Do Drug Rings Need Witch Doctors?

The Brooklyn DA's office busted a huge drug ring that provided a "pizza delivery service" for drugs to middle-class professionals yesterday, but the media is focusing on how the drug ring also used a witch doctor for advice and guidance. The Post describes her as a "bushy-haired, 53-year-old Santeria priestess who advised" the drug dealers "via a Yahtzee-like game of hocus-pocus: putting "magical" objects resembling shells into a special container, shaking it and then spilling the items on a table to "read" the resulting design," telling the drug dealers to make deals at certain times.

Fifteen members of the drug ring, including the priestess, were charged on 133 counts of dealing drugs (cocaine, crack, heroin, Ecstasy) to residents in Bay Ridge and Park Slope. Deana Rodriguez, head of the DA's office gang bureau, said, "She's not a very good Santeria, is she? They're all in jail!" Oh, snap, drug dealers - you got served! Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, noting the arrests of 10 of the drug ring's clients, said, "This is a message to people who think it's cute to buy drugs on the weekend and go to their summer homes to shoot up and to snort up." [Via Matte]

When Gothamist hears witch doctor, we think the Witch Doctor song from Alvin & The Chipmunks. Ooh eeh ooh ahah, ting tang wallawallabingbang...as for voodoo, it's Cole Porter's You Do Something to Me. But either way, we aren't using voodoo when working on Gothamist. Oh, no, we're using the tried-and-true method of a Magic 8 ball and Ask Gothamist.