Transcript: Mayor Adams, Attorney General James and NY Drug Enforcement Task Force Announce Take Down Ghost Gun and Narcotics Trafficking Ring

March 15, 2023

New York Attorney General Letitia James: Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here, and we apologize for our lateness. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge my partners in law enforcement who are here: Mayor Eric Adams; commissioner of the NYPD, Keechant Sewell; superintendent of the New York State Police, Steven Nigrelli; special agent in charge of Drug Enforcement Administration New York Division, Frank Tarentino; the Queens County district attorney, Melinda Katz; and all of the members of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force. My name is Letitia James, the attorney general of the State of New York, and I want to thank all of them for their partnership in today's take down.

We are here today because as members of law enforcement, it is our responsibility and our duty to keep New York safe. And we all know that one of the greatest threats to public safety is gun violence. Every single day, someone in New York or in this country is harmed by gun violence. We witnessed it yesterday with two teenagers outside their schools in broad daylight, and increasingly, ghost guns are to blame for this destruction and this violence. Today, we are announcing a takedown of a gun and drug trafficking ring that operated in and around New York City.

As a result of this investigation, we recovered 19 firearms, 12 of which are ghost guns. And as you can see, many of them are AR-15 style assault weapons. We also recovered six high-capacity magazines, and more than half a kilogram of cocaine with a street value of $25,000. We are charging three defendants in a 123-count indictment for their roles in illegally trafficking these guns and drugs. And this was a joint investigation by my office's Organized Crime Task Force and the NYPD, DEA, and New York State Police.

The investigation which began in March of 2021 centered around Eduardo Hernandez. Mr. Hernandez worked together with Euclides Castillo and Jose Garcia. Mr. Hernandez sold a total of 14 guns and more than 560 grams of cocaine to members of the investigative team on multiple occasions. Both Garcia and Castillo participated in some of these sales. Garcia also sold five guns directly to the team from a location in Port Chester in Westchester County. On multiple occasions, these guns were sold directly from Mr. Hernandez's home in a residential area of Southeast Queens, and even during the middle of the day.

These dangerous weapons were being pedaled in neighborhoods where the families live and children play. Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Garcia both sourced the majority of these guns from an undisclosed location in Massachusetts and then brought them to New York to sell. Mr. Castillo was present for a number of the sales and also helped to fix any issues operating the guns. During the investigation, we discovered that Mr. Castillo previously worked for gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson in their assembly department. And while none of the guns recovered were made by Smith & Wesson, Mr. Castillo had experience assembling guns and understanding how to fix them.

And during at least one firearm sales, Mr. Castillo provided instructions about how to compile and operate the guns that were purchased. As I mentioned earlier, the majority of these guns were ghost guns, unserialized, untraceable. And as you can see, these ghost guns include AR-15 style assault weapons and some high-capacity magazines, serving as a direct threat to law enforcement each and every day in New York State and all across this country. Weapons that only exist, these AR-15 style assault weapons and these high-capacity magazines exist to inflict mass casualties and have no place in our communities.

And because so many are ghost guns, we're not able to trace or track them, making them all the more dangerous and appealing to bad actors, and making them available to those who would not be able to legally purchase guns. And that's why ghost guns represent one of the greatest risks to our communities. And that is why we will always be aggressive in our efforts to remove them from our streets. Public safety is a priority for every one of us standing up here and those who are also in the audience. And we have taken action to address the scourge of gun violence from every angle, going after those who illegally trafficked guns and cracking down on companies that illegally sell them in New York. Last summer, as you recall, Mayor Adams and I, and the commissioner, have filed lawsuits against companies that have been illegally selling ghost guns, ghost gun kits to New York.

It's pretty simple, and that is it's illegal to sell these kits to New Yorkers, and we will continue to go after anyone who tries to break our laws and endanger our communities. And just three months ago, this same task force, the task force that consists, which works with my office. The office is Organized Crime Task Force, the DEA, and the NYPD and the New York State Police. We took down another gun trafficking operation based in New York City, and that operation led to the recovery of 57 guns. 51 of them were ghost guns. Many are on display here today.

In that case, the defendants ordered ghost gun kits online and shipped them to an address in Pennsylvania. And these kits were then illegally brought to New York where they were assembled into ghost gun assault weapons for sale. And thanks to the partnership of this group here, we were able to shut down that operation in just a few months.

So let's today's announcement serve as a clear message. We will use every power in our disposal to go after anyone who puts these dangerous weapons in our communities. None of this obviously would be possible without the incredible work of our agencies. I want to thank the members of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, the NYPD, DEA, and New York State Police. I also want to thank, take a moment to thank the dedicated members of the Attorney General's Office who have worked tirelessly on this case and so many others: Detective Brad Farrell, Detective Brian Fleming, Detective Angel Lopez, Supervising Detective Paul Grasgorsky, OCTF Deputy Chief Andrew Boss, Chief of the Investigations Division Oliver Pu-Folkes, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Jason Navia, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Joseph Barker, OCTF Legal Analyst Santiago Molina, Downstate OCTF Deputy Chief Lauren Abenante, Deputy Attorney General in Charge of OCTF Nicole Keary, Chief Deputy Attorney General Jose Maldonado, and the First Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Levy. I thank them.

And now at this point in time, I'd like to bring up to the podium a critical partner and the voice in our efforts to protect New Yorkers, Mayor Eric Adams. And he has been at the forefront of this fight against gun violence. He's been laser focused on making our streets and our community safe and this nation safe. And I thank him for his collaboration on this effort to protect New Yorkers. Mayor Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thanks so much AG, just really for being the chief law enforcement officer of the state and bringing together the partnership that is needed. And Commissioner Sewell and I, as the attorney general stated, we are laser focused on this issue. NYPD, with the help of the men and women who serve in this city have taking office, they have removed over 8,500 guns off the street of New York, over 5,000 arrests. But one thing is clear, in addition to the apprehension of these ghost guns that we removed off our streets, there's a level of clarity on the challenges we are facing. Look at some of these guns. The one here has a silencer. This one has a silencer as well. These extended magazines that could have multiple shots at any time. We have one here with a scope on top of it. These automatic assault weapons that are here. This is what the men and women of the New York City Police Department and the men and women of New York State Police, the DEAs, our federal partners, this is what they are coming up against every day and how serious this problem is.

The attorney general indicated how we went after those companies that were producing the materials and the ghost guns. I thought it was probably one of the most important upstream approaches to deal with this issue of violence. She has used this office with a level of creativity, of not only suing but prosecuting those who are placing these guns on our streets. We cannot ask for a better leader in this area. I'm going to renew our call. The commissioner and I made a call to the ATF to revoke the license of Polymer80. We're going to renew that call. We believe that we have to have a multitude of approaches as we deal with these very real issues of ghost guns.

We have an increased number of ghost guns we've removed off our street in comparison to last year, but we're seeing a continuous reproduction. Someone with a 3D printer could sit inside their home and print out a device of death. So [inaudible] the estimates of the millions of guns we have in the country, those are estimates of guns with serial numbers. You can basically throw that book away because the numbers are no longer accountable. Anytime you have a manner in which you can become your own manufacturing firm within your basement or your garage, you are really throwing off the entire criminal justice system of how we manufacture and how we account for guns.

We're at a critical point and a critical state. We need to make sure that our law enforcement apparatus, our lawyers, our lawmakers keep abreast of how these weapons are entering our streets and come up with real laws to prevent them from doing so. So again, I want to just really thank the attorney general and for the men and women who are behind me, because they're on the front line of dealing with this real threat to the infrastructure of our country. Thank you very much.

Attorney General James: Now I'd like to call the police commissioner of the City of New York, NYPD commissioner, Commissioner Sewell.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. I'd like to begin by commending and acknowledging the extraordinary job done by the undercover officer in this case. Much of our department's success is built on the foundational work of our undercovers. They're exceptional public servants. By necessity they remain largely unsung and oftentimes operate under very dangerous circumstances. We owe them a great debt of gratitude. New York Drug... Excuse me. New York Drug Enforcement Task Force investigators together with our law enforcement partners never wavered in their mission to interrupt this criminal network, interdict these illegal weapons and hold these subjects accountable. And today, this work has made New York City safer. Yet, even as we praise the significant work in this case, your officers and investigators are right back out there keeping this important work at the forefront of our mission to make New York City safe.

In 2022, our gun arrests reached a 27 year high as NYPD officers took more than 7,000 illegal firearms off our streets. And so far this year, we've seized more than 1,300 more. New Yorkers in every neighborhood deserve to live free from fear. This is why we build these long-term investigations. It is why we collaborate with partners like the DEA, the Queens DA, the New York State Police, and officials like Attorney General James. This is precision policing in action, making a real difference in the lives of the people we serve in New York City. So I want to thank our law enforcement partners, NYPD personnel, and everyone else involved in this investigation. I'll now turn it over to DEA special agent in charge of the New York office, Frank Tarentino. Frank.

Frank Tarentino, Special Agent in Charge, Drug Enforcement Administration: Good afternoon.

Mayor Adams: Afternoon.

Tarentino: Attorney General James, Mayor Adams, Police Commissioner Sewell, Superintendent Nigrelli, and District Attorney Katz, thank you. It's an honor and privilege to stand alongside you here today as we work together as partners. Simply put, DEA's mission is to save lives. And so at the DEA, we ask ourselves every single day, "How do we save more lives? How can we do more?" This investigation is one example of how we can do more. This is a holistic, all in government approach, because it will take every single one of us to make a difference.

The New York Drug Enforcement Task Force jointly led by Deputy SAC Frank Del Re from the DEA New York Division, Deputy Inspector Tom Kelly from the New York City Police Department, and Captain Mike Sumnick from the New York State Police worked collaboratively with our law enforcement partners from the New York State Attorney General's Office to take down a drug and gun trafficking organization working up and down the East Coast.

Our REDRUM Group, a specially selected and well-trained investigative team, is responsible for bringing to justice the most dangerous and most violent drug traffickers and criminal networks operating here in New York City with ties throughout the world. We work relentlessly every single day to drive down drug related violence and drug poisonings to keep this city healthy and safe but also to protect the rights of people to live without fear of violence and drug trafficking. We are not waging a war on drugs. We're engaged in a fight every single day to save lives. Thank you. I'd like to turn it over to superintendent of the New York State Police, Steven Nigrelli.

Steven Nigrelli, Acting Superintendent, New York State Police: Thank you, Frank. I have some prepared statement that someone else wrote for me, but after 32 years of law enforcement, I don't think I need someone to tell me what I should say right now. I think you can come up here and say the same comments I'm going to say just by looking at this table. If you look at these guns, don't look at them as a firearm. Look at them as a device that ends a life, that ruins a family. It ruins potential. It's a sad state that we are in right now as a country that the proliferation of PMs, or personally manufactured guns or ghost guns, are ravaging our communities, destroying our communities. This is a cottage industry, and you see, like any other business, what is driving that cottage industry? Well, people who are prohibited from possessing a firearm themselves or legally purchasing or exercising their Second Amendment rights because they have shown a proclivity for violence. So we as a society said they can't have guns. And up out of nowhere, a thing called ghost gun is invented. This is the cottage industry that is affecting every one of our communities in this state. Last year, law enforcement in this state, 10,500 guns were taken. That's 10,500 criminal guns taken off our streets in the state of New York, including here in the five boroughs.

Do me a favor as reasonable people, think about your community, your family, your friends. These guns were destined for those communities to ruin those neighborhoods, those lives, to the people... And this is three people, all these guns. To the people who are going to pursue this cottage industry, I stand united with my friends, my friends from the ATF, DEA, every federal entity I ever heard of, the attorney general, the US Attorney's Office, every DA in this state. If there's one thing that's galvanized our friendships and our partnerships is this. Because each one of us have only one mission. If you look at what our mission is in law enforcement, it's to serve our communities, to protect the public and protect those who can't protect themselves. I stand united with my partners behind me. I applaud the members of the task force, and I thank Letitia James, Governor Hochul for your unwavering support in giving us the tools and support that we can do our job, which is protecting you. Thank you very much.

Attorney General James: Thank you. Thank you for humanizing the issue and putting a face to it. Our last speaker is the great Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz: Well, I'm going to follow suit and throw my speech out too. I want to thank Attorney General Tish James. This is really a team effort. The amazing team that stands behind me here at the podium brought together three individuals that were selling dozens of guns to our kids. I may be the Queens DA, but I care deeply about the City of New York. We are a city of families. We are a city of kids. We are a city of grandparents that deserve to be able to sit outside during the day and during the night. We are a city that needs to function on our subways and on our buses. We're a city that deserves to go out with our families during the day and have law enforcement focus on keeping us safe. Attorney General James and the Drug Enforcement Task Force are one step further today with that. Look at the guns that are up here. To humanize this, look at the guns. Each one of them represents shootings.

Each one of them represents a death that could occur on the street. They were intercepted by this task force. That's amazing cooperation. Tish James who uses her power, not only civilly but criminally at every chance she gets to make this state safer. A mayor who took office and promised to make our streets safer. A police commissioner who has the respect of the men and the women under her and who work every single day to make our city safer. The DEA, the state police, the DAs’ offices throughout this state, it is our job to keep people safe. You can't do that when people can build guns in the basement of their homes and in apartments right next door to you and we're not finding them. And so today brings a message. This is a team effort. We are out there and law enforcement will find you and we will make it our job every single day to take more and more guns off the streets of the City of New York. Thank you. Thank you.

Attorney General James: We will continue to use every tool at our disposal, criminal law, civil law, gun buybacks, working together to address the gun violence that we are seeing, not only in New York City, but all across the state of New York. I also want to thank the president of the United States, President Biden, for his executive order that he issued two days ago in an effort to address this epidemic, which we continue to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Now we will take on topic questions and I'm going to turn it over to Delaney. Delaney.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: I don't have those... Does anyone have those stats?

James Essig, Chief of Detectives, Police Department: We wouldn't have that stat right now, because we would have to recover the gun and then the ballistics comparison to see if it matched the shooting. But right now we don't have specific... But as you can see, ghost guns are being recovered at a higher and higher rate every year. I believe, as the commissioner said, 30, a couple of years ago, 74. We're probably over 90 this year so far. So you see it's becoming more and more of a problem. Technology is always advancing, and I think that's probably big part of the problem where you see these guns being manufactured at a record [inaudible] and then coming into our communities.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: Can I give you a list of the ghost gun manufacturers that we have... Just recently were able to get an injunction against? Ronnell's, Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, Salvo Technologies, Glock Store, Indie Guns, Primary Arms, Armor Ally, Rainier Arms, KM Technical, and Rock Slide USA. Next question.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Polymer80. We want them to revoke their federal firearms license because you're finding that a large — the overwhelming number of the ghost guns are coming through Polymer80, that's the company. And the commissioner and I asked last year for ATF to revoke their firearms license. The guns that we are seeing coming through the mail is coming through their company, and that is why we want to zero in on them in particular. But as the AG just announced or just mentioned, we filed a lawsuit against several companies, but we are continuing to see Polymer80 guns coming into the city, their parts coming into the city. And I think it's important to point out that all of these guns here that we're talking about today were manufactured outside our city. New York, places like Chicago where you don't see the manufacturing happening in our cities, the bloodshed is taking place in our cities.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Nigrelli: Finally, a question that I actually know and answer to. Last year we created the Interstate Gun Trafficking task force. Actually, as we speak, the nine states in the northeast are meeting in Philadelphia on this topic. We've created this task force, we've been working collaboratively with NYPD, Boston PD, Philly and then the state police in Northeast on guns trafficking. As Mayor Adams alluded to and I don't know if everyone's aware of this, a gun is not legally manufactured in the state of New York. Yet I mentioned earlier, over 10,000 crime guns were seized last year. Not one was manufactured here legally. So we're trying to stop the pipeline, the Iron Pipeline coming from the south into New York. Because these guns, they may be legally manufactured and sold in some other state. They're coming to our state and they're ruining our communities.

So we are working collectively, collaboratively. As we speak, we have operations going on here in the northeast, which I think President Biden, when he was here and heard about our task force last year, called it a model for the nation that other states, other regions of our country should follow. Because truly, should a state line stop intel sharing or collaboration between law enforcement, whether it's the US attorney or the Attorney General, or the district attorney's office or law enforcement? Should it? Should jurisdictional boundaries? No, because gun dealers don't abide by state lines, why should we? So let's work collaboratively because as I mentioned in my speech, this is a nationwide epidemic. It's not a New York City epidemic or state of New York. It's our country's epidemic and we have to work together in partnerships and tear down those silos.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Commissioner Sewell: Well, as the superintendent just said, we have to work in partnership. The mayor has said from the beginning that we were going to focus on the drivers of violence, getting the guns off the street, and apprehending those who use those guns. We recognize that we can't do it alone, we have to work with our partners. So we have a number of task forces, we have a number of initiatives that we collaborate with, but our focus is obviously getting these guns off the street, apprehending the people who are manufacturing them, assembling them, and interdicting them before they get to the city, ideally. But we recognize that moving forward, we're going to be doing more of these cases, you're going to see more of these takedowns. Our objective is to get as many of these guns off the street as humanly possible and bring these cases to a close with some success like we are doing today.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: Because they're ghost guns, they're untraceable. And so we cannot trace to see whether they have been involved in any other crimes. Two, let me also say that in addition to gun trafficking, this investigation focused on drugs, in particular fentanyl, which as you know, has led to a significant number of overdoses in the state of New York. And it's really critically important that I advise my task force, OCTF, and the Office of the Attorney General that I want to focus not only on guns, but also on fentanyl, removing it off the streets of the City of New York as well as the state of New York.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Attorney General James: You get two? [Laughter.]

Mayor Adams: Okay, I don't know what that has to do with ghost guns, but I know it's Michael Gartland. I'm a big believer and always believe that our law enforcement personnel should be in the City of New York. Like my neighboring counties, they require residency requirements there. And I think we just have a good crop of individuals that will make great law enforcement officers that grow up in the City of New York. And the state laws doesn't allow that, so we going to continue to follow the law. But I'm a believer, my philosophy is that police officers should come from the communities that they're policing in, particularly a place like New York.

It's extremely diverse, it is really understanding the diversity of this city. And the Police Department has become more and more diverse. We're seeing different groups who have historically stated they would never have thought they could be a member of the police department. I think under this commissioner, we are seeing so many people are coming from different walks of life and being a part of the police department. But I'm a big believer in the residency requirement.

Attorney General James: That's it? Thank you all.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

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