CRIME: Drug ring round-up hits hard at club drugs

Bennett operation catered to wide ranging clientele with “high quality” products

By Rick Pfeiffer/pfeifferr@gnnewspaper.com

Ron Jay Bennett was sound asleep when Niagara Falls cops came knocking on Tuesday morning.

Staying at a Hyde Park Boulevard apartment, instead of his well-fortified Cudaback Avenue home, he awoke to a small squad of Falls Police SWAT Team members, with their weapons leveled at him.

“It was a perfect stealth entry,” said Falls Police Lt. Bryan DalPorto, the first officer through the apartment door. “As I came around the corner, I could see people sleeping on couches. They were surprised to be woken up by a SWAT Team.”

Able to enter the apartment without making any noise, the officers took Bennett, his close associate Mark “Marky” Smith and a third man into custody.

“To do an entry like that was good,” DalPorto said, “To have a (way to enter the apartment with out breaking down the door) was great. To find all the targets sleeping, priceless.”

The takedown of Bennett, the main target of a joint federal and local law enforcement investigation into drug smuggling from Canada, wrapped up almost year-long investigation. The operation began with information from police informants and a chance tip to Falls Police Narcotics Division Detectives Tom Fournier and John Galie.

“Street sources would bring up his name as being a player (in the local drug trade),” Fournier said. “Then one night in September, John and I got a complaint about a residence at 2212 Cudaback Ave. The person told us there was heavy traffic there at all hours, lots of expensive vehicles pulling up and the home appeared to be fortified with bars on all the windows.”

The Cudaback home was Bennett’s residence. No stranger to Falls Police, Bennett had a significant and violent criminal history.

“He’s been arrested for some things other than narcotics,” Fournier said, “including a stabbing at a restaurant.”

Street violence took the lives of both of Bennett’s brothers. Antonio was killed in June 1990, while Phil, one of the city’s more prolific dealers, was gunned down in the streets in October 1998.

When police arrived at Phil’s murder scene on Highland Avenue, drug users were picking his pockets for his stash of narcotics.

Bennett reportedly boasted of his brother’s violent deaths and warned people cops would not take him into custody without a fight. He even invoked Phil’s name, when federal agents questioned him in the Hyde Park Boulevard apartment and asked if he would take to them.

“I swear on my brother Phil’s grave, I ain’t no snitch,” Bennett said. “I’m straight up tellin’ ya, I ain’t talking. I ain’t no snitch.”

Investigators say, like his brother Phil, Bennett was a particularly proficient drug dealer. While he reportedly moved significant quantities of cocaine and marijuana, his importation of upwards of 1,500 Ecstasy tablets a week from north of the border set him apart.

“His mules (drug smugglers) would make three or four trips a week into Canada (to purchase Ecstasy),” Fournier said.

In Canada, the mules would meet Bennett’s Canadian supplier, Jada Sears. Sears, who was supplied by a Toronto-based club drug manufacturer, would negotiate the terms of the sale directly with Bennett.

Investigators said Bennett would purchase the Ecstasy tablets for as little as $3 a piece, sell them to street and club dealers in the Western New York area for $6 to $7 and those dealers would then sell the tabs for up to $20 to $25.

“They sold to everyone,” Galie said. “Young, old, black, white, (the drugs were) going all over the place.”

Bennett had a system for sending mules back and forth across the border and the system was centered on young women.

“He liked to use young females who would appear to have a reason to go to Canada,” Fournier said, “They’d say they were going to bingo or shopping. One female took her 11-year-old brother along and said she was going shopping for him. So that would lessen suspicions.”

Niagara Regional Police assisted in the investigation by providing surveillance on the mules while they picked up drugs from Sears and returned to the border. Falls cops and federal agents then followed the smugglers as they delivered the drugs to Bennett.

In addition to human surveillance, investigators also used electronic surveillance to keep track of what Bennett and his associates were up to.

“These things are awfully time consuming and difficult,” Narcotics Division Captain Morris Shamrock said. “You live (the dealers) schedules, you live their lifestyle.”

As of Thursday, 25 out of 28 suspects being sought in the case had been arrested. All of them are charged with, in federal court, possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to import controlled substances into the United States.

The investigation also led to spin-off arrests. Agents arrested John Mayfield of the Falls on 13th Street on Tuesday night and seized 3 grams of crack cocaine. Mayfield will now faces federal drug charges.

In addition to the arrests on Tuesday, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies executed 18 search warrants in the Falls and Buffalo. They seized two handguns, more than 28 grams of powdered cocaine, 3 grams of crack cocaine, almost 20 grams of marijuana, 610 Ecstasy tablets and $4,668.

Falls Police also charged Antoine Bones, who was not a target of the drug smuggling investigation, but was at one of the sites when investigators went on Tuesday morning, with third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Bones had 3 grams of crack cocaine in his possession at a home in the 700 block of Augustus Place.

Both local and federal agents said the dismantling of Bennett’s operation will impact the club drug scene.

“The reviews of his (Ecstasy tabs) were pretty good,” Fournier said. “And when they weren’t, (Bennett) demanded better (drugs from his supplier).”

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