New York Post – by Kathianne Boniello
A Brooklyn family claims bumbling cops raided their home for drugs and snatched up small capsules they thought contained heroin — but were actually the ashes of their dearly departed patriarch.
Lucia Santiago, 65, was napping in her Bushwick apartment in February 2018 when she awoke to chaos.
“When I opened my eyes I saw . . . six or seven police [officers] in my room,” she recalled. “They told me, ‘Get out of the bed!’”
Cops cuffed the grandmother, her son and a grandson as they searched the Starr Street home, demanding to know where “the guns and drugs” were hidden, the Santiagos claim in a lawsuit.
But all the cops found were “personal memorial urns” containing the cremated remains of Lucia’s husband, Miguel, who died of natural causes in 2016 at age 72, the family says.
The officers believed the ashes, sealed in an airtight capsule inside bullet-sized vials, was heroin, and took the urns as evidence, according to the Brooklyn federal-court lawsuit against the city.
“I said, ‘That’s the ashes of my husband,’ ” Santiago claimed she told one cop.
“‘No,’ he told me, ‘That’s drugs.’ ”
The family divvied up Miguel Santiago’s ashes after his cremation and stored them in the vials, which they would sometimes wear on necklaces in his memory.
“He wanted for his grandkids to have a piece of him, and his children, me and my mother, nephew and son,” Nelson Santiago said of his dad, who once owned a pizzeria in Brooklyn.
Cops conducted the raid in connection to allegations one of Santiago’s grandsons was involved in a gun sale. They charged the grandmother, one of her sons and two grandsons with possession of a controlled substance and ammunition.
The family denied the accusations, including the gun sale, and said the ammo was a few old bullets that Miguel had kept in the house.
The charges were later dismissed.
Lucia Santiago said watching the officers manhandle her husband’s remains brought “unbearable pain.”
Making it worse was the NYPD’s refusal to return the ashes, said Nelson Santiago.
The family fears the ashes have been trashed.
Nelson Santiago said the family was told that “evidence they don’t use is discarded. We don’t know where my dad is at. We’re going on a year.”
The city will review the complaint, a Law Department rep said.
The NYPD said they were at Lucia Santiago’s home executing “a legal search warrant,” and that drugs seized during any raid can’t be returned “because they cannot be legally possessed.”
Police did not say whether the substances taken from the Santiagos were confirmed to be heroin, but said people seeking the return of legal items can get a release from the district attorney’s office and then claim their belongings from the city’s property clerk.
‘Police did not say whether the substances taken from the Santiagos were confirmed to be heroin,’……….it’s been almost a year ya think they would have figured it out by now
‘people seeking the return of legal items can get a release from the district attorney’s office and then claim their belongings from the city’s property clerk.’………sheesh……the family should not have to jump through hoops to get their property back…..it should be returned WITH apology
what the hell is wrong with selling a gun? ‘charged with possession of a controlled substance and ammunition’ ….now illegal to own ammunition? how can they charge with ‘controlled substance’ when that had not been determined at that point? and it’s nobody’s damn business what substances are in my home….so sick of this crap
Basically, its Marshall Law.
ITS BEEN THIS WAY FOR YEARS MARK, THE INTERNET JUST UNCOVERED IT ALL.
Martial Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law
“Making it worse was the NYPD’s refusal to return the ashes, said Nelson Santiago.”
They snorted ’em.
They were SURE they were drugs, rokit syentists that they are.