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Eleven months of freedom ended for Courry Rice, 40, when a Bergen County Regional SWAT team joined police from Hackensack and Maywood in hitting his Prospect Avenue home early Tuesday, Feb. 21.
Seized were varying amounts of crack and Ecstasy, along with packaging materials and scales, Maywood Police Chief Terence Kenny said.
Rice has a criminal history that includes a host of convictions involving drug dealing and violence, to go with multiple front-page news accounts.
The most notorious involved an acquittal for murder in the 2006 stabbing death of a 24-year-old Hackensack man, which Rice’s public defender successfully argued was in self-defense.
Rice made headlines again when his mother and her son’s new lawyer followed that by unsuccessfully challenging the Hackensack Police Department in court, claiming that a string of drug arrests were in retaliation for the murder acquittal.
A local newspaper columnist wrote about the suit, accusing authorities of the “relentless pursuit” of Rice, whom he referred to as a “sitting duck.”
Records show Rice has violated parole numerous times since then, with arrests for crimes that include aggravated assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, drug dealing and weapons possession.
He recently served five years in state prison after being convicted of selling drugs on school property, as well as for burglary, theft and making terroristic threats.
Rice was released last March 21, only to be arrested again three months ago on charges of burglary, making terroristic threats and simple assault out of Englewood, records show.
He'd been free pending trial when police came knocking with the SWAT team on Tuesday.
Rice remained held Thursday in the Bergen County Jail on drug and parole violation charges.
Meanwhile, details of what is expected to be a lengthy return to the custody of the New Jersey Department of Corrections are being worked out, according to the department's website.
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