Pubdate: Fri, 19 May 2006
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2006 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Al Baker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?246 (Policing - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

EX-POLICE OFFICER IS ACCUSED OF HELPING TO FIND DRUG DEALERS FOR AN 
UNCLE TO ROB

A former New York City police officer was indicted on charges of
helping her uncle rob drug dealers while she was still on the force,
the authorities said yesterday. She got involved in the plot, they
said, after she borrowed money from her uncle to pay for a class to
prepare for a sergeant's test.

The officer, Kirsix De La Cruz, accepted the loan from her uncle last
July, the authorities said. Soon after, he asked her if she could help
him find someone to help him rob drug dealers, and she introduced him
to Luis German, a drug dealer known as Pedro, they said.

Mr. German said he could point out houses in the Bronx and in
Manhattan where cocaine that was stashed could be stolen, the federal
authorities said.

They said that the three hatched a plan that involved robbing drug
dealers of their money, reselling their drugs and divvying up the proceeds.

But the plan quickly unraveled, on July 13, after F.B.I. agents who
had a confidential informer who knew about it followed the uncle and
Markus Vizaniaris, a man he allegedly enlisted to help him, to an
apartment at Broadway and 176th Street in Washington Heights, where,
they said, the pair stole seven one-kilogram bricks of cocaine worth
$17,000 to $25,000 a kilogram wholesale. After the robbery, the former
officer got a call from her uncle asking how she wanted to be paid,
the authorities said, adding that she called back and left a message
for him saying she wanted "the green," which the uncle later told the
authorities he took to mean she wanted cash.

Later that same day, federal agents arrested the uncle. He became a
cooperating witness in the case in January, officials said.

The arrest of Ms. De La Cruz was announced yesterday by the F.B.I. and
the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York after
a grand jury returned an indictment, officials said.

Ms. De La Cruz, 36, and Mr. German, 38, both of Manhattan, and Mr.
Vizaniaris, 27, of the Bronx, were each charged with conspiracy to
distribute cocaine and conspiracy to commit robbery, the officials
said. If convicted, each faces a maximum of life in prison. The uncle
was not named in the court papers.

A Police Department spokesman said yesterday that Ms. De La Cruz, who
joined the force in 1995, resigned on April 26, the day she was
arrested. Mr. German was arrested on April 27, an F.B.I. spokesman
said.

Though Ms. De La Cruz registered to take the sergeant's test and,
according to the court papers, borrowed "several thousand dollars"
from her uncle to pay for the test-preparation class, the cost of the
class is usually less than $1,000, said Ed Mullins, the president of
the Sergeant's Benevolent Association. He said most officers take a
class once a week for about two months and that each class costs about
$20 to $25.

The court papers made it clear that Ms. De La Cruz did not take part
in robbing drug dens. Rather, her role was to set her uncle up with
Mr. German, who pointed the uncle and his helper in the right direction.

The three first met on July 9, the complaint charged, adding that the
next day, Mr. German told the uncle that several of his drug
associates could be robbed as they dropped off 10 kilograms of cocaine
in Washington Heights, but the uncle showed up too late to strike.

On July 11, Mr. German told her uncle that there was $300,000 to
$400,000 in cash in an apartment near West 100th Street and Columbus
Avenue, information the uncle passed on to Mr. Vizaniaris and the
confidential informer.

The uncle told the informer that his niece "had set up the deal," the
court papers said. But the men got nervous that the owners of the cash
had seen them preparing to commit the robbery, and aborted the plan,
the papers said.

In the July 13 plot, according to the complaint, Mr. Vizaniaris, who
actually stole the cocaine from the apartment, was given a
one-kilogram brick as payment.

Lawyers for the three defendants did not return calls or answer
messages seeking comment. Ms. De La Cruz is free on bond and is
scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

After he became a cooperating witness, the uncle made several phone
calls to Ms. De La Cruz -- his niece by marriage -- the complaint
said, including one in which he told her that Mr. Vizaniaris had been
arrested.

He said that he had told Mr. Vizaniaris about her role in arranging
the robbery and was worried that the man might tip the authorities
off. He asked her to run Mr. Vizaniaris's name through a police
database to see why he had been arrested, and she said she would try
to do so, according to the complaint.

Police Department records show that on July 14, after her uncle was
arrested, then-Officer De La Cruz twice entered his name into a
departmental database. She did so twice on July 18 and twice on Aug.
15.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake