STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A TBTA police officer and his wife have been arrested in a 19-suspect drug dealing sweep, accused of selling pills and illegal drugs out of their Tottenville home, while their children were present.
The court has unsealed indictments against 19 Staten Island suspects, including Thomas Bianco, a police officer with the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and his wife, Jennifer.
The suspects indicted aren’t part of an over-reaching, organized drug ring, according to prosecutors — rather, they’re loosely linked, operating in the same general area around Tottenville, near Main Street.
Prosecutors and police called the sweep “Operation Pill Crusher.”
Yesterday, police arrested Thomas Bianco while he was in uniform, on the job attending a training session in Long Island City.
Bianco and his wife sold thousands of dollars in oxycodone to undercover investigators, and in one case he even made a drug deal at one of his son’s football games, a law enforcement source said.
District Attorney Daniel Donovan’s office is looking to seize the Biancos’ house at 187 Lee Ave., alleging they dealt the prescription painkiller, as well as cocaine and marijuana, in front of their three young children.
At one point last year, police responded to a home invasion robbery at the house — Mrs. Bianco told investigators that an armed suspect came calling while her husband wasn’t home, looking for cash and drugs, law enforcement sources said. She would later tell investigators that she owed her drug suppliers thousands of dollars because they were stolen, according to sources.
“These criminals were trying to turn the South Shore into their own illicit ‘Drug Supermarket,’” Donovan said in a prepared statement today. “But because some brave members of the community came forward and said ‘Enough!,’ we were able to remove these poison peddlers from our streets.”
The suspects sold drugs on the street, inside cars, and out of homes, prosecutors allege, peddling everything from oxycodone and Xanax to cocaine and crystal methamphetamine. One suspect sold the hallucinogen LSD, prosecutors allege.
A series of search warrant raids on the suspects’ homes over the past two days have turned up tens of thousands of dollars in “drugs, cash and assets,” according to prosecutors, as well as several guns, and in the case of the Biancos, a defaced shotgun.
One suspect, Richard Ferranti, had two loaded guns and three pounds of pot, authorities allege.
Donovan said investigators will probe where the suspects got their prescription pills — “We do a whole history now of the source of these pills,” Donovan said. “The investigation doesn’t end with the arrests today. Some of it just begins now.”
The drug sweep was nearly a year in the making, starting last March — undercover detectives with the NYPD’s Staten Island Narcotics Bureau bought tens of thousands of dollars in drugs from the suspects, police and prosecutors said.
They were working off tips from concerned neighbors, who reached out to both police and Councilman Vincent Ignizio’s office, authorities said.
Ignizio praised the police and Donovan’s office today, saying the bust shows that neighborhood tips can make a dent in the prescription drug trade here.
“The pressure’s on and the message is clear,” Ignizio said. “Don’t sell the stuff here.”
Bianco had worked for TBTA since 2002, according to MTA spokeswoman Judie Glave, and was assigned to the Special Operations Division, which does roving patrols on all the authority’s bridges and tunnels.
Public payroll records show Bianco had a salary of $58,444 in 2009, and took home $68,070 that year. He’ll be suspended without pay pending the outcome of the investigation, Ms. Glave said.
Yesterday’s arrest marks the second major police raid on the Biancos’ block over the past three months — on Nov. 16, police raided the 183 Lee Ave. home of city Sanitation worker Anthony Castelle, next door to the Biancos’ home. Castelle is the brother of reputed Lucchese capo Eugene (Boopsie) Castelle, and police were looking for evidence of tax and workers’ compensation fraud in connection with his private carting firm. They found a stash of weapons instead, police allege.
“Operation Pill Crusher” is the latest in a string of multi-suspect pill busts centered around the Island’s South Shore.
Last August, police arrested 25 loosely-connected suspects in a bust that uncovered an alleged prescription drug-dealing operation run out of Nel-Boy Bagels on Amboy Road in Great Kills. A few months before that, in March, authorities took down an alleged 31-person conspiracy prosecutors say sold painkillers out of an ice cream truck on the South Shore.
Said NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly: “Oxycodone addicts have killed to feed their addiction. It’s a scourge that’s ruined lives and jeopardized entire neighborhoods. In this case detectives from the NYPD’s Staten Island Narcotics Bureau, and the District Attorney’s office, successfully shut down these prescription pill dealers and removed harmful additive drugs from our streets.”
The Biancos were ordered held on $200,000 bail until their next appearance in state Supreme Court, St. George, on Feb. 22.
Bianco’s union-appointed lawyer, Joseph Daniels, who represented him at arraignment, said it was “a little premature to comment” on the allegations.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Michelle Molfetta.
