Results tagged “drugbust”

A drug bust in Springfeild Gardens led cops to a homemade zoo inside a home housing three geckos, two marmosets, three tarantulas, a monitor lizard, a snake, a baby caiman and two iguanas. Animal control was called in to bring in the illegal animals along with seven adult pitbulls, a bulldog and a puppy pitbull with cropped ears. An 84-year-old man who lives nearby said, "This is a nice block. Sometimes things like this happen, but I'm not leaving." [via NYDN]

The two young women who were busted for scoring cocaine at Chelsea nightclubs and accused of reselling it throughout their FIT dorms look like they might have run into some good fortune due to some admitted sloppiness by the DA's office. Mickenzie Dippenworth and Christine Scafa turned down plea bargains of six months in jail for last November's coke bust. The Post reveals that investigators have admitted that they are missing $200 in "buy" money, transcripts of the contents of more than 15 text messages between the two women and the undercover cops who nailed them, and expense reports detailing how much buy money the undercovers put in their pockets. The pair have said that the cocaine sale was just the natural next step when meeting two undercover cops at the hotspot Home who claimed to be ultimate fighters and bragged about their penis sizes. The trial is set to begin this week.

A 49-year-old handyman who was up from Pennsylvania visiting his sick mother in Clinton Hill was shot last night by an undercover cop in a separate drug bust that went awry. Shem Walker had just finished cooking his family dinner when he told them that was going out to buy cigarettes in the Brooklyn neighborhood around 8 p.m.

Build-a-Bear has made a name for itself over the last decade by letting passers-by take a bird's eye view of the their bears getting stuffed inside workshops around the country. But yesterday police caught up with a group of criminals in The Bronx who have been filling up the teddy bears with bags of heroin over the last year right under their unsuspecting neighbors' noses.

Drug Enforcement Agency agents arrested two bounty hunters in Washington Heights last night, charging them with possession of over 6 pounds of cocaine (street value: $300,000). NY1 reports that the two suspects, Chris Morel and Rensy Adrover, were arrested after being spotted as they put on "ballistics vests and police tactical gear. Investigators say they also had a stun gun, a dagger, bullet proof vests and handcuffs." DEA Officer Wilbert Plummer surmised, "I think they were using it as a cover. This way it would be a little more safe for them to travel through the city with drugs in the car. They didn't have it in a trap or compartment. They had it out actually inside a bag in plain view. [If stopped by cops] They could be en route to somewhere and law enforcement would just believe they were other law enforcement agents driving off somewhere." Morel and Adrover work for a bail enforcement firm in the Bronx; they will be arraigned on drug possession charges, which could bring up to 24 years in prison.

The locally-grown produce movement has apparently reared its head into the marijuana trade. The DEA has broken up five hydroponic set-ups around town in the last couple of months, an equal number to those recorded for the previous fiscal year in its entirety. The five raids in total have netted 830 pounds of pot, worth $4.15 million on the street. Four of the five setups were uncovered throughout The Bronx last week, but no arrests were made. The fifth raid was the Queens basement belonging to a city firefighter who was growing over 100 plants under high-intensity discharge lights. The Post says that "with the nation's fiscal health in the tank, homegrown marijuana operations have soared by 60 percent." The paper adds that growing pot hydroponically leads to such strong weed that its value ends up being anywhere from three to ten times the amount that Mexican imported grass goes for.

The undercover cops who set up the bust of two FIT students for selling them cocaine apparently knew the quickest way to the young women's hearts—they complimented their cleavage. That was one of several details offered by accused dealers Mickenzie Dippenworth and Christine Scafa in their defense that the sting was set up by a month-long seduction by the undercover officers "Chris" and "Jack" (they all met at a Chelsea club). The women also say that the cops bragged about being Ultimate Fighters and boasted of their penis size. On the night of the actual bust, the Post reports Dippenworth's lawyer's claim that: "at 1:30 a.m., one of the undercovers 'initiated a request for cocaine.' When Dippenworth gave him the little left of her stash, the undercover 'literally pushed $100 to the defendant and insisted that she take the money.'" The two young women are due back in court in a little under a month for the charges of selling a total of 11 grams of cocaine for $1,280.

The TGI Friday's in the Financial District known for its uppers as much as its poppers has been reopened with an entire new staff after last week's drug bust. The Times checks in with the eatery where a bar maid tells them everyone was fired after the place was shut down following two men being arrested for openly selling pot and coke at the bar. One woman dining on mozzarella sticks was surprised to hear of the news and said, "He was selling it right here at the bar? Dag. I didn’t know it was that kind of place.” Friday's parent company, Riese Restaurants received a $50,000 fine for the bust where staff was accused of knowing about the dealings, an accusation the Times says is supported by the cramped quarters of the location. One patron at the bar seemed to think the incident gave the chain some character, telling the paper, “If some guy’s selling drugs at a bar—I don’t know, it doesn’t bother me. It’s actually kind of cool.”

Cops raided a TGI Friday's in the financial district on the day of its namesake and shut it down after discovering that the family eatery was striped with cocaine. Apparently the business plan at this franchise location included looking the other way as dealers at the bar lured in high rollers from nearby Wall Street institutions. The Post says that the bankers and traders would "spend their nights getting high after the market spent the day going low."

As two young women were led out of FIT student housing in handcuffs last night after getting busted for running a coke ring, the only emotions revealed from their faces came from having a case of the giggles. When they spotted reporters out front of their West 31st Street dorms following the arrests of the two as well as their supplier on multiple counts of cocaine possession and sale, 22-year-old Christine Scafa laughed and said, "Oh my God, are you guys serious? We're not Plaxico Burress!" This triggered her 21-year-old partner in crime Mickenzie Dippenworth to zing back, "Well, I'm a Plaxico Burress fan." Like her fallen idol, Dippenworth was no stranger to the city club scene, where she originally sold cocaine to an undercover cop at nearby hotspot Home. That led to a series of undercover purchases as police gathered evidence of the two dealing to a number of fellow FIT students. The Post says that both were from "very good backgrounds:" Scafa ran in this year's NYC Marathon and Dippenworth was once a girl scout. UPDATE: FIT's president sent an email to the school community: "this situation appears to be an isolated incident and involves no others on campus."

WNBC reports that the NYPD shut down a drug operation in a Brooklyn meat market--Sikorski Meat Market on Manhattan Avenue. The police had caught the drug dealers on wiretaps referring to "hot kielbasa," and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly explained, "the ‘kielbasa’ was really cocaine, and thanks to outstanding police work it’s no longer available at the meat market." More details: Livery cabs were used for delivering the shipments and "Polish and Dominican crews teamed up to run the ring" (hello, melting pot!).

A tractor trailer stopped in the Bronx turned out to be carrying $16 million in cocaine. Apparently $16 million in cocaine is equal to 400 pounds, as that's how much the authorities confiscated.

A man died while trying to flee the dozens of federal agents who raided a heroin mill in a Castle Hill apartment. The man jumped from a 9th floor balcony to a 6th floor balcony, but "slammed his head against a sixth-floor railing." Two other women who tried to make the same jump were hospitalized.

Robert Chambers, the infamous Preppy Killer who was busted last fall for dealing drugs to undercover cops, is going to use a "psychiatric 'poly-substance abuse' defense." His lawyer Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg told a judge, "He did not act knowingly" because he was so influenced by drugs.