NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- An NYPD office from Long Island has been arrested and charged with being part of a "multinational drug trafficking organization" that distributed cocaine in the New York City area and in the Dominican Republic, prosecutors said Monday.
NYPD Officer Amaury Abreu, 34, of Hauppauge, and four other men — Julio Bautista, 35, of Roosevelt; Cesar Diaz-Bautista, 43, of Roosevelt; Gustavo Valerio, 43, of South Ozone Park, and Junior Ortiz, 29, of Uniondale — have all been arrested for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a release Monday.
Prosecutors say the drug trafficking organization with which the five men were affiliated imported cocaine into the U.S. by flying it in using "drug couriers" and hiding it in mail trucks and tractor trailers coming from Mexico, among other methods.
Bautista and Valerio, who were "high-ranking members" of the organization, oversaw cocaine distribution in the New York City area, prosecutors said.
Abreu, meanwhile, "used his position as a police officer to protect his co-conspirators by providing information to the [organization] about law enforcement procedures, performing warrant checks on [organization] members on the NYPD arrest database, and, on at least one occasion, distributing cocaine for [the organization]," the attorney's office said in the release.
"By joining forces with his co-conspirators, Abreu has allegedly committed serious crimes, disgraced his NYPD badge and betrayed the public trust, as well as fellow members of law enforcement who put their lives on the line to interdict drugs that endanger our communities," Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in a statement.
In his own statement, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said there "is no place for corruption in the NYPD, and it will always be prosecuted fully."
Attorney information for the five men wasn't immediately available Monday.
