Crown Heights

12 busted for selling crack in Crown Heights

Arrests made in Super Bowl Sex ring

January 30, 2014 By Charisma L. Miller, Esq. Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson and New York Police Commissioner William Bratton announced the arrests of 12 people who allegedly sold crack cocaine, heroin and alprazolam to undercover officers approximately 120 times, beginning in January 2013, often making deliveries near a Crown Heights middle school.

During the year-long investigation conducted by the Field Intelligence officers of NYPD’s 77th Precinct, the NYPD’s Narcotics Borough Brooklyn North and Thompson’s Major Narcotics Investigations Bureau, undercover officers made approximately 120 purchases of crack cocaine and heroin, with the vast majority of the sales taking place in the lobbies and walkways of the following residential buildings: 1470 Sterling Place, 1488 Sterling Place, 1506 Sterling Place, 1522 Sterling Place and 1492 Park Place.

“The NYPD initiated a yearlong investigation that dismantled a drug dealing network that peddled crack cocaine less than a block from a middle school and instilled fear in local residents in and around the Sterling community,” Bratton said in a released statement.

The defendants, all between the ages of 24 and 54, allegedly sold the drugs in the vicinity of Sterling Place between Utica and Rochester avenues, within a one-block radius of Middle School 394. They have been charged with varying counts of criminal possession and criminal sale of controlled substances.

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Across the river, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the arrests of 18 people involved in a sex-and-drug trafficking ring that extended to Brooklyn, Long Island, Queens and the Hudson Valley. It is alleged that the defendants sold “party packs” of cocaine and sex to high-end clients and texted their customers to advertise ahead of this week’s Super Bowl festivities in New York and New Jersey.

Schneiderman’s office said the arrests followed an 11-month investigation by the state Organized Crime Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security and the NYPD. About half of the 18 suspects had been arrested by 9 a.m. Thursday and brought to a Manhattan police precinct for processing before arraignment, a spokesman said.

Authorities said electronic and other surveillance and reviews of business records show that the ring laundered money and credit cards through clothing, wig, beauty supply and limousine businesses and targeted wealthy, out-of-town customers, especially during large events. Prostitutes would bring cocaine to clients who ordered the so-called party packs.

The ring also promoted the suspects’ business with advertisements on the Internet and public access television, and sometimes billed for cocaine as equivalent “hours” of prostitution, authorities said.

Prosecutors allege that after clients were impaired by drugs, the ring would flood the room with additional prostitutes and repeatedly charge clients’ credit cards, at times for more than $10,000 for one night. Through the front businesses, the group would also charge credit cards for legitimate goods and services that were not provided, according to investigators.


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