Great Barrington — At 9:55 a.m., on Tuesday, May 6, as reports came in about a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Marshals in the Barrington House apartment building, The Berkshire Edge contacted Police Chief Paul Storti.
When asked about the raid, Chief Storti said, “Yeah, we heard [about] the same thing.”
Chief Storti told The Berkshire Edge at the time that he did not have any additional information about the raid. “We just know we got reports that there were some people that were filming it and protesting their activity,” Chief Storti told The Berkshire Edge. “[We heard] that they were in the Taconic Lot behind the Barrington House. That’s all we really know. We got a trespassing complaint from one of the maintenance people from the Barrington House. But when we went over to manage that, it was already over. So, we don’t have any information. We’re not in the loop when they’re in town.”
At 11:09 a.m., however, right after The Berkshire Edge published its first report on the raid, WAMC Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes published that Chief Storti said “that ICE had contacted the police department about their plan to come to the town early Tuesday morning. He said that they did not disclose their plans in the community to the Great Barrington PD, and that the department had not asked.”
Berkshire Eagle reporter Heather Bellow quoted Chief Storti in her story that “the department received a phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security around 5:30 a.m. to let them know that they were in the area.”
