Police arrested a New Jersey man in the middle of loading a quarter-ton of suspected cartel cocaine into a van at a Queens storage facility last Wednesday, capping what officials are calling the largest cocaine seizure by the NYPD in at least a decade.
Nelson Salcedo, 35, of Englewood, New Jersey, was taken into custody Aug. 26 at the Public Storage facility in Long Island City, where investigators found 12 cardboard boxes inside his vehicle and another seven stacked on the ground nearby. The boxes contained 230 brick-shaped packages weighing a total of 586 pounds, with field tests confirming the substance as cocaine, though NYPD laboratory analysis remains pending.
The arrest punctuated a two-week surveillance operation that began when Drug Enforcement Administration agents, acting on an earlier find in Fort Lee, New Jersey, started tailing Salcedo on Aug. 12. Those agents had discovered $170,000 in cash, a firearm and 33 pounds of cocaine across the Hudson River, then linked Salcedo to a broader interstate trafficking network with connections stretching across New York and New Jersey, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Investigators were initially tipped off while tracking other suspected traffickers moving drugs between New Jersey and Upper Manhattan, Tisch said. Prosecutors allege Salcedo made deliveries on Aug. 12 and Aug. 19, each time transporting boxes from the Queens storage unit to a location near the northern end of Central Park, before officers moved in as he prepared for a third run.
The van Salcedo used is registered to an elevator repair company, though police declined to name the business.
“This was a massive shipment of narcotics, tied to an interstate trafficking network with connections across the country, including in New York and New Jersey. And because of the work of the investigators standing with me today, those drugs will never make it into the streets of New York City,” Tisch said.
The bricks appear to be pure cocaine, and the DEA has said the investigation “traces back to the cartel.” The estimated street value of the seized drugs tops $10 million, making it the largest seizure by the special narcotics prosecutor’s office in more than two decades.
“Think about the scale of what was intercepted here: more than a quarter of a metric ton of cocaine sitting in boxes and ready to move through an illegal distribution network. That is an enormous quantity of narcotics that will never be broken down, that will never be packaged, sold or distributed in our neighborhood,” Tisch added.
Three people have been arrested so far in connection with the trafficking scheme, including Salcedo and two others. The individual who allegedly accepted the deliveries near Central Park has not yet been taken into custody.
Salcedo was arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on first- and second-degree Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance charges.
The multi-agency operation involved the NYPD, DEA and special narcotics prosecutors, with surveillance spanning both sides of the Hudson River before the final takedown at the storage facility.