The City's Drug Money

The NYPD, plus the state police and the city's narcotics prosecution office, will get some of the money from Cali drug cartel leader Joe Santacruz Londono's bank accounts. Londono had put the hit on Manuel de Dios Unanue, the NYC journalist who was investigating the Cali cartel's influence in Queens; the Cali cartel had controlled the majority of the cocaine trade in NYC and the Northeast. New York City and State's cut will be $3.3 million, which is probably a small fraction of the what drug ring infiltrations actually cost, but it's so symbolic that the checks will be presented in a ceremony. How a check-from-a-dead- druglord's-bank-account ceremony works Gothamist doesn't know, but we're certainly curious.

And speaking of cocaine - and other drugs - NY magazine has a feature on the last days of the two college students who died of drug overdoses in the Lower East Side last month. Londono's arrest was a highlight in the DEA's 1995 publication.