NYPD cop from LI admits to robbing dealers

A Long Island man who worked as a police officer with the NYPD for eight years pleaded guilty Monday to being part of an armed-robbery crew that ripped off drug dealers.

Emmanuel Tavarez, 31, of Deer Park, was accused of using his police badge and falsified search warrants to stage phony raids on dealers during which drugs and money were stolen. The scheme involved hundreds of robberies that netted 250 kilograms of cocaine and $1 million in drug proceeds, officials said.

Tavarez, most recently a member of the New York City Police Department's Housing Bureau Viper Unit in Queens, faces a sentence of up to life in prison after pleading guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to robbery conspiracy, conspiracy to deal in cocaine and heroin, and use of a firearm in those crimes.

In his guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Viktor Pohorelsky on the day his trial was scheduled to begin, Tavarez admitted to participating in only two of the robberies -- one in Nassau County and one in Connecticut.

"I participated in the robberies of drug dealers -- of narcotics for money," Tavarez told the judge. "I was a lookout."

Defense lawyer Raymond Colon later called the case a tragedy for Tavarez -- a former professional baseball prospect and married father of a newborn -- and his family. Guidelines call for a sentence of 292 to 365 months on the robbery and drug charges, and a mandatory minimum of 10 years consecutively on the firearms charge.

Colon said that at sentencing scheduled for July 29 the defense will argue that Tavarez was lured down a bad road by people he trusted, whose involvement was more extensive.

Prosecutors have alleged that Tavarez's role went beyond being a lookout, charging that he restrained a victim with handcuffs in one fake raid and obtained NYPD raid jackets and other equipment so his crew would appear to be real cops.