New Haven Independent

Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Officer Joe Avery:

As he was getting into his car at 6:30 on Friday morning at Ferry and Dover Streets, a man was approached by a man with a gun. The gunman took off in the 2000 Honda.

A LoJack transmitter in the car led police to the vehicle two and a half hours later. A state police K9 unit was called in to sniff the Honda, found in the rear of a residence on Springside Avenue in West Rock. The dog traced a scent from the car to an apartment at 35 Springside Ave.

SWAT searched the apartment, but didn’t find the suspect.

In other police news, according to Avery:

Police dogs were also called in for a robbery of the Whalley Avenue Radio Shack at 1:16 p.m. on Thursday. Two masked and gloved men with handguns robbed the store then fled on foot. State police dogs tracked a scent taken from the robbers’ clothing, which was found behind the business. A search turned up no leads.

At 9:15 on Thursday evening, a man told officers that he’d been robbed of three dollars and a cell phone at Chapel and State Streets. An 18-year-old was apprehended after a short foot chase by Officer Corry Kozuch, but the victim wasn’t able to ID him. The 18-year-old was arrested for interfering.

Following up on a report that a man on a bike was retrieving a handgun from under a rear porch on Judson Street, cops “flooded the area” and arrested the man at 10:22 p.m. on Thursday. The 18-year-old was arrested on narcotics and weapons charges.

“One Good Flush”

The police’s Tactical Narcotic Unit (TNU) executed two search warrants on Thursday, yielding four drug-related arrests. One suspect was caught while trying to flush heroin down the toilet.

Cops first hit a third floor apartment on Grand Avenue, the subject of a lengthy investigation of marijuana sales. The search began at 4:30 p.m. and included the car of a 48-year-old man identified as a drug dealer. Police arrested the man and found a small quantity of marijuana, packaging material, an electric “stun gun,” and ammunition in his apartment. Cops seized his car, a 2006 Hummer valued at $25,000.

At the scene, police also found and arrested a 24-year-old man wanted for an assault in Hamden.

Then, at 6:20 p.m., the TNU went to Norton Street where detectives had been investigating a house being used as “a mid-level heroin distribution hub.” They were targeting a 45-year-old man wanted for sale of narcotics.

After a forced entry into the house, police found their suspect on the second floor.

Then they heard a toilet flushing.

Heading down to the basement, cops found a woman flushing heroin down the toilet. She had been cutting up a shipment of heroin and packaging it in $10 bags for street sale, said Lt. John Velleca, who heads the TNU.

Hearing the cops upstairs, she had dumped a quantity of loose heroin in the toilet and flushed it. Police caught her as she was trying to flush the bags she’d already packed up. “She’d already gotten one good flush in,” Velleca said.

The lieutenant said it’s impossible to say how much evidence the woman was able to destroy. “We’re thinking it’s a considerable amount,” he said.

Police seized a large quantity of heroin packaged for street level sale, scales, grinders, thousands of empty glassine bags, razor blades, cutting agents, devices to conceal narcotics, $760.00 dollars, and drug paraphernalia. Some of the heroin was recovered from the basement toilet.

Velleca said that the drug dealers receive packages of raw heroin in sandwich-bagged packages “roughly the size of a baseball.” The drugs are then cut with additives to triple or quadruple the amount that can be sold.

Velleca said the investigation of the operation is ongoing and that he hopes that it will lead to higher-level drug arrests. “Inevitably that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said.

For block-by-block year-to-date crime info, and daily crime maps, check the Independent’s crime log.