Washington Heights Drug Ring Sold Cocaine at Cold Cut Counter, Police Say

A multimillion-dollar narcotics operation in which buyers were allegedly able to purchase cocaine along with cold cuts at the counter of a meat market in Upper Manhattan has been broken up, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, announced yesterday.

Police have arrested 25 suspects, including a man police allege is the operation's ringleader, Rafael Rodriguez, on drug charges. The arrests should put an end to an alleged $4 million a year cocaine venture that was partly based out of the Fiesta Meat Market on Broadway in Washington Heights, Mr. Kelly said. Police allegedly confiscated more than $175,000 and 4.5 kilograms of cocaine, Mr. Kelly said.

The investigation, in which undercover detectives claim to have made 24 documented narcotics purchases, charges that the operation sold drugs from the meat market by day and allegedly changed venues to a nearby pool hall, D.D. Café Billiard Sport on West 152nd Street, at night.

Other outposts included a clothing store, Yaharra, that police say served as an unofficial headquarters, and a bodega, Broadway's Finest Grocery, from which the ring allegedly purchased packaging materials and a substance used to adulterate the cocaine.