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Six people arrested in connection with a $7 million drug trafficking ring based in the Bronx were released late Tuesday without bail under the new state criminal justice reform law, officials said.
The suspects were busted Monday following a search of an apartment on Sedgwick Ave. in Kingsbridge that seized 750,000 glassine envelopes of heroin and fentanyl, then released the next day.
Under the state’s new criminal justice reform laws, nonviolent drug trafficking is not one of the offenses in which a judge can impose bail.
The Legal Aid Society, which represents one of the suspects, Livo Valdez, defended the “long-needed” reforms.
“Our client, who has no criminal record and has not been found guilty of any crime, is on supervised release, the City’s own highly successful program, which has been in effect for several years,” the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “Bail reform has already worked to free thousands of New Yorkers, many of whom could not afford to buy their freedom, from pretrial detention allowing them to go back to their families and communities. Albany was right to enact this long-needed reform.”
But Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, whose office is handling the case, said drug trafficking shouldn’t be “the kind of offense that bail reform was intended to address. The amount seized represents millions of dollars of potential lethal drugs that would have been distributed throughout our city, state and the East Coast.”
Law enforcement surveillance over several days spotted eight people in all carrying items into the apartment tied to drug trafficking. On Monday night, federal agents and police officers served a search warrant and caught the sextet in the act of packing the drugs into thousands of envelopes stamped with the brand “Fire,” according to prosecutors.
The envelopes covered two table tops and overflowed from plastic bins and cardboard boxes. The search also found a scale and grinders.
Arrested with Valdez were Jaslin Baldera, Frederick Baldera, Frandi Ledema, Diego Tejada and Pafraimy Antonio. All six, whose ages range from 21 to 25, were charged with drug possession and use of drug paraphernalia. They were arraigned Tuesday and released on their own recognizance with a date to return to court in February. Baldera is from Passaic; the others are from the Bronx.
The Drug Enforcement Administration estimated the street value of the drugs at $7 million. The drugs were destined for distribution in New York City and New England.
“The sheer volume of heroin and fentanyl packages assembled in a small apartment just off the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx is shocking. Even veteran narcotics investigators were surprised by the output of this packaging operation, which was run out of a nondescript apartment in the borough afflicted by the city’s highest rate of overdose death,” Brennan previously said.
DEA Agent-In-Charge Ray Donovan said the seizure was significant because it saved “hundreds of thousands of people from starting a cycle of opioid addiction.”
The six defendants each face at least eight years in prison.