Opinion
No. 4580.
December 11, 2008.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Edward J. McLaughlin, J., at suppression hearing; Charles H. Solomon, J., at plea and sentence), rendered May 3, 2005, convicting defendant, of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 41/2 to 9 years, unanimously affirmed.
Steven Banks, The Legal Aid Society, New York (Paul Wiener of counsel), for appellant.
Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Jared Wolkowitz of counsel), for respondent.
Before: Tom, J.P., Andrias, Friedman, Catterson and Acosta, JJ.
Given the testimony of a trained and experienced member of a police street narcotics enforcement unit that, from a rooftop vantage point in a drug-prone location, he observed defendant retrieve two small objects from the area of his buttocks and hand them to a man and a woman in exchange for an unknown sum of United States currency, there is ample support in the record for the hearing court's determination that the officer had probable cause to arrest and search defendant ( see People v Jones, 90 NY2d 835).