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Crown Heights Stores Raided for Selling Weed Under the Table
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 7, 2010
Modified Apr 7, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 7, 2010
Modified Apr 7, 2010
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About a half-dozen businesses along Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights were raided by the NYPD on Tuesday, on charges that owners sold hundreds of pounds of marijuana alongside Caribbean food, incense, clothes, and CDs. The sting snagged the owners of two restaurants, a deli, a bodega, a clothing shop and a music store. "You could go in and get drugs in the food itself or go to the back of the store and pick it up or even buy it over the counter," explained NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly at a press conference in Crown Heights yesterday. "At lunch it turned into a veritable pot-luck event." Gee, one might even say these businesses will now see their profits go up in smoke.
About 170 pounds of marijuana were sold every week, for about $1,100 a pound, according to investigators. During the raid, police confiscated two pounds of marijuana and $300,000 in cash from one business. Officials tell the Times there was "no coordination or relationship among those charged with selling marijuana," it was simply "an open drug bazaar on Nostrand Avenue," in the words of Councilwoman Letitia James.
Eight people who worked at the establishments were arrested on a variety of charges, and Kelly says the businesses are now closed for good. "These places may have been able to have made it as a legitimate business. We don't know that, and we're not going to give them a chance to find out," Kelly told reporters. And with this latest Pyrrhic victory in the War on Drugs, it's unclear how anyone in Crown Heights will ever score weed again.
Tagged
bust
Crown Heights
marijuana
nostrand avenue
war on drugs
weed
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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