Brooklyn Gang Leader Gets 9 Years For Trafficking Crack, Feds Say

EAST NEW YORK, BROOKLYN — The gang leader who operated a large-scale drug network in the Cypress Hills Houses and supplied crack, cocaine and heroin to dealers in New York and in Maine was sentenced in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday, prosecutors said.

Tyriek Hankins faces a nine-year sentence for distributing illegal narcotics from the NYCHA housing complex at Sutter and Euclid avenues in East New York between 2015 until his arrest in June 2016, federal prosecutors announced.

The arrests were the result of a federal and city investigation, launched in November 2015, into two Crips gang subgroups — the Back Side and the Team Side — thought to be the source of several shootings and murders at the the Cypress Houses, prosecutors said.

Investigators discovered Hankins — with his accomplices Anthony Brown and Isiah Sadler —supplied cocaine to distributors and worked with another crew who cooked and sold crack, said prosecutors.

The Cypress Hills crews also distributed more than 280 grams of crack that was sold in Brooklyn and upstate New York in just five months, prosecutors said.

Ten suspects were arrested in June 2016, and Hankins — who pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute cocaine in April 2017 — was the last to be sentenced, prosecutors said.

Brown and Sadler both pleaded guilty to conspiracy and were sentenced to 16 years and and 14 years jail time respectively, prosecutors said.

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