An NYPD officer was arrested Monday for playing a "key role" in a multinational drug trafficking ring that brought hundreds of kilos of cocaine to Brooklyn by way of Mexico and the Dominican Republic, according to federal prosecutors.
Amaury Abreau, a nine-year veteran of the force, was indicted along with four co-conspirators in Brooklyn federal court on Monday. Prosecutors said that the 34-year-old cop used his NYPD privileges to help drug couriers funnel cocaine through JFK Airport, the Red Hook Port, and other locations — and in one case even helped distribute the drug on Brooklyn streets.
While working at the 113th precinct in Queens, Abreau allegedly ran warrant checks for members of the trafficking ring and tipped them off to certain NYPD protocols. For the last two years, he allegedly spoke to leaders of the operation on an "almost daily" basis, according to phone records obtained through the investigation.
“Today I’m going to find out the thing I couldn’t yesterday because there were too many people at the office," he allegedly wrote to one of the leader's of the drug trafficking organization.
Prosecutors say he followed up with a message assuring a member of the drug ring that they would be "fine, because here in New York you don’t see information from another state when we run a license from another state."
Authorities also said the drug ring benefitted from the help of a corrupt Customs and Border Patrol officer who worked at JFK and helped escort the couriers through customs and baggage claim. The CBP agent is not named in the indictments.
Julio Bautista, Cesar Diaz-Bautista, Gustavo Valerio, and Junior Ortez are also defendants in the federal drug trafficking case. They are expected to be arraigned on Monday afternoon.
An NYPD spokesperson confirmed that Abreau was suspended from the department without pay.
“There is no place for corruption in the NYPD and it will always be prosecuted fully,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a statement.
