NEW YORK — Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, joined by New York City Police Department Commissioner William J. Bratton, today announced that seven purported members of the violent Trinitarios street gang and a member of the MaraSalvatrucha (MS-13) street gang have been charged with selling more than a dozen illegal firearms and drugs to undercover operatives between 2012 and 2014.
District Attorney Brown said, “The District Attorney’s Office is committed to ridding our communities of illegal guns and narcotics. Illegal firearms that flood our streets pose a serious and deadly threat to public safety and the distribution of illegal drugs is a plague on our society. Forthose arrested, the message could not be clearer: law enforcement has no tolerance for those involved in the weapons and drug trade.”
“The flow of narcotics and firearms into our city results in destructive consequences that can severely impact our neighborhoods and prove detrimental to the quality of life of the residents who live there, but thanks to the efforts of the NYPD’s Gang Squad Queens, our law enforcement partners, and the prosecutors at the Queens District Attorney’s Office, these gang members who trafficked guns and drugs in Queens communities have been brought to justice.”
District Attorney Brown identified seven of the defendants as purportedly being members of the Trinitarios, a violent New York-based Dominican street gang, and the eighth defendant as purportedly being a member of MS-13, another violent street gang primarily composed of Central Americans. The defendants are variously charged with second- and third-degree criminal sale of a firearm, second-, third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of a firearm, third- and fifth-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance and fourth-degree criminal sale of marijuana.
