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They also took a BMW and a Hyundai for forfeiture while arresting a second-floor tenant, a fellow city resident and a man from Rockland County, Passaic County Sheriff Richard Berdnik said.
Complaints of drug dealing focused the attention of the sheriff’s Bureau of Narcotics detectives on the home at the corner of Knickerbocker and Getty avenues at the Clifton border, directly across the street from the Omar Mosque.
They found that tenant Mathew McBryde Jr. and Jensi Ortega, also of Paterson, had been slinging cocaine, weed and illegal prescription pills not just in the city but throughout Passaic County, Berdnik said.
The investigators were watching, he said, as McBryde sold coke to visiting Rockland County resident Carl M. Porto.
While Porto was being stopped and arrested, other detectives followed the Hyundai and BMW.
They conducted stops that turned up nearly a pound of pot and roughly $1,850 in cash from the BMW, as well as more than six ounces of cocaine, 45 Ecstasy pills, 10 Oxycodone pills and nearly the same amount of marijuana from the Hyundai, Berdnik said.
Emergency Response Team members then led a raid on the Knickerbocker Avenue home.
They were quickly confronted by a vicious dog, who ended up unharmed in a locked bathroom, the sheriff said.
In the home detectives found five ounces of raw cocaine, another 93 Oxy pills, 30 Suboxone folds, a loaded handgun, various drug paraphernalia and packaging materials and $20,783 in cash, he said.
Porto was charged with minor drug possession and sent on his way pending a hearing.
McBryde and Ortega ended up charged with a host of major crimes and sent to the Bergen County Jail, where they remained on Saturday, Dec. 9.
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