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Four Alleged Gun Traffickers Busted as Part of Year-Long NYPD Sting

By DNAinfo Staff on July 20, 2011 5:10pm

Four alleged Upper Manhattan gun dealers were indicted.
Four alleged Upper Manhattan gun dealers were indicted.
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MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Four alleged Upper Manhattan gun traffickers — including a convicted murderer — have been indicted as part of a year-long undercover NYPD sting that took 40 illegal weapons off the street, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jose Alvarez, 35, was charged with dealing guns in Washington Heights, The Bronx and Yonkers, according to prosecutors. He sold 26 handguns and one shotgun to undercover officers, according to the 57-count indictment.

In a separate case announced Wednesday in which 13 guns were recovered, James Carter, 45, Jermaine Carson, 24 and Lyamas Slater, 26, were charged with weapons possession. They pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Carter, an ex-con who served significant prison time in Pennsylvania for a 1990 murder and has other felony convictions, was charged with running a gun trade out of his St. Nicholas Avenue apartment, in Harlem, prosecutors said. There, Carson and Slater each allegedly sold guns on Carter's behalf.

Carter was ordered held without bail, while his alleged accomplices were each held on $25,000 cash or $100,000 bond. They are due back in court on Aug. 12.

"These guns will no longer threaten our neighborhoods or be available for dangerous and illegal purposes," DA Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement.

Gun violence accounted for 18 of the 33 homicides committed in Manhattan in 2011, the DA said.