He thought he was a hotshot.
A brazen Canarsie man and three Brooklyn henchmen smuggled more than 100 high-powered guns into Kings County since last year, according to an indictment prosecutors handed down on Oct. 14. The suspected ringleader, who allegedly brought the out-of-state guns in through Manhattan before selling them in Canarsie, boasted to a lady friend about carrying Uzis and an assault rifle in his duffel bag through Manhattan, according to phone recordings police obtained.
“Listen, I’m walking through Manhattan, right? I’ve got two Mac 10s on me, an SK assault rifle, and four handguns and I’m walking through New York,” Michael Bassier told his girlfriend, according to police.
Prosecutors say Bassier and accomplices from Canarsie, Crown Heights, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens supplied an undercover cop with 112 guns worth more than $130,000 since September 2014. Bassier allegedly sold the guns from a pharmacy parking lot just two blocks from Canarsie High School with a man from Crown Heights acting as a lookout, officials said.
The guns came from out of state, prosecutors said.
Officials claim a Prospect Lefferts Gardens man connected Bassier with people in Georgia and Pennsylvania who bought the guns legally and handed them over to Bassier, who ran the weapons back to Brooklyn.
The county’s top prosecutor called for stricter federal gun-control in announcing the indictments.
“The problem is, we have states that seem to not care where these guns end up,” said District Attorney Ken Thompson. “So we need to wake up and deal with this or we’re going to have these press conferences with guns on the table. How many bodies are we going to have between each press conference?”
There were more than 6,800 firearm-related crimes citywide last year, according state data. Half of the city’s 283 murders last year involved a gun, and 90 percent of guns police seize here come from out of state, Thompson said.
Prosecutors are charging Bassier and his alleged accomplices with hundreds of counts of possessing and selling fire arms, court records show. The top charges carry a maximum 25-year penalty. A Canarsie man police suspect was connected is on the lam. Cops arrested four out-of-state conspirators who are all awaiting extradition, prosecutors said.
Bassier’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
