Providence police seize guns, drugs, arrest three men

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PROVIDENCE -- The Providence police seized seven loaded guns and kilos of cocaine, fentanyl and heroin after searching a Sisson Street residence Tuesday.

They also arrested three men on drug and gun charges. They were identified as Ernes Bautista Garcia, 29; Luis Mercedes, 25; and Vladimir Brito, 26.

The police said the narcotics unit’s three-month investigation disrupted a major narcotics-dealing enterprise, taking more than a million dollars worth of drugs and an arsenal of high-powered weaponry out of circulation.

The guns and drugs that police displayed on a table at headquarters Wednesday — a shotgun, an AK-47, two rifles, three handguns, an unusually large amount of ammunition, a kilo of cocaine, 2,000 pills, a kilo of heroin and two kilos of fentanyl — represented the potential for widespread violence and devastation.

“We’re very fortunate to have these off the street,” Major David Lapatin said. “It’s just another battle that we go through.”

According to Lapatin, members of the narcotics unit working on a three-month investigation stopped a vehicle, seizing 500 grams of cocaine. They later got a warrant for a Sisson Street residence, where they believed the men were running their operation.

At first, one piece of furniture also seized in the probe looks unassuming: a slightly dinged wooden table that wouldn’t look out of place in the home of a 20-something. But trained investigators could tell there was “dead space” in the back of the table where the drawers didn’t reach. As investigators looked closer, they discovered that the top of the table slid off sideways, revealing a hidden area. It was filled with drugs.

“That amount of fentanyl would kill a lot of people,” said Col. Hugh T. Clements Jr., the chief of the Providence police.

The three men were relatively unknown to detectives before this investigation, police said.

Detectives were still investigating the background of the guns, and whether they’d been used in any previous violent crimes in the city.

“Unfortunately, we see too often this kind of operation making a lot of money, preying on those people that are addicted to an opioid,” Public Safety Commissioner Steven M. Paré said. “At this level, it becomes violent because they protect territory, and they’re making a lot of money.”