By Gus Saltonstall
A raid by the city Sheriff’s Office Tuesday morning shut down an Upper West Side smoke shop that had a secret trap door used to move drugs into the store, according to City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who did a walkthrough of the shop in the afternoon.
The secret door was hidden behind the counter at Zookiez Smoke Shop on Amsterdam Avenue between West 81st and 82nd streets, Brewer told the Rag.
The trap door led to a room with cannabis product inside of it, which was the top floor of a makeshift apartment connected to the smoke shop’s building. At least two of the store’s employees lived in the connected apartment, according to officials.
The apartment, which had multiple floors, also contained stored cannabis, according to Brewer and a video seen by the Rag, in which a New York Sheriff’s Office official is describing the situation to Mayor Eric Adams, while inside of the store.
“When you went behind the counter, there is a trap door, a small one,” said Brewer. “When you go down the stairs to that space, you enter an apartment full of product. Boxes of cannabis product.”
“They were packaging product and then sending it through this trap door to individuals working in the store,” Brewer continued. “It’s just a totally illegal operation.”
Zookiez Smoke Shop, which was previously named Zootiez, does not have a license to sell cannabis. In recent weeks a multiagency enforcement campaign has shuttered dozens of smoke shops in the city for illegal sales of cannabis and tobacco products.
In the video, a sheriff’s officer can be heard explaining the connected apartment operation to Mayor Adams as “five to six rooms where people are living in, and also space for storage and for processing the actual cannabis flower.”
The apartment, which Brewer described as “dirty and nasty,” appeared to have flooded during Monday’s heavy downpour, she said. City fire officials and Department of Building officers are expected to inspect the building in the coming days.
The Sheriff’s Office padlocked multiple illegal smoke shops on the Upper West Side on Tuesday morning, including Zookiez, according to Brewer.
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Remind me again why I respect the law. Unfortunately I was raised by parents who taught me right from wrong.
Not unfortunate, Bananas Foster. Your parents were right.
Unbelievable.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. This is why illegal shops need to be shut down. They’re packaging goods – in a “dirty and nasty” environment – to be sold to unsuspecting customers . Glad they were able to open the curtain and expose how the behind the scenes works in these illegal shops. Good riddance!
It took over 3 years to close down this operation between 81st ans82nd street, around the corner from the 20th precint. They sold millions of dollars in product the past few years
Wait, the store with the giant neon Cannabis sign has weed inside? NO!
And what is being done to the landlord who undoubtedly knew about the illegally connected apartment?
Precisely. Hear no evil, speak no evil…
Let me get this straight. The illegal weed store is breaking even more laws? I am truly shocked. Perhaps an audit is in order since I bet they aren’t paying taxes. Do you think the workers have filed I9s? I know Weed is the future so we can’t make life too difficult here but imagine this was any other illegal business, would they be given a blind eye?
That is an excellent idea…but it could be expanded. Make any LL who rents to an illegal business become responsible for the taxes that are determined to be due and owing by the unlawful operation. That would go a long way to curtailing LLs from turning a blind eye and renting to these operations.
There are landlords who are told that the space will be used as a normal convenience store and sign a lease stating that no marijuana sales are allowed. Then they switch on the landlord once it is too late and then turn the store into a weed shop. Some of the weed shop owners actually operate normal convenience stores under different corporations and presented in their lease proposal as such.
Fine, but once they are found in violation of a lease agreement, isn’t it the right and duty of the landlord to evict the tenant?
Then if they evict the tenant, the smoke shop will stop paying while the process drags on for months. Even if there is a judgement awarding money, the chance the landlord sees that is next to none. So now, the landlord will be out tens of thousands of dollars. Better to let the city padlock the smoke shops and then kick them out.
We need much, much harsher punishments for miscreants. And I use the word, “harsher,,” advisedly. These inveterate, antisocial individuals need to be removed from society. Think of the children. Send them to work camps or get rid of them in some other way. Enough is enough. The generality of citizens should not be held hostage to the so-called “rights” of perps not to be put into Rikers.
Put them all into Rikers or into work camps upstate. Children, mothers, workers should NOT be subject day after day to threats from drug addicts, crayzy people, and young males on motorbikes looking for the thrill of robbing other citizens.
I live nearby. Kids going in and out all the time.
Why didn’t these exist from the 60s to 2020, and now they are all over the place? What changed?
The moment NY State announced that weed would become legal, criminals knew drug laws would no longer be enforced.
Keep it up until they are all shut down!!
Responsible adult users of cannabis can now go to a licensed regulated dispensary (and there are now a few on UWS) or they can continue to support the same black market dealer they have used since the 1980’s.
“Responsible” adult users, who, since the 1980s, violated well known laws, supported the illegal, often violent, business of others, who broke even more laws, and are now encouraged to go support the newly minted “legal” business of some of those same people who violated the laws back then, but will now SURELY be completely on the level.
Just. So. Responsible!
Get rid of all these smoke shops and illegal weed shops. Nothing good comes from them. The legislators should have anticipated this when they passed this.
Why would you want to close a legal weed shop? “Nothing good” can come from any type of store. Should we also close down CVS and Macys because bad people terrorize employees when they go wilding in the stores?
Secret apartment selling weed is unequivocally urbane and awesome
Those brave sheriffs! Rescuing us from the depradations of those evil … weed dealers! I feel so much safer now! Thank god that weed shop got shut down! My goodness! So much evil hereabouts nowadays!
No doubt Adams will turn this store into the next safe drug addict hand out center / illegals immigrant free debit card hand out location. 🙄. Priorities in the city are so jacked.
I think these weed stores should all be able to get outdoor “smoking sheds” permits instead of them only going to restaurants. Only fair thing to do.! After all, the pandemic was tough on them too.
What’s the big deal? It’s a legal product.
And what’s the big deal that they had a “trap door.” So what.
They are not a of licensed cannabis dispensary. Beer is legal, can I open a bar without a license?
You have to have a license to sell it. And with regulation comes in theory more safeguards against people buying a drug different from — much stronger, or whatever — what they think they’re getting.
Literally the wild west these days. A trap door!
Why does it take several years to close this down – as the 20th precinct is just around the corner? Does anything works anymore in America?
The NYPD does not enforce Marijuana sales, these laws are enforced by the New York City Sheriff’s Office.
OPOD, does the NYPD enforce the law for other drugs? Or are all illegal drug sales prosecuted by the Sheriff’s Office? When did weed enforcement become the Sheriff’s job, and why?
Adams and Brewer using this as a photo op is so cynical. Stores were mostly allowed to perpetuate for years while state lawmakers twiddled their thumbs in coming up with a licensing protocol. Now that there are state licenses yielding fees and sales taxes to protect the politicians are all in. It all boils down to money and nothing more.
@nycityny
Brewer has tried to close unlicensed shops for months. It’s NYS who screwed up.
If these were illegal, that means a crime was committed, so why not a criminal arrest and trial and imprisonment? That just may solve the problem.