NEW YORK—Community complaints about drug dealing around Fiorentino Plaza in Brooklyn, prompted a nine-month long police investigation that came to a close on Aug. 23, resulting in 15 arrests.
Undercover detectives had more than 90 transactions with suspects near Fiorentino Plaza, a NYCHA housing development, which is also close to three public schools: P.S. 158, I.S. 292, and the United Foundation charter school. Other purchases were also made at the C train subway station on the corner of Pitkin and Van Sicklen avenues.
Search warrants carried out in defendants’ apartments and motor vehicles, resulted in seizures of large amounts of crack cocaine, packaged for sale; heroin; marijuana; and a shotgun, the Kings District Attorney’s office said in a press release.
“When community members reached out to us five years ago for assistance with narcotics activity in Fiorentino Plaza, we took immediate and decisive action, and when they asked for help again at the end of last year, we once again got right to work,” Kings District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a press release.
“There will be zero tolerance for drug dealers who elect to set up shop in close proximity to our children’s schools. The same holds true for those who seek to avoid police surveillance cameras by plying their trade in the subway system, where the members of our community are simply trying to travel safely to work and home again,” he said.
Timothy Breaker, David Boyd, Joseph Cruz, Leonardo Edwards, Maria Figueroa, Gary Floyd, Armel Goffe, Iesha Hightower, Harvey McClurin, Gwendolyn Morgan, Michael Smith, Calvin Totten, and Cory Vann have been charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance in or near school grounds, a class B felony, and related drug offenses. During a search warrant, defendants Malcolm Bell and Tiffany Harper were also arrested on possession charges.
“The residents of Fiorentino Plaza and the surrounding area deserve to live without illicit narcotics and the inevitable violence that their traffickers impose on neighborhoods. I commend the detectives in the Brooklyn North Narcotics bureau and their partners in District Attorney Hynes’ office for arresting these drug dealers,” said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in a release.
The long-term investigation was carried out by the NYPD’s Brooklyn North Narcotics Major Case Unit and the Kings County District Attorney’s Major Narcotics Investigations Bureau.
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