STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A chaotic ruckus punctuated the sentencing of an MTA Bridges and Tunnels police officer and his wife Tuesday morning on charges the Tottenville residents regularly sold drugs in front of their three young sons.
Family members of Thomas Bianco, 40, and his wife, Jennifer, 38, scuffled both inside and outside a courtroom in state Supreme Court in St. George Tuesday morning, witnesses said, after a justice handed down a stiffer sentence to the husband.
Bianco received five and a half years behind bars, his wife four and a half.
At one point, one of Bianco’s family members brandished an umbrella at a member of Mrs. Bianco’s side of the family, recounted Mrs. Bianco’s defense attorney, Mario F. Gallucci, who saw the brawl unfold in the hall.
Court officers separated the parties, and ultimately, no one was arrested, Gallucci said.
“They’ll have five years to work it out,” quipped one law enforcement source familiar with the case.
The Biancos pleaded guilty in July to a felony count of second-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, just a few months after police arrested the couple on charges they sold thousands of dollars’ worth of oxycodone, a prescription painkiller, to undercover officers.
The Biancos were among 19 suspects arrested around Staten Island in a February drug sweep dubbed “Operation Pill Crusher.” The suspects sold drugs on the street, inside cars, and out of homes, dealing oxycodone, Xanax, cocaine and crystal meth, prosecutors said. One suspect allegedly sold the hallucinogen LSD.
Police arrested Bianco on Feb. 15 while he was in uniform, attending a training session in Long Island City, Queens. Suspended without pay, he resigned on May 21, said Judie Glave, an MTA spokeswoman.
Besides oxycodone, the Biancos allegedly dealt cocaine and marijuana.
One of their young sons told authorities they regularly sold drugs while he and his brothers, who ranged in age from 6 to 13, were inside their Tottenville home, said a law enforcement source. Once, the boy walked in on his father cutting cocaine in the parents’ bedroom, and another time, the boy and his siblings were ushered out of the kitchen so a drug deal could take place, the source said.
Bianco had even peddled narcotics at one of his son’s football games, said a law enforcement source.
Gallucci yesterday described the sentence that Justice Leonard P. Rienzi handed down to Mrs. Bianco as fair, noting that she’d be eligible for a “shock incarceration” regimen that gives non-violent offenders with drug abuse problems the chance at release in six months.
Thomas Bianco’s lawyer, Lance Lazzaro, declined comment when contacted on Tuesday.
