King’s African hair Braiding Barbershop on 86 Main st. was raided yesterday by the special services division. Illegal DVDs and CDs and marijuana were found. Lat week it was the bodega across the street from the Police station. Apparently moving the police station to South Norwalk has not disrupted the business as usual drug dealing along Main st.
From the Hour:
In addition to “several bags” of marijuana and pirated DVDs set up on tables in a back room, police found knockoff Louis Vuitton handbags, Nike sneakers and Timberland boots for sale when they executed a search and seizure warrant Friday afternoon at the shop, said division Officer David Orr.
“You could go get a shape-up, a dime bag (of marijuana), a DVD and a pair of Timberlands — all from the same place,” he said. “It was a one-stop shop for illegal items. The only legal thing going on there was the hair-cutting.”
Orr, who handled the investigation, said the division had been looking into the shop, at 86 Main St., for three or four months in response to “numerous complaints from the businesses that are in the same area.”
Other business owners had noticed more traffic than normal coming in and out of Kings’, as well as open-air marijuana smoking, “a lot of double-parked cars there, a lot of loud music,” he said. “Over the last few months we’d just been getting a steady flow of complaints.”
Plus, known gang members frequent the establishment, Orr said.
The division had raided Kings’ before, on Oct. 23, allegedly recovering marijuana from inside and charging owner Wallace King Jr. with selling it to his hair customers.
On July 5, the division also raided the Perfect Touch barber shop at 155 West Cedar St., Orr said.
“We found a large amount of weed on that one and I think we arrested five people,” he said. “It seems to be a pattern that were seeing with barber shops being associated with known gang memberships and criminal enterprise. The businesses that are around these places are taking note of these things and reporting it to the police.”
Division members seized 490 DVDs and 144 CDs — all pirated — from Kings’, said police spokesman Lt. Paul Resnick.
At 4 p.m., they charged Wallace King Jr., 42, of 13 1/2 Burwell St., Norwalk with possession of unauthorized recordings, illegal sale or possession of master, possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana, illegal possession near a school, possession with intent to sell and intent to sell near a school.
Two shop employees, Jamar Booker, 26, of Bridgeport and Tamara Ward, 22, of Norwalk were charged with possession of unauthorized recordings and illegal sale or possession of master.
“They were all profiting from it,” said Orr, adding that King was dealing the marijuana but “you could buy a DVD from anyone.”
The connection between drugs, drug dealers, and crime is not hard to miss.
Some residents of the Washington Village public housing complex, near where a number of gun-related incidents have been recently reported, have had enough. They say drug-dealers, mostly young men, hang out every day in front of the complex or in Ryan Park across Day Street, and believe those people are the source of the violence.
One resident said the drug dealers have family and cohorts living in the complex who quickly hide the perpetrators when police come around.
Resident Paula Sanchez said her 9-year-old son heard the gunshots that killed Williams and has been having nightmares from which he wakes, screaming.
“I’ve got to find a therapist for him because he don’t want to live here,” she said. “He’s scared. He thinks that somebody’s going to shoot him through the window. I’ve got two little kids. I want a better life for them. I gotta be stuck here because I got no other choice. I can’t afford an apartment in the outside. This has been going too far. Enough is enough.”
Sanchez and others said they don’t care about the “no-snitching” street rule: They’ll call police to protect themselves and their families. They said more police patrols, especially late at night, are needed in the area.
The Nov. 11 shooting of Williams came to police attention at about 1:46 a.m., when several residents called 911 to report hearing shots and a police officer heard them, too.
Williams flagged down a patrol officer who was searching the area and was rushed to Norwalk Hospital by ambulance and from there taken to Yale-New Haven.
Police followed a blood trail from where Williams was found on Water Street to Day and Raymond streets. They found “numerous” fired shell casings from one gun on Day, and from another gun next to Washington Village on Raymond, reported Detective Sgt. Art Weisgerber, who’s in charge of the investigation.
Detectives haven’t identified suspects in the killing, but “we have some leads that we’re following up,” Weisgerber said.
The Detective Bureau recovered “a large amount of evidence” from the scene, he reported.
District B Councilwoman Phyllis Bolden, whose district includes Washington Village, called a news conference Monday at Day and Raymond to urge locals to report crimes to police and to reiterate that city leaders won’t tolerate illegal guns and violent crime.
“We want it to stop,” Bolden said. “The residents are terrified. The quality of life is a really big issue. These people deserve to live in peace and comfort. No one should have to go to bed worried if a bullet’s going to come through their window or a drug dealer’s outside their door.”
source: The Hour, Police: Barbershop was crime bazaar, by Noelle Frampton, November 20, 2007
source: The Hour, Latest shooting death spurs outcry, by Noelle Frampton, November 20, 2007
