For years, the intersections of Myrtle Avenue and Mallory Avenue in Jersey City functioned as something other than a place where children wait for school buses or old men sit on stoops watching the world go by.
They were a supermarket. Not for milk and bread. For fentanyl.
Federal authorities this week swept up 29 members and associates of a drug trafficking organization that had turned those blocks into an open-air bazaar for death, hauling in 15 kilograms of suspected fentanyl, three more of cocaine, 19 firearms, high-capacity magazines, a bulletproof vest, and more than $160,000 in cash.
Two more guns had been seized earlier in the investigation. The arrests came down like a hammer before dawn on April 22, the product of a long-term wiretap investigation that let law enforcement listen in as the accused went about their business of moving poison through the streets.
The numbers are staggering until you remember what they represent. Fifteen kilograms of fentanyl is not a statistic. It is a quantity capable of killing every man, woman and child in Hudson County several times over. The synthetic opioid, up to 50 times more potent than heroin, has turned the American drug crisis into something closer to a biological weapon aimed at the nation’s own bloodstream.
U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer called the defendants “purveyors of poison.” That is a polite way of putting it. A more direct translation would be:
These 29 people were selling death by the gram, packaging it in little bags and sending it out into a city where the overdose epidemic has already filled more body bags than any war since Vietnam.
The investigation pulled together an alphabet soup of agencies that actually worked like a single fist: Homeland Security Investigations, the ATF, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, the IRS’s criminal division, Customs and Border Protection, the New Jersey State Police, the Jersey City Police Department.
They ran controlled drug buys that tested positive for fentanyl. They got court orders to tap phones. They watched from cars and rooftops. They followed the money, which is how they found the cash.
And when they had had enough, they hit the search warrants. Dozens of them. Premises, vehicles, other locations. They found the kilogram press too — the machine that turns raw powder into pressed pills or compact bricks, the kind of equipment that tells you this was not some corner operation but a distribution network with industrial ambitions.
Michael S. McCarthy, special agent in charge of HSI Newark, said the operation marked “a decisive step forward” in confronting the fentanyl crisis. That is the language of law enforcement, and it is accurate as far as it goes. But decisive steps forward have a way of feeling incomplete when you have buried a friend’s child. The war on drugs has been going on for more than half a century, and here we are still counting kilos and guns and cash.
What makes this case different, perhaps, is the sheer volume of collaboration and the weaponry involved. Nineteen firearms is not a collection. It is an arsenal. High-capacity magazines suggest an expectation of sustained violence. A bulletproof vest suggests someone intended to survive the exchange.
Beau Kolodka, ATF special agent in charge, said the arrests send a message that his agency will not tolerate “the dangerous combination of drug trafficking and firearms.” The message has been sent before. The question is whether anybody was listening on the other end.
Frank Russo, New York director of field operations for Customs and Border Protection, noted that more than 70 of his officers participated, including special response team warrant entry teams, while the agency’s air and marine operations provided aerial support. That is the kind of resource allocation usually reserved for chasing cartel leaders in Mexico. These arrests happened on the streets of Jersey City, a short PATH ride from Manhattan.
The defendants now face charges including conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute fentanyl and cocaine. The conspiracy charge alone carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 40, plus a potential $5 million fine. The gun charges for convicted felons add another 15 years. The government has listed 31 individuals in total, with charges pending against two others.
Twenty-six defendants appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judges Jessica S. Allen and Michael A. Hammer in Newark federal court on Tuesday. Three more appeared Wednesday before Judge Allen. Defense counsel has been assigned or retained for most.
The names read like a roll call from any American city grappling with this epidemic: Jamaar McGeachy, known as “Mooky.” Johnel Dunlap, “Supreme.” Albert Clawson, “Pop.” Kion Amaker, “Scooby.” Kenneth Hayward, “Cutty.” Jeremy Powell, “O Dog.” The nicknames are almost banal in their familiarity, the kind of street tags that suggest a longing for reputation that a prison jumpsuit will soon replace.
Prosecutor Wayne Mello of Hudson County credited the Narcotics and Gang Task Force. Acting State Police Superintendent Jeanne Hengemuhle said the takedown “strikes at the heart of that threat, but our work is far from over.” She is right about that.
This investigation fell under the umbrella of the Jersey City Violent Crime Initiative, formed in 2018, and the Homeland Security Task Force, a whole-of-government partnership aimed at cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
It also falls under Operation Take Back America, the Department of Justice’s nationwide effort to target cartels and transnational criminal organizations. That name suggests a certain political framing. What it describes on the ground is federal agents kicking in doors at dawn to pull people out of bed because enough fentanyl to kill a congressional district was flowing through a couple of city blocks.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Maloy from the Organized Crime/Gangs Unit is prosecuting the case, with help from Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Erica Bertuzzi. The charges and allegations contained in the complaints are merely accusations, as the press release dutifully notes. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. That is how the system works, or at least how it is supposed to work.
But the evidence described in court filings tells a different kind of story. Wiretaps. Controlled buys. Surveillance. The kind of old-school police work that built cases before the age of cellphones, updated for an era when the drug dealers have phones too, and the cops have court orders to listen to everything said on them.
The seizure included fentanyl, cocaine, guns, cash, a vest and high-capacity magazines. That last item is worth pausing over. High-capacity magazines have no purpose in drug trafficking except to facilitate the kind of shootouts that leave innocent people bleeding on sidewalks. They are not for hunting. They are not for target practice. They are for killing as many people as possible before you have to reload.
Jersey City knows something about that. The city has seen its share of violence, its share of overdoses, its share of funerals for people who should have had decades left. The arrests this week will disrupt one network. But the demand remains, and where demand exists, supply will eventually find a way. The fentanyl will keep coming. The guns will keep coming. The cash will keep flowing.
Unless something changes. Unless the underlying mathematics of addiction and poverty and desperation get addressed with the same urgency as the wiretap applications and the early-morning search warrants. That is the hard truth that no press release can capture. The 29 arrests are a victory, yes. A necessary one. A righteous one. But it is a victory measured in skirmishes, not wars.
For now, the intersections of Myrtle and Mallory are a little quieter. The children waiting for the school bus will not see the men with the cellphones and the small bags. The old men on the stoops will not have to look away. The poison pipeline has been capped, at least for a while.
There are other intersections, though. There are always other intersections. The work of protecting them never ends. That is the part that does not make the news release. That is the part that happens tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, while the 29 defendants sit in federal custody, and the prosecutors prepare their cases, and somewhere in Jersey City or Newark or Paterson or Camden, someone else is learning how to use a kilogram press.