Seven men face between 40 years to life behind bars for allegedly dealing drugs near a Bushwick elementary school and at a local public housing complex, federal prosecutors said on June 27.
Six Bushwick men and one man from New Jersey distributed prohibited drugs in three different instances in and around Bushwick Houses at Flushing Avenue and close to nearby Public School 257, according to John Marzulli, a spokesman for the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Drug pushers destroy young lives in the community and fuel Kings County’s lethal opioid epidemic, according to Richard Donoghue, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
“We are working tirelessly with our partners to hold accountable the criminals who contribute to the opioid epidemic and to ensure that the residents of our communities are free from the plague of drug trafficking,”
The defendants are part of three separate indictments.
One of the Bushwick men allegedly sold heroin within 1,000 feet of the Cook Street school in August of last year, prosecutors said.
Four other suspects from the northern Brooklyn nabe dealt heroin, fentanyl, and crack in and around Bushwick Houses between July 2018–June 2019 and one of them had more than a kilogram of heroin on him, the feds allege.
One more Bushwick man and his New Jersey partner dealt more than 28 grams of crack at the housing complex bounded by Humboldt Street and Bushwick Avenue between November 2018 and June 2019, according to the authorities.
If convicted, the defendants face maximum sentences ranging from 40 years to life in prison, according to law enforcement sources.
The federal office’s Organized Crime and Gangs Section is handling the government’s case.
Spokesman Marzulli told this paper that the indictments don’t allege that any of the men are members of a gang or part of organized crime, but declined to clarify why that section of the federal prosecution office is pursuing the cases.
