Two charged in brazen drug-dealing operationThursday, October 09, 2008 By MICHAELANGELO CONTEJOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Jersey City police brass are crediting an experimental "three-prong" attack on drug dealing for the seizure of 365 vials of suspected cocaine and two arrests at a Downtown Jersey City park Tuesday night.

Arrested at Wayne Street Park near Jersey Avenue at 10:30 p.m. were Clayton S. Cureton, 19, of Montgomery Street, and a 16-year-old boy from Stegman Street, reports said.

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They face multiple drug counts, including drug possession with intent to distribute near a school and park, reports said, adding that Cureton is also charged with using a juvenile to deal drugs.

Both were nabbed through using a system of first sending in undercover cops to identified high drug-dealing areas, then sending in plainclothes police at odd hours and finally getting people in the community to go outside and essentially take back the streets, said East District Capt. Brian McDonough.

"This operation is ongoing and is a step to insure we go after the drug dealers and then put uniformed personnel in the area to make sure they don't come back," Police Director Sam Jefferson added. "We are now opening it up to other areas of the city."

Police chose the area of Wayne Street Park to test the technique after they received numerous complaints of open-air drug dealing, officials said.

It was a uniformed officer posted at the park who around 4:15 p.m. spotted Cureton making what appeared to be drug transactions, reports said. The uniformed officer immediately contacted plainclothes officers, who set up surveillance, reports said.

The plainclothes police watched as Cureton handed something to the boy as they walked up Wayne Street toward a third man waiting on a bicycle and they converged on them, reports said.

The boy dropped five vials of suspected cocaine and was arrested, but Cureton ran and after a chase was found hiding under a car, reports said. The person on the bike got away.

A search of Cureton turned up 360 vials of suspected cocaine with a street value of about $3,600, reports said.

McDonough said he and Chief Tom Comey used this system of alternating uniformed and plainclothes officers in the 1990s and conferred recently and decided to put it into practice again.

Something is happening on Wayne St. I hav edriven down that street 3 times today and there was a police scooter parked in that little park, a seperate time there was a police scooter parked on the corner of of Jersey and Wayne, and there was also a "patrol vehical" type of truck thing, parked there. None of the regulars are out today. I wonder what brought the police over to this part of town today.....

At least he didn't have any visable band-aids on his face/head.....

While anytime I see the mayor speak publicly it is usually embarrassing, it could have been worse...at least he wasn't drunk.

You are right, all he tried to do was a commercial for JC and even that was bad because he couldn't get his facts straight. When he was asked how the city was being impacted he side stepped the issue. He has no idea how the city is being impacted....I don't think anyone in City Hall has an idea.....nore do i think they care.

I love this theatre, it is so cool inside. Thanks for posting this, it should be a lot of fun.

This guy Deluco is a bozo. He was at a neighborhood meeting last night to present a horrible redevelopment plan to the Hilltop neighborhood and like a good slimy realtor, before he started his sales pitch, he has to mention that he has one of the best realtors in Hudson cOunty with him if there is anyone in the audiance that has questions about the mortgage crisis and real estate. It was so unprofessional. You are there to present a plan that is going to rip that neighborhood apart and you have the gaul to ask me to list your house with you?

Then to top the evening off, he was shut down, in the middle of his presentation, by the president of the neighborhood assoc. because his presentation was horrible. A real slime-ball....

Del Forno probably burned that building down for the insurance money, knowing something like this was coming down the road. That way they collect the insurance money and then argue the city needs to pay more for the land because the land is vacant and their plans in place to rebuild a 6 story building there.

I live in the Van vosrt area and can smell the same thing. We actually had sewage come up into the basement of our building during the storm.

I have done several transactions, over the past 12 years, with Sheldon Margolis in Journal Sq. 201-795-9000

A real nice guy who knows his stuff.

If I were you, I would rent your unit out to the worst section 8 person you can find. Some single mother with 5 kids, running around making all kinds of noise. I would get all kinds of satisfaction out of that....:)

Is this the old "Hague" building?

I think this is that beautiful old building near Tsigonia Paint. The developer, and the city, allowed this old building to be destroyed and turned into an eye sore. The building was built in the 1860's, with beautiful old red brick, and they added an extension onto the building and used disgusting "grey" bricks. It makes the builidng look like some modern day public works project. If the builder would "choose" to that to the outside of his builidng I can't imagine what he has done to the inside. But in the end, it come s down to the city. Developers have proven time and time again that they don't care about this city, they just want to make as much money as they can. The city allowed them to use those orrible bricks on their extension because they don't care either. As citizens, I guess we should count ourselves lucky that they didn't use the pink bricks that have shown up here in recent years.

I was being sarchastic about the poster....the cultural affairs office never seems to do anything to promote the stuff they set up, you just kinda have to stumble upon it. They played up in the heights last weekend and we only found out about it because the director of con vivo reached out to our neighborhood association, friday night, looking for an indoor venue in case it rained. Just a little effort on their part and these events could be so well attended, there is a thriving art culture here, they just have to reach out to it.

Just a heads up, there is a classical concert in Hamilton Park this weekend.

http://www.convivojerseycity.org/discography.html

I am sure you have all seen the posters our wonderful city has put up to promote this event......

From their website, it looks like thei concert is at 2pm. consists of music for guitar and strings.

70+ unit owers are being negatively impacted by this, I wonder how many owner are being positively impacted by this (with lower common charges). Any chance that the board members are in the latter catagory and that is why they don't want to change anything?

I would also recommend Royal Haeting and Cooling. Don and Chris have done excellent work in several of my apartment units and I wouldn't hesitate recommending them.

what I like to do is keep a tennis ball with me and when I see a car speeding down a crowded street is bounce the tennis ball out from between 2 cars hopefully giving the person driving a scare that some kids are going to pop out chasing after it.....although that really only works after school is out.

You should go to a local neighborhood meeting and press the neighborhood association to get after the police. We did this up in the heights last summer because people were blowign through a stop sign heading into a park. Within a couple of weeks, we had several police officers there pulling people over and writing tickets and warnings. At times they had as many as 10 cars pulled over at once. It was so successful that the beat cops now do this proactively in the park.

Be careful with your advice about throwing pennies. The same drivers that blow through stop signs and cross walks are the same drivers who would love to stop, after having something thrown at them, and either shoot you or beat you to near death....

Does your building (or any of the others) have a live in super? I see your super mentioned once, does he live in the building or just show up to clean and take the trash out? I would think it is partially his responsibilty to ensure the doors are shut. Does he ever chase these people out of the building ro does he just turn his back?

It amazes me that people still ride these things. Everytime they do one of these inspections, more then 75% get pulled off the road. Not just sited for some minor violation, PULLED from the road. It is very telling that once word of the inspection gets out, that ALL of the vans disappear for the day. (and this happens with every surprise inspection, it is not just a one off thing) If the owners of the vans know they are putting a SAFE product on the street, why refuse to let your vans go out there? You would think they would be confident if they knew that their vans comply with local and state law. Instead, all of their vans scurry back to where they come from and hide. They aren't fools, they know they are putting everyone who rides these things in danger everyday. It is the greedy/lazy commuter who is the fool in this scenario because I am sure they got up this morning and didn't think twice about jumping on the next van that came down the street.

If you go City Council meetings, you would see that the city has been accepting State and Federal Grants for all kinds of poilce activity. Last Summer they started an initiative in Rvierview Park catching people who were running the stop sign going into the park. A times they had 10 cars pulled over at once. More recently, the city accepted a Federal Grant to combat Drunk Driving. I bet you start to see a bunch of DWI check points starting up around St. Patricks day.

Kudo's to RNA, great job getting some sort of bus service back to Palisade ave. They got us the bus, now we have to use it.....use it or loose it. I agree that something is amis with the politicians and how they side stepped the issue of regulating the jittny's. Maybe we need to push for some sort of regulation of the jittny's whether it be on a local, state, or federal level.

No one was blaming the jittny's at last nights meeting, but a important point was made by one of the resdents who attended the meeting. When the bus service was moved off of Palisade, that was a perfect opportunity for the jittny's to step up. But instead they did nothing. They didn't increase the number of jittny's going into the city (god knows they have enough jittny's going up and down palisade) and they didn't increase the time frame that they choose to run. They only service NYC from approx. 7 - 9 am and 5 - 7 pm.

As far as getting a direct bus to NYC from Jrnl Sq. to PA down thru Hoboken, if the people in Union City can't get on the 123 because we are filling the seats before the bus gets there, I am sure they will scream. That will show transit that there is a strong enough ridership to warrant a direct bus of our own.

I have found out that State Senator Sacco is suppose to be in attendance as well. Hopefully that means something positive will come from this meeting. Hope to see you all there!!!!!