Two Arrested In Drugs And Guns Scheme
By Christopher Flaherty
Special to The Sun – March 22, 2007
City Law Enforcement Officials arrested two men charged with running a criminal network that used drug profits to purchase and sell guns on the streets on New York.
In the scheme, three suspects, Peguy Desir, 27, Joshua Pierre, 30, and a man yet to be apprehended who is knows as “Big Man” purchased drugs in the city and sold them for large profits in the South, the officials said. They would then purchase guns in Southern states and resell them for higher prices in New York, the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert Morganthau, said at a press conference yesterday.
Some of the guns were bought at pawnshops in Virginia, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said.
Mr. Morgenthau said the suspects were arrested on Tuesday evening at 182 South St. after a sting operation conducted by a joint task force from the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the police department’s Firearm Investigation Unit.
During the investigation, which commenced in January 2006, officials confiscated 83 guns and large quantities of crack, heroin, and marijuana, Mr. Morgenthau said.
Using cell phones, the suspects would send the undercover officials digital pictures of the weapons. Many of the investigators said that it was the first time they had seen illegal gun vendors use digital photography.
“It was part of merchandising the weapons — a new high-tech phase of weapon sales,” the chief assistant district attorney for Manhattan, James Kindler, said.
The suspects sold the guns to the undercover operatives for about $840 each, the chief of the police department’s Organized Crime Control Bureau, Anthony Izzo, said. Illegal gun vendors resell out-of-state guns in the city for about two times the purchase price, Mr. Kelly said.
Elected officials in many of the Southern states find it difficult to restrict gun sales, Mr. Kelly said, because of pressure from the National Rifle Association.
It is believed that the guns confiscated by undercover officers represent only a fraction of the weapons sold by the suspects on the city’s streets, he said.
Source: The New York Sun – March 22,2007
Attorney for the defense: Matthew D. Myers