The recent announcement by United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton and Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of FBI Christopher G. Raia, that 12 members of an East Harlem-based narcotics crew had been charged in a wide ranging drugs and guns conspiracy in the Johnson Houses NYCHA projects is more than just another crime story.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, these 12 defendants allegedly utilized the Johnson Houses to facilitate their open-air drug market and generate an illicit revenue stream,\u201d said Assistant Director Raia. \u201cThis joint investigation with NYPD Manhattan North Narcotics dismantled an alleged trafficking conspiracy disrupting the safety of a public housing development with a continual revolving door of drugs and firearms\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the dozen defendants, eight have nicknames: Brian Gonzalez, a.k.a. \u201cBmakk\u201d; Brian Nin, a.k.a. \u201cBDot\u201d; Bryan Cowan, a.k.a. \u201cChapo\u201d; Jafari Hopwah, a.k.a. \u201cBaby Wuu\u201d; Ira Boyce, a.k.a. \u201cZaza\u201d; Daniel Jones, a.k.a. \u201cD Cash\u201d; Richard Farquharson, a.k.a. \u201cSmooth\u201d; and Quadir Davonish, a.k.a. \u201cSkii Dotty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those charged only by their government names include Jose Hernandez, Jahdeen Williams, Percy Carrion and Caesar Hernandez.<\/p>\n
Notably, the grand jury indictment begins with a definition and history: \u201cThe \u2018Johnson Houses\u2019\u2014a colloquial name for the James Weldon Johnson Residential Community\u2014is a public housing development under the control of the New York City Housing Authority (\u2018NYCHA\u2019). Named for a Harlem Renaissance author and civil rights activist, the Johnson Houses consist of approximately ten apartment buildings, which are home to hundreds of families in Manhattan\u2019s East Harlem neighborhood. Every day, men, women and children over throughout the Johnson using its shared spaces that include lobbies, elevators, stairways, mailboxes, courtyards with benches, and a children\u2019s playground.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Johnson Houses fills most of the blocks from East 112th to East 115th Streets and from Park Ave. to 3rd Avenue, with public schools P.S.\/M.S. 57 claiming the northwest corner.<\/p>\n
Before Johnson Houses, which opened in 1948, the area was largely residential, including brownstones and large six-story apartment buildings. Surviving buildings on the north side of East 115 Street suggest what the area was like before urban renewal. The Third Avenue El made that side of the project noisy until service ended in 1955.<\/p>\n
As for James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), he was a writer (\u201cAutobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,\u201d \u201cGod\u2019s Trombones\u201d), songwriter (including with his brother John Rosamond Johnson, of \u201cLift Ev\u2019ry Voice And Sing\u201d), diplomat (serving as U.S. consul in both Venezuela and Nicaragua) and civil rights activist, among other things.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, from at least in or about 2022 up to and including December 2025, the defendants used a building within the Johnson Houses\u2014and that building\u2019s adjoining courtyard\u2014\u201das an open drug market in which they sold a variety of controlled substances, including crack cocaine and fentanyl, to customers who streamed into the building to buy the drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recent announcement by United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton and Assistant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130,42658],"class_list":{"0":"post-89322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news","15":"tag-u-s-attorney-jay-clayton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89322","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=89322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}