Drugs and loaded guns were seized during the arrests early last month of the quintet, who U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger said slung the potentially lethal narcotics from the neighborhood at Kent and Brenner streets.
He identified them as Fuquan Williams, 33; Dwight Dixon, 52; Nafee Patterson, 41; Jabriel Mason, 20; and Daqwuan Barkley, 29, all of Essex County.
A federal magistrate judge in Newark ordered that Williams and Dixon remain held pending trial. The other three were released on bail.
All five are charged with drug conspiracy.
Williams is also charged with possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
Patterson is also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and cocaine. It wasn’t immediately clear why he was allowed to go free.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI with the investigation leading to the prosecution of the reputed members of the Bloods subset by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Samantha C. Fasanello and Jason Goldberg of his Criminal Division in Newark.
He also thanked detectives of the Essex County prosecutor’s and sheriff’s officers, Newark and East Orange police, New Jersey State Police detectives and officers of the New Jersey State Department of Corrections for their assistance.
The crime fighters are part of a “supergroup,” of sorts – known as the Violent Crime Initiative (VCI) – that targets thriving criminal organizations in Newark, Paterson and elsewhere in New Jersey.
Sellinger defined the VCI as a “collaborative, multi-agency program designed to combine the resources of New Jersey’s federal, state, and local law enforcement to identify, target, and prosecute violent offenders and criminal organizations” throughout the state.
The Newark version involves those mentioned above, as well as the ATF, the DEA, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Union County Jail, the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations and Intelligence Center/Real Time Crime Center, the state Parole Board and Irvington police.
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