By Joe Anuta
Two reputed leaders of the Bloods gang in Far Rockaway pleaded guilty to charges of drug trafficking and firearm possession Friday in what the Queens district attorney called “a major blow” to the street gang’s cocaine operations on the peninsula.
Robert “Dead Eye” Baley, 32, believed to be the head of the Far Rockaway branch of the Bloods at the Edgemere Houses, admitted that he sold cocaine and had an illegal weapon, the DA said. Akeem “AK” Addison, 29, his suspected lieutenant, entered a guilty plea to having a loaded semiautomatic handgun.
Both will be imprisoned upstate following a sentencing hearing Nov. 19, according to acting Supreme Court Justice Barry Kron.
By pleading guilty, Baley, who is an aspiring rapper known as “The Boss of Far Rock,” reduced his sentence from 15 years to 8 1/2, and Addison cut his from seven years to six. They will be spending less time in prison than that if a jury had convicted them, but the plea nonetheless marks a significant gain in the ongoing fight to end gang-related crime in the area, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
“The conviction of these two defendants is a major blow to the Bloods street gang and helps reinforce the message that law enforcement has no tolerance for those who terrorize the communities in which they live,” Brown said in a statement.
But the blow extended much further than the pleas of the two gang members. Baley and Addison were just the latest to appear in a courtroom after a sweeping drug raid in 2007 that netted 34 suspects allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking operations in Far Rockaway — and they have slowly been working their way through the court system.
“This case has been a long time in coming,” said a spokesman for the district attorney, who added that the NYPD’s Queens Gang Squad conducted the far-reaching sting, dubbed “Operation Bloodhound,” in 2007.
The sting resulted in the arrest of key players suspected of being involved in the Bloods’ $15,000-a-week drug deals throughout the neighborhood.
