A Manhattan grand jury has been impaneled to hear evidence that about 10 men connected to the city’s five organized crime families loaded as much as 250 tons of scrap metal onto trucks and carted the debris to a scrap metal yard in Deer Park, on Long Island, and two others in New Jersey, officials said. The investigation was first reported in the New York Post on Friday. Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik confirmed the report.
He also dispelled worries among law-enforcement officials that the stolen debris might have contained human remains or other physical evidence. Kerik said the scrap metal had been recovered, returned to a Staten Island landfill and examined by federal agents.
“There is an ongoing investigation being conducted by the Organized Crime Control Bureau and the Trade Waste Commission with regard to three different locations that we’ve determined material has been removed from the site and taken to,” Kerik said.
It was not the first time there have been reports of looting at the disaster site, from which 133,000 tons of debris in nearly 9,000 truckloads have been removed since Sept. 11. Last week, members of the New York National Guard said shops and restaurants in the retail concourse beneath 5 World Trade Center had been looted.
In the aftermath of the attack, chaos reigned at the site and scores of dump trucks, 18-wheelers and garbage haulers were pressed into service to cart the rubble to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. One investigator said some of the trucks may have been able to slip away unnoticed to other dumping sites.
A law-enforcement official who has spent time investigating the region’s scrap metal industry said large pieces of metal would have to be melted down to be marketable. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is supervising the case, declined to comment.
According to The Post, investigators discovered 75 tons of debris at Mid-Island Scrap Metal in Deer Park. They found an additional 180 tons at two New Jersey scrap yards that have not yet been identified.