A former New York City police department officer has been arrested on charges of selling fentanyl and heroin, allegedly negotiating deals while on the job in the Bronx.
The charges against Grace Rosa Baez, who is 37 and has been a member of the NYPD since 2012, included conspiracy and three counts of narcotics distribution, according to prosecutors with New York’s southern federal district.
“Grace Rosa Baez took an oath to protect and serve the people of New York City,” US attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “As alleged, she flagrantly violated that oath by pushing poison, including fentanyl and heroin, which are driving the nation’s deadly opioid crisis and have been responsible for thousands of tragic deaths in this city and around the nation.”
Cesar Martinez, a 43-year-old man who shared an apartment with Baez, faces identical charges. He and Baez were charged in a criminal complaint that led to their arrests Thursday.
In a statement on Friday, prosecutors allege that Baez and Martinez had multiple conversations with a police informant about obtaining kilogram quantities of the drugs at negotiated prices.
On 11 October, prosecutors accuse Baez of telling the informant that Baez could sell two kilos of fentanyl for $30,000 each. She later handed over a plastic candy container with a substance inside that investigators determined was heroin, prosecutors said.
A kilogram press and other narcotics were later found at the apartment of Baez and Martinez.
The New York police commissioner, Edward Caban, called the charges against Baez “extremely troubling” and said that “there is no place for corruption within the NYPD”.
The charges come a little more than a month after the owner of a Bronx daycare center was arrested in connection with the death of a one-year-old boy named Nicholas Dominici, who was poisoned by fentanyl that was allegedly stored on top of play mats.
The case drew attention to the scale of the drug crisis, both in New York and nationally. Two people – Grei Mendez, the 36-year-old owner of the daycare center, and Carlisto Acevedo Brito, a 41-year-old man who rented a room from her, were hit with federal narcotics conspiracy charges. Felix Herrera, 34, was later arrested in Mexico and extradited to New York.
Herrera is Mendez’s husband and Acevedo’s cousin. A fourth co-defendant charged in the case was identified as Renny Parra, 38.
The fentanyl that was stored in the Bronx daycare is believed to have sickened four children, including Dominici, while three others aged between eight months to two years old were sickened and hospitalized.
“The defendants poisoned four babies and killed one of them because they were running a drug operation from a daycare center,” prosecutors said at the time.
According to provisional data from New York City’s department of health and mental hygiene, there were 3,026 overdose deaths locally last year, the highest total since the agency began recording such cases in 2000.
Fentanyl was detected in 81% of drug overdose deaths, the report found. The highest number of such deaths occurred among Black and Latino New Yorkers.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta forecasts that overdose deaths in 28 states, including New York, Texas, California, Alabama, Washington, and Oregon, will see a rise in overdose deaths from 2022 to 2023.
Last month, New York health department officials issued an advisory recommending that New Yorkers carry an anti-overdose nasal spray and become familiar with how to use it.
“This crisis is killing a New Yorker every three hours and is [affecting] every individual and family in our city and in our nation,” said the health commissioner, Dr Ashwin Vasan. “No one is spared, even if you think otherwise.”
