Outraged over 135 heroin overdoses in just four years, Nassau DA Kathleen Rice launched a yearlong undercover operation that nabbed 33 dealers on Long Island and in Brooklyn, including one grandmother.
Some of the dead users had packets of “brand-name,” high-purity heroin still on their bodies on the morgue slabs, Rice said yesterday as she announced the arrests.
The brand names of the strong heroin in the probe included State Property, Killer, Lucky 13 and Gunsmoke.
Rice said her office tracked the deadly drugs from the morgue to Hempstead and then, using undercover detectives and informants, to the streets and apartments of Bushwick, Brooklyn.
“We have a responsibility to target not only the drugs on our streets, but the drugs being sold before they hit our streets,” Rice said.
The overdoses may have been the result of competitive business practices, in which dealers provided very high-purity levels of heroin to “keep the customers coming back.”
One accused dealer, Linda Matos, 36, of Brooklyn, was filmed allegedly selling heroin in the same room as her grandchild.
The 33 defendants were charged with an array of drug possession and sale charges, and face one to nine years in prison. Seventeen have already pleaded guilty.