A New Jersey man is in custody after police seized more than 580 pounds of cocaine outside a Queens self-storage facility Wednesday night in the NYPD’s largest narcotics seizure in at least a decade.
Nelson Salcedo, 35, with an address in Englewood, NJ, was apprehended outside a Public Storage facility at 41-02 Northern Blvd. following a months-long interstate investigation involving the NYPD, DEA, New Jersey State Police and Port Authority Police Department.
Tisch said Friday afternoon that police had seized approximately 266 kilograms of cocaine during the raid with an estimated street value of over $10 million. Salcedo has been charged with Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the first and third degrees.
Law enforcement officials lauded Wednesday’s seizure, vowing that more individuals would be apprehended and more narcotics would be seized as part of the inter-agency investigation.
“Think about the scale of what was intercepted,” Tisch said Friday. “A quarter of a metric ton of cocaine sitting in boxes and ready to move through an illegal distribution network. That is an enormous quantity of narcotics that will never be broken down, that will never be packaged, sold or distributed in our neighborhoods.”
The investigation dates back to June, when officers and agents began tracking a drug trafficking network that crossed state lines, Tisch added.
On Aug. 12, investigators conducting surveillance in Manhattan observed several individuals suspected of trafficking narcotics in Upper Manhattan and followed them to an address in Fort Lee, NJ. A subsequent investigation at the address recovered approximately $170,000 in cash, 15 kilos of cocaine and a firearm.
On the same day, officers allegedly observed Salcedo dropping off weighted cardboard boxes in the vicinity of the northern end of Central Park. Investigators allegedly observed Salcedo making a similar drop-off on Aug. 19, alleging that he again delivered multiple boxes to another individual who remains unapprehended.
Photo by Shane O’Brien.
On both occasions, Salcedo transported the boxes in a Nissan van registered to an elevator repair company. Investigators conducted surveillance on the vehicle and tracked it to the self-storage facility on Aug. 26, where they allegedly observed Salcedo making two trips inside. Each time he returned to the vehicle, he carried multiple brown cardboard boxes, Tisch said.
Officers and agents approached Salcedo and detained him, observing 12 boxes inside the vehicle and a further seven on the ground beside it. They subsequently froze the location, obtained a court-authorized search warrant and found 230 brick-shaped packages of alleged cocaine in varying sizes. Field tests conducted on the packages tested positive for cocaine. NYPD lab analyses on the recovered substances are pending.
Tisch said three people have now been apprehended in connection to the months-long investigation. A spokesperson for the NYPD did not disclose any details about the other two individuals.
Tisch also confirmed that the investigation is connected to an international cartel but did not confirm Salcedo’s role in the network.
Towanda Thorne-James, special agent in charge of the DEA New Jersey Field Division, said she was “not at liberty” to reveal further information about Salcedo as the investigation remains ongoing.
Tisch praised investigators with relevant law enforcement agencies for conducting “old-fashioned detective work” to apprehend Salcedo on Wednesday.
“It was long hours of surveillance, following suspects in vehicles, developing intelligence and staying with the case until investigators were in a position to act,” she said.
Photo by Shane O’Brien.
Bridget Brennan, the city’s special narcotics prosecutor, said the seizure represented the largest single cache of cocaine that her office has seized in over 20 years. Brennan said cocaine is often cut with fentanyl or other substances before it is sold to unwitting buyers, making it responsible for over half of all overdose deaths in the city.
“Cocaine trafficking has caused signficant damage to our city and continues to claim lives,” Brennan said in a statement.
Investigators said Friday that the seized drugs appear to be “very pure.”