Feds Charge 12 in East Harlem Drugs & Guns Conspiracy

The recent announcement by US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton and Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI Christopher G. Raia that 12 members of an East Harlem-based narcotics crew had been charged in a wide-ranging drugs and guns conspiracy in the Johnson Houses NYCHA projects is more than just another crime story.

“For years, these 12 defendants allegedly utilized the Johnson Houses to facilitate their open-air drug market and generate an illicit revenue stream,” said Raia. “This joint investigation with NYPD Manhattan North Narcotics dismantled an alleged trafficking conspiracy disrupting the safety of a public housing development with a continual revolving door of drugs and firearms.”

Of the dozen defendants, eight have nicknames: Brian Gonzalez, a.k.a. “Bmakk”; Brian Nin, a.k.a. “BDot”; Bryan Cowan, a.k.a. “Chapo”; Jafari Hopwah, a.k.a. “Baby Wuu”; Ira Boyce, a.k.a. “Zaza”; Daniel Jones, a.k.a. “D Cash”; Richard Farquharson, a.k.a. “Smooth”; and Quadir Davonish, a.k.a. “Skii Dotty.”

Those charged only by their government names include Jose Hernandez, Jahdeen Williams, Percy Carrion, and Caesar Hernandez.

Notably, the grand jury indictment begins with a definition and history: “The ‘Johnson Houses’—a colloquial name for the James Weldon Johnson Residential Community—is a public housing development under the control of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Named for a Harlem Renaissance author and civil rights activist, the Johnson Houses consist of approximately 10 apartment buildings, which are home to hundreds of families in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood.” Every day, the indictment continued, these defendants “degraded the quality of life for Johnson House residents by selling drugs in common areas including lobbies, courtyards, and a children’s playground.”

The Johnson Houses fills most of the blocks from East 112th to East 115th streets and from Park Avenue to Third Avenue, with public schools P.S./M.S. 57 claiming the northwest corner.

Before Johnson Houses, which opened in 1948, the area was largely residential, including brownstones and large six-story apartment buildings. Surviving buildings on the north side of East 115th Street suggest what the area was like before urban renewal. The Third Avenue El made that side of the project noisy until service ended in 1955.

As for James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), he was a writer (Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, God’s Trombones), songwriter (including with his brother John Rosamond Johnson, of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”), diplomat (serving as US consul in both Venezuela and Nicaragua) and civil rights activist, among other things.

Meanwhile, from at least in or about 2022 up to and including December 2025, the defendants used a building within the Johnson Houses—and that building’s adjoining courtyard—”as an open drug market in which they sold a variety of controlled substances, including crack cocaine and fentanyl, to customers who streamed into the building to buy the drugs.”