Newark drug delivery operation busted

[sjsweetheart]

Newark police today busted members of a retail cocaine-and-heroin delivery operation that serviced customers and fenced stolen merchandise in the city's Ironbound section.

In early morning raids at several houses and a bank in the East Ward, police seized more than $700,000 in cash, more than a kilo of drugs, five guns and an array of stolen goods, including GPS units, digital cameras and a laptop computer.

The alleged leader of the operation, Albert J. Castro, pulled a gun on officers as they stormed his Tichenor Street home at 5:30 a.m., police said. He pulled the trigger, but the 9 mm handgun jammed, and officers wrestled him to the floor.

Four others were arrested for talking part in the drugs and fencing operation, including Castro's 21 year old daughter, police said.

The investigation began with a tip from a person arrested by narcotics detectives in the city's 3rd Precinct. As they looked into Castro's operation, they saw how big it was and brought in the city's Central Narcotics Division, which investigates mid-level drug dealers. The Essex County Prosecutor's Office also took part in the case.

Most of the cash and drugs were found in the homes, but police also seized $250,000 from a safety deposit box kept by Castro in an Ironbound bank.

Investigators are now trying to link the seized merchandise to burglaries across North Jersey in recent years. And they're looking for more fenced goods warehoused by Castro's ring elsewhere.

[Make Newark Clean]

And now the world is weed free. Not!!

[LastCubanStanding]

And now the world is weed free. Not!!


I know, I know, the poor downtrodden drug dealers:

The alleged leader of the operation, Albert J. Castro, pulled a gun on officers as they stormed his Tichenor Street home at 5:30 a.m., police said. He pulled the trigger, but the 9 mm handgun jammed, and officers wrestled him to the floor.

[nom de plume]

And now the world is weed free. Not!!
Your show of concern is overwhelming. I saw this last night on the news and that cop is lucky to be alive. Congratulations for a job well done NPD/ERT and for the restraint you showed when faced with the possible murder of your fellow officer.

[nom de plume]

Police arrest 5 in raid on Newark drug ring
Saturday, May 03, 2008
BY JONATHAN SCHUPPE
Star-Ledger Staff
Drug dealer Albert Castro was waiting with a cocked 9-mm handgun when the heavily armed Emergency Response Team burst through the door of his Newark home just before dawn.

As the first officer came through the threshold at 5:30 a.m. yesterday, Castro jammed the gun into the cop's hip, just below his bulletproof vest, and pulled the trigger.

The weapon jammed. The Newark officer, Carlos Orbe, wrestled him down.

"I grabbed the gun, picked him up and threw him to the floor," Orbe recalled later. "And that was it."

Inside Castro's Tichenor Street home, the team found stacks of hundred-dollar bills, bags of heroin and cocaine, and thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise. More turned up at simultaneous raids at two of Castro's nearby homes.

They arrested Castro, 37, and four other people, including his 21-year-old daughter, for running a retail cocaine-and-heroin delivery operation that, in addition to servicing clients in the city's Ironbound section, fenced merchandise stolen in burglaries around Newark and North Jersey, police said.

After the raids, detectives from all four of the city's precincts were ordered to put their work on hold and begin the arduous task of sorting out the stolen goods. Using serial numbers, they will try to tie the items to reported burglaries.

Among the first items traced by detectives was a digital camera left in a car stolen in Montclair five years ago.

"When we get to the bottom of all this, we're going to reunite a lot of owners with their things," Deputy Police Chief Daniel Zieser said.

In all, police seized more than $700,000 in cash, including $250,000 from a safety deposit box kept by Castro in a PNC Bank branch on Wilson Avenue. They also took more than a kilogram of cocaine, 137 glassine bags of heroin, five guns, four cars and dozens of watches, portable GPS units and digital cameras.

Zieser predicted that the stolen property would turn out to be worth more than the cash. Investigators are still trying to trace the guns' origins.

The four-week investigation began with a drug arrest by detectives in the city's 3rd Precinct, which encompasses the East Ward, police said. The man they arrested provided information that led them to Castro, who had a record of drug arrests and served a year in state prison for dealing near a school.

They grew more suspicious after Castro's wife reported a home invasion at their house, which was outfitted with surveillance cameras. Eventually the detectives brought in the city's Central Narcotics Division, which investigates mid-level drug dealers.

Castro's delivery service operated by word of mouth, taking calls from customers and doing deals in bars and parking lots, police said. Undercover officers had little trouble earning the dealers' trust, police said. Castro's ring also bought stolen goods from thieves, who sometimes took drugs instead of cash.

The five people arrested yesterday -- Castro; his daughter, Stephanie Castro, who helped package drugs; Samuel McMillian, 18; Marcio Otsubo, 31; and Anthony Cruz, 30 -- were all charged with numerous weapons and drug offenses, police said. Castro also was charged with attempted murder of a police officer.



http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/essex/index.ssf?/base/news-4/120978936358770.xml&coll=1

[Hots in the Ironbound]

Any connection to this bust and to the shooting, death, on Ferry Street in the early hours of Saturday morning? Just curious....In as much as these Castros kept it in the family, prison should do the same for them.:cool:

[Make Newark Clean]

It's astonishing how someone took away from my comments disrespect toward the individual police officers involved in this effort. They're doing the job we charged them to do.

What would be better for Newark and its police officers would be the removal of ongoing, continuous, incessant, always-present incentives for violence in the street that illegal drug markets bring. It is time to wrest control of this scourge from street thugs, basically because unregluated, illegal markets equal gunplay. People without sufficient opportunities (no matter how much they deserve from their inability to escape personal shortcoming), are going to get into the "neighborhood business." We may wish they'd go to medical school instesad.

Now, if liquor stores sold weed, a less dangerous subtance than what they do sell, then cops could concentrate on other things like driving while intoxicated or having a lighted product on a public street, instead of a never-ending nanny battle. Maybe it's hopeless. The real stringpuller have honed our racism and disdain for each others groups that perhaps people will never unify for true reform.

And so it goes.... again, again, again.