Metro

Former cop gets 20 years for robbing gangs, holding kids at gunpoint

A former NYPD officer was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison today for robbing drug gangs and holding children at gunpoint as a part of violent stickup crew that operated along the East Coast.

Jorge Arbaje-Diaz, 33, admitted that he wore his official police uniform and badge, wielding his service pistol during some of the stick-ups and eventually stealing more than 1,650 pounds of cocaine and $4 million in illicit drug proceeds from dealers.

“You are the poster boy for a sentence that will deter others from the kinds of acts you engaged in,” Judge Nicholas Garaufis said, as he pronounced sentence in Brooklyn federal court.

The judge rejected a plea from the disgraced officer’s defense attorney for a 10-year sentence, pointing out that Arbaje-Diaz had wantonly betrayed the public’s trust and violated his sworn oath to uphold the law to instead engage in “extreme and unimaginable conduct” as a police officer between 2003-2008.

Arbaje-Diaz, who worked in the department’s transit bureau patrolling subways in The Bronx, was motivated by “untrammeled, unlimited, unchecked greed,” Garaufis said.

mmaddux@nypost.com