NYC

Aug. 28 (UPI) — New York City police on Friday said they seized 580 pounds of cocaine worth $10 million, the largest cocaine seizure in the city in decades.

Nelson Salcedo, 35 of New Jersey, was arrested while moving several boxes hiding cocaine from a self-storage facility in Queens.

“This was a massive shipment of narcotics, tied to an interstate trafficking network with connections across the country, including in New York and New Jersey,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told the New York Post.

“And because of the work of the investigators standing with me today, those drugs will never make it into the streets of New York City.”

Police began following Salcedo on Aug. 12, when he was spotted dropping off packages believed to contain drugs near the north end of Central Park.

Then on Wednesday, officers spotted the suspect loading boxes into a van registered to an elevator repair company.

Police and Drug Enforcement Administration agents recovered 230 bricks containing 580 pounds of cocaine.

“This appears to be the largest single cache of cocaine my office has seized in 20 years,” Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan told the New York Daily News.

“Thanks to our investigators and our law enforcement partners in this case, these drugs will never make it onto the streets of New York City.”

Salcedo and two suspected accomplices were arrested.

He was arraigned on charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Aug. 24 (UPI) — A group of grocers filed two lawsuits Monday over New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open five city-run grocery stores, saying it would harm neighborhood supermarkets.

The Multicultural Business Coalition, an organization that says it represents owners of smaller stores, said in the filings that the city would violate business owners’ civil rights if the new stores open and that officials did not study how the planned stores would affect existing businesses.

Kenneth Roldan, the president of the coalition, said the plan would have a “devastating” effect on small grocery stores. He called it “a direct assault on minority business,” The New York Times reported.

The plan for city-owned grocery stores, which would sell some items at a 30% discount, was part of Mamdani’s platform as he ran for mayor. It calls for five stores, one in each borough of New York City, to open by 2029.

Mamdani said at a news conference Monday that the new stores are needed to address the high cost of groceries and that they would not offer significant competition in the city.

“I’m confident both in the legality of this, that it will stand up in court, and the importance of delivering it,” Mamdani said.

The new stores would reevaluate prices once a month and set the cost for food items at 30% below retailers, The Hill reported. The city would own the land and cover the rent and construction costs. A private operator, selected through a request for proposals, would manage daily operations.

“We are talking about a reflection of a cost-of-living crisis that has seen grocery prices increase by about 30 percent over the last few years, and we’re also talking about delivering five city-run grocery stores in a city of 8.5 million people that has more than 1,000 grocery stores,” Mamdani said.

The first store is expected to open in 2027 in the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx. An East Harlem store is expected to open by 2029. The city has not yet selected sites in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.