Source: Anadolu / Getty
Grocery prices are high, gas prices are high, and now the block about to go dry as the NYPD just pulled off the biggest drug bust in more than 10 years.
According to Gothamist, authorities in New York City seized 580 pounds of cocaine this past Wednesday (Aug. 26) from a self-storage facility in Long Island City, making it the largest coke bust the city has seen in more than a decade. With drug dealers and drug users no doubt punching air upon hearing the news, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch was more than proud of her team’s operation and at a news conference on Friday (Aug. 28) asked the public to just “Think about the scale of what was intercepted here,” as more than 266 kilo’s were confiscated by police.
The Gothamist reports:
The cocaine has an estimated street value of $10 million and would have likely been cut with fentanyl before reaching city buyers, prosecutors said. Cocaine now factors into more than half of all overdose deaths in New York City, they said.
“It is often mixed with other dangerous substances such as fentanyl,” Lisa Tompkins, chief assistant district attorney at New York’s Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, said at the news conference.
Prosecutors charged Nelson Salcedo, 35, of Englewood, New Jersey, with first- and third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. He pleaded not guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday evening. He is being held at Rikers Island on $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond.
Salcedo for his part pleaded not guilty to the charges he was slapped with even though Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch says Salcedo was seen unloading numerous boxes of the cocaine himself. Something his lawyer very much questions.
“Salcedo was gainfully employed as an elevator mechanic and the issue will be if he had knowledge of what was in those boxes,” Brackley said.
Aside from Salcedo, authorities also booked two other individuals though their names are being withheld for the time being.
Unfortunately for Salcedo, the NYPD and DEA had been monitoring his moves for weeks witnessing him unload boxes of drugs to another person at the north end of Central Park on Wednesday nights. After arresting Salcedo and confiscating the cocaine, authorities say they discovered that the purity of the coke indicated it was uncut and would’ve been “stretched three or four times before reaching buyers.”
Salcedo had that forreal forreal plug, b (allegedly).
