East side patrol cops Marco Correa and Bleck Joseph made two return trips to Smith Avenue looking for a suspect in a weapons complaint.
Here’s what happened next, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman:
Correa and Joseph first went to Smith Avenue two days ago to respond to a complaint about a man brandishing a black 9 mm handgun at the Sunset Ridge apartment complex. They knew the man. They knew he drove a black Lexus or white SUV. He wasn’t around.
They returned the next day. The man still wasn’t around. The black Lexus was. They ran the plates, confirmed his ownership, learned the registration had expired.
So they returned again Wednesday afternoon. Parked next to the Lexus was a white SUV. Later they saw a driver in the SUV start to leave the complex.
“Oddly,” Hartman wrote in a release, “The driver stopped without being pulled over. He got out and headed toward the officers’ cruiser.”
The cops got out to speak with the man, who indeed turned out to be the suspect.
The driver declined a request to search the SUV. “Do I have a warrant?” he asked them.
The cops called for Officer Martin Feliciano to bring the department police dog named Axe. Axe appeared, sniffed the presence of drugs.
“The search was on.”
It revealed seven bags of crack, a bullet, a napkin-wrapped bullet, a digital scale, and the 9 mm. The cops confiscated all that, along with drug-packaging materials and $500 “suspect of being ill-gotten.”
The cops confiscated the SUV. The arrested the driver, who’s 37, on the following charges: having a weapon in a motor vehicle, carrying a pistol without a permit, possession of a controlled substance , possession of narcotics with the intent to sell, operation of motor vehicle with tinted windows without a tinting sticker and operation of motor vehicle under suspension.
Good find NHPD! It's interesting how this man had a pistol without a permit, yet CT and other states continue to try and pass laws that do nothing to punish people who carry illegally. Laws do nothing for people who do not intend on following the law. They need to start keeping people in prison for a longer period of time and enforce the penalties for carrying a pistol without a permit.