Cop gets 30 years for murder-for-hire scheme on behalf of drug traffickers who shipped cocaine to a daycare center

A former member of the Puerto Rico Police Department has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for engaging in a litany of crimes that he undertook while secretly working on behalf of drug traffickers.

The United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced on Thursday that disgraced former officer William Vazquez-Baez would be spending the next three decades behind bars after he pleaded guilty to one count of participating in a racketeering conspiracy and one count of participating in a conspiracy to commit murder for hire.

According to the SDNY, Vazquez-Baez committed these crimes while working on behalf of a drug-trafficking organization that "distributed thousands of kilograms of cocaine, including cocaine that was shipped from Puerto Rico to New York and then distributed out of a Bronx daycare center."

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U.S. Attorney Damian Williams delivered a scathing assessment of Vazquez-Baez's actions in a statement announcing the former officer's sentence.

"William Vazquez Baez abused his position as a police officer to help a vicious drug organization distribute massive amounts of cocaine and massacre citizens he had sworn to protect," he said. "Today Vazquez-Baez was rightly sentenced to 30 years in prison for his horrific crimes."