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Judge snorts at coke-ring clients

1drug-buyer
Photo by Jefferson Siegel
Photo by Jefferson Siegel

Alicia Elett appeared at her arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court, above, on Fri., April 26. Elett, 25, a bartender at the Bowery Hotel, was one of 16 people arrested for buying drugs from a ring that operated out of the Baruch Houses in the Lower East Side and Campos Plaza in the East Village.

Two weeks earlier, 41 people were arrested, including the drug dealers and livery car drivers who made the deliveries.

As each of the buyers appeared before Justice Edward McLaughlin, he held up photos of the dealers, saying to each buyer that the “kingpins” of the drug rings would very likely go to jail for 15 years to life.

“There are gun battles” in the Lower East Side because of drugs, McLaughlin told them. “Cocaine and its problem has been in all the newspapers.

“In the Lower East Side, two police officers were shot at because of drug gangs shooting each other in order to control the selling of drugs to idiots,”  the judge said, glaring at the buyers.

“You,” he said to each defendant, including Elett, “are a contributing factor in the Lower East Side problem.”

The 16 had made cocaine purchases totaling from $430 to $2,400. They are due back in court this month.

Jefferson Siegel