Pubdate: Sat, 08 Feb 2014
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2014 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Tom Hays, The Associated Press

BLENDING IN: THE HEROIN MILL NEXT DOOR

NEW YORK - In a major drug bust that drew little attention just a week
before Philip Seymour Hoffman's death, authorities found a
sophisticated heroin packaging and distribution operation in an
apartment in the Bronx.

There, workers with coffee grinders, scoops and scales toiled around
the clock to break down bricks of the drug into thousands of tiny,
hit-size baggies bearing stamped brands such as "Government Shutdown"
and, in a nod to the Super Bowl, "NFL."

The seizure of $8 million worth of heroin was the result of the latest
raid on heroin mills located behind the doors of New York homes, which
authorities say are a sign of a well-oiled distribution network that
caters to more mainstream, middle- and upper-class customers such as
the Oscar-winning Hoffman.

Heroin dealers want to find customers with ready cash "who are going
to be with them until they die," said city Special Narcotics
Prosecutor Bridget Brennan. "That's the attitude."

Tests are continuing to try to pinpoint how Hoffman died, but his body
was found with a syringe in his arm and dozens of packets of heroin
nearby. Where he got his drugs remains uncertain, but the arrests of
drug suspects identified during the investigation suggest he might
have visited a lower Manhattan apartment building where a supplier
lived.

There's no evidence that the Bronx operation provided any heroin
Hoffman might have bought. But New York has long been known as the
nation's capital of smack, regularly accounting for about 20 percent
of the heroin the federal Drug Enforcement Administration seizes every
year.

Those seizures have grown by 67 percent in the state over the last
five years, a trend Brennan attributes in part to high-volume heroin
mills invisible to most New Yorkers but capable of churning out
hundreds of thousands of packets within days after a shipment arrives.

The pipeline starts in Mexico, where cartels traffic
Colombian-produced heroin by the kilogram. The wholesalers smuggle the
drugs into the United States concealed in trucks, through tunnels dug
under the Southwest border and, in one recent case, by molding and
coloring the heroin to look like coffee beans and shipping it via UPS
to a private postal box in Queens.

In the Northeast, the cartels have increasingly supplied Dominican
middlemen who rely on a business model for heroin mills that
emphasizes discipline, quality control and an absence of violence.

The retailers favor residential settings in safe neighborhoods as a
means of cover. Raids by Brennan's office and the DEA in recent years
have found them in a newly renovated apartment in midtown Manhattan
that rented for $3,800 a month and in a red-brick home in the New York
City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J.

Workers can make up to $5,000 a week. They're also given meals and
toiletries to help make it through 12-hour shifts.

The mill operators and workers go out of their way not to disturb
neighbors, who might report them to police, or to draw the attention
of other criminals who want to rob them. They leave the apartments
empty when not working and sometimes change locations long before
their leases are up as a cost of doing business, said James J. Hunt,
the acting head of the DEA's New York office.

The economics are addictive: The heroin flooding the region carries an
average wholesale price of about $60,000 per kilo. The retailers can
cut a kilo to a 50 percent purity level using powdered vitamin B or
other nontoxic substances. That provides enough drugs to fill 25,000
single-dose glassine envelopes that would be sold for $5 each to
street-level dealers, who in turn charge customers $10 to $15.

After subtracting the cost of the kilo, wages and other expenses, the
mill operator would turn a $70,000 profit per kilo.

[Photo caption]

An oven loaded with bricks of heroin was found in a Bronx apartment
during a police raid of the location. According to prosecutors it was
a sophisticated operation, where workers with coffee grinders and
scales toiled around the clock to break down bricks of heroin into
thousands of tiny, hit-sized baggies, bearing such stamped brands as
"Government Shutdown" and "NFL."

Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor
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