CADMAN PLAZA EAST (AP) — A Brooklyn butcher shop worker called his specialty “hot kielbasa� — for snorting, not eating.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly says the kielbasa was really cocaine — not the Polish sausage sold in a popular meat market.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday, the “hot kielbasa� was kept in the basement. Twenty-six defendants were arrested as officers executed arrest warrants in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, Manhattan, and Pennsylvania. The defendants conspired to distribute large quantities of cocaine from locations in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, according to a press release from the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York.

The arrests came after a year-long investigation by the FBI-NYPD Eurasion Organized Crime Task Force.

The suspects arrested include the butcher, after an FBI informant visited the shop in response to the message: “Come to the store, I have hot kielbasa for you.�

Another suspect, Rolando Vasquez, was a licensed city limousine driver who used his limo to deliver cocaine. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission aided in this investigation.

Law enforcement officials say the ring includes John Guarnieri, a nephew of Louis Eppolito, the former NYPD detective convicted of murdering eight people on the orders of a Mafia boss.

Guarnieri is a Department of Sanitation police lieutenant. Defense attorney Ken Montgomery says he doesn’t think the suspect is “a major player.�

The defendants face a minimum of ten years each, and a maximum of life imprisonment.

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