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Bergen Detectives Smash Cocaine, Heroin Ring With SWAT Raids In Hackensack, Garfield, Lodi

With help from a variety of law enforcement agencies, Bergen County prosecutor's detectives smashed a local drug ring, arresting five people during a series of quick-strike SWAT raids in Garfield, Lodi and Hackensack, authorities announced Tuesday.

Frankley Sanchez-Javier, Luis Otero, Mario Tapia-Hernandez, Nicole Bonilla, Randy Rosa-Garcia

Frankley Sanchez-Javier, Luis Otero, Mario Tapia-Hernandez, Nicole Bonilla, Randy Rosa-Garcia

 Photo Credit: MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR
Jerry DeMarco
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Responders grabbed three defendants who tried to flee a vacant first-floor Garfield apartment that was being used to process and package heroin for sale – among them, third-floor resident Frankley Sanchez-Javier, 31, who “jumped through a glass pane window before being apprehended outside,” Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Dennis Calo said.

They arrested two others separately, in Lodi and Hackensack, Calo said.

Seized were more than 3½ pounds of packaged heroin, nearly three pounds of cocaine and more than five ounces of unpackaged heroin, along with $140,000 in drug cash, the prosecutor said.

Bergen County Regional SWAT team members led a raid of the Midland Avenue heroin mill in Garfield, as well as at Sanchez-Javier’s apartment two floors above.

The ad hoc strike force also raided:

  • two Hackensack apartments – on Railroad Avenue and Lodi Street – where co-defendant Mario Tapia-Hernandez, 31, was living:
  • a Prospect Avenue apartment, also in Hackensack, where co-defendant Luis Otero, 33, lived;
  • a Kipp Avenue basement apartment where co-defendants Randy Rosa-Garcia, 24, and Nicole Bonilla, 23,  lived.

All are unemployed, except for Tapia-Hernandez, who Calo said works for ICS Voice & Data on State Street in Hackensack. Authorities charged them with various drug offenses.

Bonilla was released pending a Feb. 13 first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.

Tapia-Hernandez was released with conditions and Rosa-Garcia was released outright following a detention hearing Monday

Otero and Sanchez-Javier remained held Tuesday in the Bergen County Jail pending detention hearings.

There was a lot of credit to go around, Calo said.

For their roles in the takedown, the prosecutor thanked:

  • the Hackensack, Garfield, and Lodi police departments;
  • New Jersey State Police HAZMAT;
  • the DEA New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, Group T22;
  • Homeland Security Investigations (Newark and JFK);
  • the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office;
  • the Bergen County Regional SWAT Team.

(The DEA’s New York Drug Enforcement Task Force includes agents, officers and investigators of from the DEA, New York State Police and the NYPD.)   

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