BY LUIS PEREZ. STAFF WRITER
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
A massive cooperative of more than 200 violent crack and heroin dealers in Brooklyn’s Red Hook Houses that reaped $12 million a year has been shut down after an 18-month sting, officials said yesterday.
Dubbed “Operation Off The Hook,” the investigation unveiled a collaboration of 19 separate drug gangs that each took over a portion of the housing project’s 33 buildings, police said. The dealers lived in and around the project and openly sold drugs there at all hours of the day and night, officials said.
“Their motto was ‘No beef, no police,’” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at a news conference yesterday.
But the drug activity, which included eight drug-related shootings and two fatal stabbings last year, also drew the ire of residents, who made 163 complaints to police over the past two years, Kelly said.
Police arrested 153 suspected dealers, and are looking for 52 other suspected dealers, Kelly said. Police also confiscated 11 guns and other weapons, a half-pound of cocaine and $30,000 cash.
Kelly said that some in the housing project may have been wrongfully detained during last week’s sweeps, but he defended the operation, saying that the number of erroneous arrests was minimal and was outweighed by the community’s complaints.
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said his office expects more than 100 convictions. Indictments are expected to be handed down next week.
The project is among several wide-ranging crackdowns on narcotics operations in city public housing projects in recent years. Not far from the Red Hook Houses, police also infiltrated a drug gang in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Houses several years ago.
“The initiative in the housing projects will continue,” said Hynes, “until residents in housing developments feel secure and are secure in their homes across the county.”
Newsday Photo / Viorel Florescu - Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said drug activity prompted neighbors to make 163 complaints to police in the past two years.
May 11, 2006