Two men were arrested in the Bedford Park section of The Bronx in connection with a large-scale heroin/fentanyl packaging and distribution operation, according to an announcement by City prosecutors on Thursday, Aug. 4. A stash of approximately 6 kilograms of narcotics (over 13 pounds), with a street value of at least $1.8 million, was intercepted during a short-term investigation, prosecutors said.

 

The drugs were allegedly destined for distribution throughout New York City and Massachusetts. Overdose rates in New York City have escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to the City’s health officials, and are at their highest rates ever, with fentanyl the most common drug associated with overdose deaths.

 

New York City’s special narcotics prosecutor, Bridget G. Brennan, special-agent-in-charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) New York division, Frank A. Tarentino III, and Nassau County district attorney, Anne T. Donnelly, announced the arrests, and the investigation was conducted by the DEA’s Long Island district office task force.

 

The latter consists of agents and investigators from the DEA, the Nassau County district attorney’s office, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, the Hempstead Police Department, the New York State Police, and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. The Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Investigators Unit (SNP) and the NYPD’s 46^th Precinct’s anti-crime team assisted in the investigation, according to the City officials.

 

Prosecutors said a criminal complaint, filed by the SNP, charges Diego Tejada-Rosario, 23, and Victor Camacho, 23, with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first and third degrees and criminally using drug paraphernalia in the second degree. Both men were arrested on Tuesday, Aug. 2, officials said. Tejada was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Aug. 4, and Camacho was scheduled to be arraigned that night.

 

According to the investigation, on Aug. 2, at around 12:23 p.m., agents and investigators were conducting surveillance outside an apartment at 2815 Grand Concourse in Bedford Park, which they believed was being used as a narcotics mill, when they allegedly observed Tejada exit the apartment carrying a gray backpack.

 

On leaving the building, he allegedly walked south along Grand Concourse. A few minutes later, at 12:29 p.m., investigators allegedly saw Camacho exit the same apartment carrying a multi-colored tote shopping bag. Camacho allegedly also left the building and got into a taxi.

 

Agents and officers stopped Tejada at approximately 12:40 p.m. and searched the gray backpack, allegedly recovering more than a kilogram of heroin/fentanyl, as well as empty glassine envelopes, stamps, an ink pad, a digital scale, a drug ledger and other materials commonly used in packaging narcotics.

 

At approximately 12:45 p.m., agents and investigators stopped the taxi in which Camacho was a passenger in front of 2675 Grand Concourse. The multi-colored tote bag that he had allegedly been seen carrying was found in the trunk, with boxes containing thousands of empty glassine envelopes inside.

 

Members of DEA’s Long Island district office obtained a court-authorized SNP search warrant for the apartment at 2815 Grand Concourse at approximately 3:48 p.m. Keys recovered from Tejada and Camacho allegedly opened the door of the apartment.

 

Inside, agents and investigators recovered over one kilogram of heroin/fentanyl split into four packages, tens of thousands of pre-packaged glassine envelopes containing heroin/fentanyl, more than 20,000 empty glassine envelopes that were stamped and ready for packaging, 12 digital scales, 14 coffee grinders (commonly used for mixing narcotics), 21 ink pads and four stamps, including one with the brand name “Tik Tok.”

 

The drugs and paraphernalia were packed inside three suitcases and additional bags. Agents and investigators also seized a Dominican Republic passport which included Tejada’s photo but a different name from the apartment.

 

After his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on Aug. 4, Tejada was remanded in custody. According to City officials, and as noted during the arraignment, he was previously charged by SNP on Jan. 27, 2020, on a separate case involving fentanyl. He and five other individuals had allegedly been found inside an active narcotics packaging mill in The Bronx, and more than 40,000 glassine envelopes of fentanyl with a street value of hundreds of thousands of dollars were allegedly recovered.

 

According to the prosecution, because criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first degree and other charges that Tejada faced were not bail eligible at the time, due to bail reforms that had taken effect in early 2020, Tejada was released at the time without any monetary conditions on supervised release.

 

Prosecutors said he was arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court, Part 22, on Aug. 3, 2021, on a charge stemming from that arrest. However, they said he allegedly failed to appear at the next scheduled court date, and a judge ordered his arrest on Nov. 18, 2021.

 

In the context of the case, Brennan thanked Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark, and commended SNP’s special investigations bureau and investigators unit, DEA New York division and DEA’s Long Island district office task force, including the Nassau County district attorney’s office, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, the Hempstead Police Department, the New York State Police, and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. She also thanked the NYPD’s 46^th Precinct’s anti-crime team for assisting in the investigation.

 

“Fentanyl-related deaths continue to surge across our city and nation, as tremendous amounts of the deadly drug flood our city, intended for distribution here and across the region,” said Brennan. “These arrests demonstrate the significant hurdles we face as we try to rein in the opioid crisis in the city, and some significant issues related to changes to bail laws.”

 

She added, “Our State legislators have demonstrated some willingness to refine sections of bail reform laws, including allowing bail when large amounts of deadly narcotics are recovered. However, more needs to be done to protect the safety and well-being of New Yorkers.”

 

As reported, earlier this week, on Aug. 3, Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell essentially called for a further scaling back of bail reform legislation passed in early 2019, which was already refined in April 2022. They said a further review was needed to target repeat dangerous offenders who they said were exploiting the prevailing bail system.

 

In response, The Legal Aid Society of public defenders said, “The numbers don’t lie, and last week, multiple outlets reported on data released by the NYS Office of Court Administration, showing that bail reform has had little impact on recidivism and as an overall driver of crime, despite the repeated attempts by this administration to cherry-pick a handful of cases to misguide New Yorkers and convince them that bail reform is responsible for all of society’s ills.”

 

The public defenders also insisted that Albany reject what they described as the broken record pleas from Adams and Sewell to enact a “dangerousness” provision in the bail statute, saying dangerousness was at best, guesswork, “replete with biases that have only resulted in the caging of more people of color.” They said short of a crystal ball, no judge or human being can predict future behavior.

 

The public defenders concluded, “Condemning more New Yorkers to languish at Rikers Island, a facility mired in crises perpetuated by this administration’s inability and refusal to meaningfully act, is not the answer, and we caution the public from falling prey to this endless fear mongering, devoid of facts and ungrounded in reality.”

 

Meanwhile, Tarentino, said of the latest Bedford Park drug-related arrests, “This investigation led us to a drug den responsible for preparing and branding poisonous doses of drugs for street-ready sale. This organization used numerous types of stamps to attract the younger generations like ‘Tik Tok’, ‘Capn Crunch’, and ‘PS 5’.”

 

As reported, on July 7, NYS Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) publicly identified 52 illicit cannabis stores that were sent cease and desist letters, directing them to stop all illicit cannabis sales in the State. Officials said, “These stores falsely depict their operations as legal cannabis dispensaries, but they are not licensed by New York State and are selling untested products that put public health at risk.”

 

Under the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), as reported, a proficiency test (PT) means a test that requires a laboratory to produce analytical results within acceptable limits on an analyte or group of analytes, of which the concentration and identity is unknown to the laboratory or its employees but known to a proficiency test provider.

 

“Analyte” means a contaminant, chemical and/or physical property, element, compound, organism, or group of any of the foregoing, the existence and amount of which a laboratory testing facility tests for or identifies in a sample [of cannabis]. According to Aspen Recovery Center, cannabis mixed with other depressants [like heroin] can be fatal or cause serious health complications.

 

Tarentino continued, “Every day, DEA and our law enforcement partners defeat criminal organizations by seizing their drugs before they are sold and before the users become victims. Through the diligent work by the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, Nassau County DA Office and the DEA’s Long Island District Office, these two defendants have been brought to justice.”

 

For her part, Donnelly said each bag of narcotics seized was a potential overdose prevented. “Heroin and fentanyl are equal opportunity killers that are devastating our communities,” she said. “With this seizure, we’ve removed thousands of deadly doses and saved lives. I thank our partners at the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor and the Drug Enforcement Administration for their dedication to ending the opioid epidemic.”

 

In 2019, Norwood News reported that 16 men and two women, including at least two suspects connected to Kingsbridge Heights and University Heights, were arrested in the South Bronx following a drug seizure worth $7 million on May 28 that year. They were charged with dealing heroin and enough fentanyl to “kill the population of New York.”

 

Those arrested allegedly had ties to the Sinaloa cartel, formerly headed up by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who, as reported, was found guilty on July 17, 2019, on ten federal charges, including murder conspiracies, engaging a continuing criminal enterprise and other drug-related charges.

 

Guzman appealed the decision, but earlier this year, the conviction was upheld by a U.S. appeals court that, according to the Associated Press, praised the trial judge for his handling of a case that had drawn international attention.

 

Meanwhile, as reported, Mayor Eric Adams and the City’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, announced new measures to reduce the number of overdoses in New York City on Friday, Aug. 5. They intend to reverse what they said was the staggering increase in overdose deaths since 2020 by expanding access to technology that tests pre-obtained drugs for fentanyl and other possibly lethal substances. They plan to do this at sites running syringe service programs (SSP) co-located at overdose prevention centers (OPC).

 

In June 2021, Norwood News reported how NYPD officers were able to intervene, using their training to successfully administer the drug, Narcan, to a man, preventing him from dying from an accidental overdose when they discovered him at Kingsbridge Road subway station.

 

On Aug. 8, Norwood News reported how $5 million of street-ready heroin and fentanyl was seized from a Bronx packaging mill in the Crotona section of the borough.

 

Separately, a major drug takedown also occurred in the Mt. Hope section of The Bronx in late June, which involved the seizure of around 110 kilograms of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, plus 50 pounds of a substance believed to be crystal meth, and up to 75,000 counterfeit pills believed to contain fentanyl. The drugs, which law enforcement officials said were intended for citywide distribution, carried an estimated street value of approximately $24 million.

 

A person arrested and charged with a crime is deemed innocent unless and until convicted in a court of law.