June 28, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 26
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Cops crack 93rd St drug den
The Brooklyn Paper
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del.icio.usPolice nabbed five suspected drug dealers who turned a peaceful Bay Ridge street into a block of fear and intimidation over the past three years.
Cops busted what they say are two neighboring drug houses on 93rd Street, between Third and Fourth avenues, charging Joseph Terrone, 54, Michael Terrone, 47, Ross Terrone, 45, and Erica Raffone, 31, with running a heroin, crack cocaine and prescription drug ring from the homes. The quartet is facing 25 years to life and is being held without bail.
Police also charged Alan Reilly, 61, with a lower drug selling offense. His bail is set at $50,000.
A sixth suspect remains on the lam.
Residents of the block say they have been terrorized by the dealers and their clientele since the summer of 2005 — and they’ve been calling on the cops to nab them since.
In 2006, an online effort to take down the dealers started on the Internet message board bayridgetalk.com, where Web-savvy Ridgites formed en masse, posting more than 1,000 responses on separate threads about the crack houses.
In October, Jason Miller, whose rear window looked into the backyard of the crack houses, called on Community Board 10 to take action.
“I have personally witnessed suspicious activity,” Miller said at the time. “Not only does this alleged activity pose a direct threat to the safety of community members, but local businesses in our area have had to tolerate acts of vandalism, panhandling and harassment from the people who frequent the location.”
In January, cops finally started investigating the alleged crack houses, but the case was complicated because almost all of the dealing took place behind closed doors.
Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes said on Wednesday that if authorities known the size of the operation — which carried out “hundreds if not thousands of transactions,” he said — they would have intervened sooner.
“It’s a matter of priority,” Hynes said. “The 68th Precinct was dealing with the complaints as they came in, but I don’t think anybody recognized that it was as expansive as it was.”
No one that is, except for the Ridgites who live nearby.
“I was seeing people who were standing out on the street, trying to get a fix in any way possible — drug dealing, begging, prostitution,” Miller said.
“It was just a bad situation.”
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
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