A disgraced East Village cop is going to prison for 15 and a half years after admitting today that he paid for his pain killer addiction by swiping four 9 mm guns from his co-workers’ police lockers and selling them to a drug ring.
Nicholas Mina, 31, has been held without bail since his July arrest, and he remained rear-cuffed in his orange jump suit as he admitted to the drug-fueled betrayals of his fellow officers.
In addition to three Glocks and a Smith & Wesson he’d taken from lockers this spring at the Ninth Precinct, Mina admitted to selling his own, private-use Glock.
Authorities have called the crime “shocking– ” and had caught Mina on wiretaps talking about taking and selling still more guns.
“It shocks the conscience that the [NYPD] Firearms Investigation Unit under covers had to put their lives in danger in order to spot another officer from putting [police] guns out on the street,” assistant district attorney Chris Prevost had said at Mina’s arraignment.
Mina sold all five guns to Woodhaven Queens-based kingpin Ivan Chavez, who fingered Mina in open court for selling him the five guns when he pleaded guilty in September. Chavez has ben promised 20 years prison for conspiracy and firearms sales.
Mina, a cop for four and a half years, was so desperate for pain killers, he sometimes called Chavez while he was at the precinct.
Chavez had already heavily defaced the serial numbers on all five transferred guns when they were recovered from his apartment. The numbers were later restored in the police ballistics lab.
“Did you sell those four pistols plus an additional pistol that belonged to you?” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin asked Mina in court today. The ex-cop nodded and said “Yes” in a soft voice.
Mina pleaded guilty to nine felonies, the top count of which was conspiracy for working with Chavez. The ninth plea was for selling methadone shortly before the arrest.
The Chavez conspiracy has also embroiled a dot-com millionaires, Jennifer Sultan, 38, who allegedly sold Chavez some 60,000 pain pills also recovered in his apartment.
Mina’s sentencing was set for Nov. 7.
“As a New York City police officer, Nicholas Mina had the duty to protect citizens, but instead, he put their lives, and the lives of his fellow officers, at risk,” Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. said afterward in a written statement. “Despite the continued serious problem of gun violence in our city, this defendant gave criminals easy access to dangerous weapons.”
Vance credited Mina’s arrest to NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau and Firearms Investigation Unit, along with the DA’s own Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit.