,400. The transactions were audiotaped, police said.
Bail was set Monday at $750,000 cash or $7.5 million surety for Barkyoumb, who was arrested Sunday in West Springfield on drug charges.
Barkyoumb, 40, dressed in jeans and a light blue shirt, denied charges of cocaine trafficking in the amount of 28 to 100 grams and violation of a drug-free school zone.
Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni and Barkyoumb’s lawyer, Jeffrey S. Weisser, agreed to the bail amount, although Weisser can argue for a reduction in the amount at a later date.
Weisser declined comment on the charges against his client.
Barkyoumb had resigned as a police officer after admitting guilt to harassing an ex-girlfriend.
Springfield District Court Judge William J. Boyle said Barkyoumb will be transported to Westfield District Court to answer a charge of violating the terms of his probation in that case.
Barkyoumb, of Holyoke, was arrested around 2:30 p.m. Sunday in West Springfield, although the alleged cocaine trafficking happened in Springfield, Mastroianni said after the arraignment.
The drug case was the result of an investigation by the Hampden County Task Force that includes local and state police.
According to a police report written by State Police Trooper Michael W. Joslyn, in July he and two
other task force members met with a confidential informant who told them Paul Barkyoumb had begun to supply him with cocaine. That informant, at the direction of officers, bought cocaine from Barkyoumb three times.
In the first two deals, July 20 and 21, the man bought cocaine from Barkyoumb in the amounts of eight grams and 11.9 grams respectively as the two sat in Barkyoumb’s car in the parking lot of Blockbuster on Memorial Drive in Chicopee, the report said.
In the third deal, also on July 21, according to Joslyn's report, the confidential informant met with Barkyoumb on Island Pond Road in Springfield and paid him $2,400 of pre-recorded police buy money for two ounces of cocaine, which Barkyoumb was to provide him shortly thereafter at a parking lot at Dale and Union Streets in the South End.
“Then, a short time later, an unidentified Dominican male, at Paul’s direction, met with the CI (confidential informant) in that parking lot on Union Street and provided him with approximately 55 grams of cocaine,” Joslyn wrote.
The lot is 776 feet from Milton Bradley Elementary School, triggering the charge of violation of a drug free school zone.
There are audio recordings of Barkyoumb’s activities that will serve as evidence, he said.
Mastroianni said instead of proceeding with charges in District Court for the Chicopee drug sales, the Chicopee offenses will be presented to a Hampden Superior Court grand jury along with the Springfield charges.
As a narcotics officer in Holyoke, Barkyoumb had worked with the Task Force in the past.
A 17-year member of the Holyoke Police Department, Barkyoumb resigned in September 2010 after admitting guilt to harassing a former girlfriend by sending text messages and through telephone calls.
One text message read “Y R U afraid? Psycho, dike (sic) . . . I will find a way to get you back.”
In addition to resigning his police position, Barkyoumb was sentenced to two years probation. He was also required to stay away from his ex-girlfriend and cannot possess firearms, a license to carry or a firearms identification card for two years.
That was not the first time Barkyoumb had been in trouble. In February 2009, a Hampden Superior Court judge refused to allow evidence in a drug case investigated by Barkyoumb, ruling that the officer had “demonstrated an unhesitating willingness to offer false testimony.”
Judge Cornelius J. Moriarty II ruled in Hampden Superior Court that police trumped up a surveillance to obtain a search warrant of a man accused of trafficking in cocaine, issuing a decision that accused a state trooper and Barkyoumb of lying that amounted to “lawlessness.”
District Attorney Mastroianni's statement on the arrest of Paul Barkyoumb