New York City Heroin Dealers Aim To Keep Customers Until They Die

Following the tragic death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman exactly one week ago today in his New York City apartment, of an apparent drug overdose, authorities are closely scrutinizing heroin dealers activities.

The week prior to Hoffman’s untimely death, in a drug bust that didn’t make any headlines, authorities came across a sophisticated heroin packaging and distribution operation in one of New York City’s boroughs, the Bronx.

Investigators found plastic baggies labeled “Government Shutdown” and “NFL”, most likely in reference to the Super Bowl held in the area also one week ago.

The Bronx drug bust yielded $8 million in heroin and was the result of a crack down operation into New York City’s private residences, where dealers are part of a well organized operation targeting upper and middle class customers of the likes of Oscar winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In a chilling revelation Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan says the dealers’ goal is to find loyal customers with cash available and with the desire to stay with them until they die, “That’s the attitude,” Brennan said.

Authorities investigating Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death are still trying to determine exactly how the actor died. And even though the autopsy said it was an overdose of heroin, the circumstances surrounding the death are not clear.

How the actor got the drugs is in question, but the arrest of four dealers have given some further insight into the tragic event. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents believe Hoffman may have traveled to a lower Manhattan apartment where a supplier lived in the days prior to his death.

Evidence has not tied the drug bust in the Bronx to the heroin found at Hoffman’s apartment, but New York City is where the DEA finds about 20 percent of the heroin they seizes every year.

The seizures have increase by 67 percent in the last five years, according to Brennan, who attributes the steep increase partly on high-volume heroin mills, which most in New York City don’t notice, but are capable of spitting out hundreds of thousands of packets within days after a big shipment arrives in town.

In most cases the shipments that arrive in New York City come from Mexico, where drug cartels traffic heroin they get from Colombia by the kilogram.

The dealers then smuggle the drugs into the United States in trucks, through a sophisticated system of tunnels dug under the US-Mexico border, and, in a 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.

The latest trend in the Northeast is to provide Dominican middlemen, who treat the operations as a business model and emphasize discipline and no violence. These are not the dealers that most imagine.

In New York City, dealers go to great lengths to blend in and look like anyone else does, so as to not to draw attention to themselves.

A mill found across from New York College had immigrant workers, who can earn up to $5,000 per week, wearing school sweatshirts.

“Drug dealers are very wary,” said James J. Hunt, the acting head of the DEA’s New York City office. “They wouldn’t want word to get out on the street about a mill. They want anonymity.”