A group of migrants was said to be squatting at a house in the Bronx, with a cache of guns and drugs found in the home's basement — where a child was also living.
Surveillance video showed eight people being escorted by police in handcuffs on Hull Avenue in the Norwood neighborhood during the last week of March. But cameras did not show what NYPD Chief John Chell said was discovered by officers in the basement.
That's where police encountered one man armed with a gun and "another man with a gun under his armpit," according to Chell, who said the second man was "reaching for that gun when they grab him.”
There were four guns, including a ghost gun, found in the basement, along with drugs, Chell said. A 7-year-old child was also found to be living down there with the alleged squatters, left in the care of one of the people arrested. The child was not hurt.
Chell described it as a "fast moving situation involving people with firearms in close quarters. Extremely dangerous."
Police said the people taken into custody were migrants from Venezuela who were squatting at the home. A neighbor told NBC New York that the guns and drugs found by officers are disturbing, but he wasn't surprised but the discovery.
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"There are a lot of people living there. A lot of traffic. Going in and out," said Alfredo Munoz. "It’s a quiet neighborhood. In the 40 years I’ve been here, we have never had police problems, hedonism, anything like that."
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Chief said of those arrested had prior run-ins with the law involving guns and shouldn’t have been on the street in the first place.
"A compliment to our District Attorney Darcel Clark. She understood the severity of this. She asked for bail for all eight occupants. Unfortunately six of the eight walked out of the courtroom," the chief said, imploring stakeholders to put differences aside and work out a solution together.
"Let’s sit at the table. Let’s fix the process because when the process works it works well for everybody. We are all about redemption, second chances," said Chell. "But we are also have to be about putting bad people in jail so they can’t harm our cops and let alone our community."
