For more than three years, public housing tenants of the James Weldon Johnson Houses in East Harlem have lived in a state of terror wrought by a crew of narcotics dealers who transformed their NYCHA development into an open-air drug market, prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
The dealers took over the lobby of one building at Johnson and stored their wares in empty apartments, utility boxes used by NYCHA maintenance crews — even inside a NYCHA mailbox. They sold crack cocaine and fentanyl openly in the courtyard between buildings.
“It’s the norm. There’s nothing ‘Oh my God’ about it. I’m used to it,” said Joyce Gonzalez, 49, who’s lived at Johnson off and on for most of her life. She said she saw the FBI going in and out of the Lexington Avenue building the dealers took over around 8:15 a.m. Wednesday morning, noting that there were people there waiting to buy from the dealers even though the building was “infested” with FBI agents…