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88 arrested, drugs, $$ seized in raids

Narcotics officers were plenty busy yesterday all across the city, seizing a total of more than $2 million in drugs and arresting dozens of suspects in two busts.

Some of the hundreds of packets of heroin that were confiscated in raids yesterday.
Some of the hundreds of packets of heroin that were confiscated in raids yesterday.Read moreSTEVEN M. FALK / Staff photographer

Narcotics officers were plenty busy yesterday all across the city, seizing a total of more than $2 million in drugs and arresting dozens of suspects in two busts.

Capt. Debra Frazier, head of the police Narcotics Field Unit, said police and agents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration started serving warrants at 6 a.m. in parts of North Philadelphia, Fairhill and Kensington, and didn't look back.

By nightfall, 88 suspected drug dealers were behind bars, and police had confiscated more than $80,000 worth of crack cocaine, marijuana and pills, $13,000 in cash and 12 firearms, Frazier said.

Five of the properties police served warrants yesterday were also hit last month, when narcotics cops made another series of daylong raids in the area.

"They were still doing business, even though we got them last month," said Police Chief Inspector Theresa Peay-Clark. "We want to work with L&I [the Department of Licenses & Inspections] and the D.A.'s office to seize all five properties."

Another surprise for cops yesterday: a mother-son drug-dealing team.

Peay-Clark said police served a warrant a house on Indiana Avenue near 10th Street in Fairhill, only to find an 11-year-old boy walking out the home, his pockets stuffed with 141 packets of heroin.

The boy and his mother, Bernice Butts, were both arrested, Peay-Clark said.

Meanwhile, three men were arrested in Northeast Philadelphia with more than $2 million worth of heroin that they had intended to deliver to the North Philadelphia and Kensington area, said Deputy Commissioner William Blackburn.

Both sting operations made a difference to residents who have grown weary of incessant criminal activity, Blackburn said. *