Posted on 12/13/2017 8:14:54 PM PST by Passaic
Jury selection is underway in the trial of Darien Allen, the former Passaic housing authority chairman and city school district employee who is charged with dealing cocaine and possession of an illegal handgun.
Allen, 47, is due back in Superior Court on Tuesday morning for a second day of jury selection with Judge Sohail Mohammed presiding. More than three years after his arrest, Allen will get the chance to defend himself against drug-dealing and weapons charges that could send him to prison for 10 years or more.
"He maintains he is innocent of all the charges," said his attorney, Miles Feinstein.
Allen sat quietly through the first day of proceedings, held Wednesday, when lawyers for both sides haggled over what questions should be asked of jurors. As has been his custom throughout his three years of hearings, Allen, who is free on bail, came to court alone, without family or friends.
Jury selection began on Thursday and is expected to take at least until midweek. The trial is expected to run through the first week of December. Agents from the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office and the Passaic Police Department raided Allen's Pennington Avenue home on Aug. 5, 2014. Cops allegedly seized 40 grams of cocaine and an unlicensed 9mm handgun, plus plastic baggies, a scale and a bottle of Inositol powder, a B vitamin derivative that authorities believe was used to cut the drugs.
Allen, a churchgoing father of two daughters, was appointed to the Housing Authority of the city of Passaic by then-mayor Alex D. Blanco in 2011. Allen, a member of the men's choir at Calvary Baptist Church in Garfield, was elected chairman of the Housing Authority the following year, continuing his rise in city politics. But his life came crashing down in August 2014.
His arrest embarrassed the city, coming just nine months after a huge sweep at Alfred Speer Village, the city's largest public housing project. A task force composed of officers from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office and the Passaic Police Department set up a surveillance camera in a first-floor stairwell and captured numerous sales of cocaine, crack and marijuana, most of them involving tenants.
Cops moved in around Thanksgiving 2013 and arrested more than 70 people on drug charges. The Housing Authority later evicted 10 families because of their involvement with drugs. Although authorities have maintained that Allen was not dealing drugs to Speer Village tenants, his arrest embarrassed the Housing Authority .
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So where is Passaic?
NJ
Thanks
So I had to go look, no surprises. Guessing democRat.
Northern New Jersey to the north of Newark. Place was once nice about a hundred years ago. It’s been a dump for decades.
I don’t know why they call him dumb!!
So where is Passaic?
Northern NJ near Giant’s Stadium.
So I had to go look, no surprises. Guessing democRat.
Al Sharpton has been a guest speaker there.
He has one of the best criminal lawyers in the state. This guy did get mobsters off!!!!
the calvary baptist church in Garfield, NJ, was rebuilt, it cost millions and fomer governor Jon Corzine paid for it!! all for votes!!
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