{"id":73945,"date":"2025-12-17T23:47:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/73945\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T23:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:47:06","slug":"fentanyl-peddling-gang-ran-open-air-drug-market-in-nyc-public-housing-complex-feds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/73945\/","title":{"rendered":"Fentanyl-peddling gang ran ‘open-air drug market’ in NYC public housing complex: feds"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dozen hooligans with lengthy rap sheets terrorized an East Harlem NYCHA complex for three years, brazenly hawking deadly drugs such as fentanyl and the even-more-powerful nitazene<\/a> in plain view, federal authorities alleged Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The feds busted the open-air drug market in the James Weldon Johnson Houses, arresting eight of the alleged pushers \u2014 part of a broader effort<\/a> by the Manhattan US Attorney\u2019s Office to target crime in city housing projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conduct of this 12-man crew created an environment of fear for many of the Johnson House residents,\u201d said Jay Clayton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a news conference hours after the busts.<\/p>\n

Feds say that the hooligans had been charged with hawking deadly drugs, including fentanyl and nitazene. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post<\/p>\n

More than a dozen individuals with lengthy rap sheets have been terrorizing the James Weldon Johnson Houses in East Harlem for over three years. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n

Clayton said the federal charges likely will keep the accused dealers off the streets longer than if the case was pursued by city and state authorities \u2013 a sly backhand at New York\u2019s criminal justice system. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf our federal charges are proven, this crew should be off the streets for a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The crew \u2014 including three suspects who remained on the loose and one already in prison \u2014 all face drug conspiracy and firearms charges in a federal indictment, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The charges followed an extensive undercover sting by the NYPD that caught roughly 45 deals of crack, fentanyl and other narcotics on video, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

The alleged dealers with street names such as \u201cSkii Dotty\u201d and \u201cBaby Wuu\u201d used the NYCHA project\u2019s lobby as their home base, but spread their deals across the complex \u2014 even into a children\u2019s playground, court papers allege.<\/p>\n

US Attorney for SDNY Jay Clayton said the crew\u2019s conduct created an environment of fear. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post<\/p>\n

The crew sold cocaine, crack, heroin and fentanyl \u2014 with hints their wares verged into increasingly dangerous drugs, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

One suspect, Caesar Hernandez, 34, twice sold drugs that turned out to be a nitazene \u2014 a group synthetic opioids up to 43 times more powerful<\/a> than fentanyl, the feds alleged.<\/p>\n

Many suspects already had long criminal records, including 19-year-old Jaffari Hopwah, who has been arrested as many years he has been alive, the documents state.<\/p>\n

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Hopwah, who is one of the suspects still in the wind, exchanged gunfire with his Jefferson Houses during two shooting that unfolded with weeks of each other in 2023, the papers allege.<\/p>\n

The gang\u2019s shady shenanigans extended into a \u201csenseless back and forth\u201d beef that involved shooting rap videos talking smack about the neighboring Thomas Jefferson Houses, the filings state.<\/p>\n

\u201cMembers of each group would then film themselves walking through (or \u2018spinning\u2019) the other\u2019s complex until they found each other and exchanged gunfire in broad daylight, in populated residential areas,\u201d the papers state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dozen hooligans with lengthy rap sheets terrorized an East Harlem NYCHA complex for three years, brazenly hawking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4709,24783,469,277,57,9,56,63,65,64,305,58],"class_list":["post-73945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-central-park","tag-drug-dealers","tag-harlem","tag-manhattan-federal-court","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nycha","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}