Police officer sentenced to 10 years in prison in federal date rape drug trafficking case
An officer with the New York Police Department has been convicted of trafficking massive quantities of date rape drugs to the U.S. was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.
John Cicero “spent years betraying his former law enforcement partners, enriching himself, and endangering the community by importing GBL,” a date-rape drug, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
“Thanks to the tireless efforts of law enforcement, Cicero will serve a substantial sentence in prison for his callous crimes.”
Cicero, 40, played “a prominent and leadership role” in the scheme to transport the dangerous liquid date-rape drug from China and methamphetamine from Mexico, the feds say. He pleaded guilty in October.
The lifelong Westchester County resident trafficked the drug throughout Westchester County and New York City from 2017 through 2020, including in Hell’s Kitchen and Midtown around Penn Station.
In 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 6.6 kilos of GBL from China bound for an apartment that belonged to Cicero’s parents. Cicero’s phone records turned up the name of a meth supplier in Mexico, and pictures of kilos of meth on a scale, court papers show.
The ex-cop traded stolen identities to pay for luxury hotel rooms and other services on top of the drug trafficking, authorities said. Cicero was busted at the luxury Andaz Wall Street Hotel in February 2020, where he was staying under a fake name, Alexander Brandt, and storing meth and GBL in the room, the feds said.
While he was a police officer, Cicero was accused of slamming a man’s head into the ground as he lay splayed and handcuffed on a Bronx sidewalk. He pleaded guilty to the assault in 2010, and was sentenced to 400 hours of community service.
Cicero’s lawyers said his conviction in the Bronx case and subsequent departure from the NYPD led him to suffer significant mental health issues, which they say are the root of his personal problems.
“Mr. Cicero is an individual who lost his way in life, became addicted to prescribed opioids and later illegal drugs, suffered significant depression that went untreated following the loss of his career, and self-medicated with illegal drugs in response,” said one of his lawyers, Steven Feldman.
Feldman urged White Plains Federal Judge Kenneth Karas to impose a five-year sentence and said Cicero, who has been jailed since his arrest, has never met his baby son. Also, Feldman said, Cicero’s father died while he awaited the resolution of his case.
“He knew at the time that what he was doing was wrong, but acted through the clouded brain of a drug addict,” the lawyer wrote.
Besides the prison term, Karas ordered Cicero to serve four years post-release supervision and pay more than $216,000 in fines.
