A family of alleged gun traffickers were indicted on Wednesday after local authorities shut down a firearm pipeline between Brooklyn and Georgia.
New York City Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton and Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson released a 558-count indictment against six suspects while standing alongside a spread of firearms confiscated after the seven-month investigation.
In all, police picked up at least 155 different firearms, including an AR-15, a MAC-
11, two TEC-9 automatic weapons and 151 other varieties of pistols and revolvers.
Michael Brewer Quick, 32, allegedly made at least 13 trips between LaGrange, Georgia and Brooklyn’s Canarsie section, each time bring up as many as 25 firearms at a time. Quick would then unknowingly sell the weapons to an undercover police officer at the corner of Foster Avenue and East 96th Street.
“Our joint investigation with the NYPD has put an end to a major gun trafficking operation that brought illegal firearms to Brooklyn from Georgia,” Thompson said in a statement. “The apparently easy accessibility of these weapons threatened the safety and security of our Brooklyn communities.”
The district attorney’s office said that Quick, who also has a home in Staten Island, coordinated wife Aliyah Camille Dowell and two uncles, Rodney Brewer and Albert Pless, to gather the weapons in Georgia and and wire their profit to purchase more guns.
As an example, investigators said that a 9mm gun purchased in Georgia for $200 could be go for as much as $1,000 in Brooklyn.
Police said that Quick, Brewer and Dowell were already in NYPD’s custody at the time of the announcement. Pless, as well as associates Emmanuel Caswell and Marcus White are in custody in Georgia awaiting extradition.
“This family of gun traffickers did not hesitate to distribute illegal guns in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn,” Bratton said in statement, “but thanks to the hard work of the investigators and prosecutors involved, this pipeline of firearms has been shut down.”
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