Metro

17 arrested in upper Manhattan drug bust

Seventeen members of two upper Manhattan drug crews were busted today for selling cocaine, ecstasy pills and marijuana, authorities said.

The crews, who controlled opposite sides of Vermilyea Avenue between West 207th and Academy streets for the past three years, often worked together to sell drugs out of building lobbies.

The nine-month probe — dubbed “Operation Manhattan Project” — revealed that the crews shared look-outs, who kept a close watch over the street, and at times even customers, according to the Manhattan North Narcotics Bureau and New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan.

The arrests came after undercover detectives netted 1,550 ecstasy pills and seven ounces of cocaine and marijuana resulting from two dozen purchases, authorities said.

Cash payments ranged from $200 to $3,400 and totaled nearly $17,000, according to Brennan’s office.

All the sales took place near Vermilyea Avenue — with the exception of one in which one of the defendants “got nervous and drove the buyer from Inwood to a Bronx warehouse,” according to Brennan’s office.

The NYPD launched the investigation after residents complained about constant foot traffic from drug dealers and customers in several five-story apartment buildings.

The arrests come after last Friday’s massive drug bust in Queens where police said Bloods and Crips street gangs put their beef on ice to form a murderous, drug-pushing business that was later caught on wiretaps.

The gangbangers were among 104 thugs busted for a massive drug-and-gun operation, where some members also brazenly boasted on YouTube rap videos they would “spray the Man” with bullets, according to police.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Queens DA Richard Brown announced the arrests as part of a large-scale probe focused on the “Flocc” street gang. Based in Far Rockaway and Jamaica, the alliance raked in $15,000 a week from peddling guns and narcotics, but were secretly wiretapped for hundreds of hours during the two-year probe dubbed, “Operation Under Siege.”