10 YEARS FOR HEROIN CARTEL POWER PLAYER

TRENTON -- Family and friends of an alleged heroin cartel
power-player brought down by 2004's "Operation Golden Triangle"
begged a judge yesterday for leniency, claiming he's not the big-time
drug dealer the attorney general's office made him out to be.

Judge Maryann Bielamowicz just wasn't buying it.

Yesterday, the former county prosecutor sentenced Robert Cashwell,
34, of Elizabeth, to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for
bringing 8,950 decks of heroin into the city for resale June 25, 2004.

The cartel member must serve 42 months before he's eligible for
parole, the judge ruled.

Teary-eyed family members and co-workers asked for a probationary
sentence or for the high-school dropout to be put in a work-release
program because he has a solid job, mentors city youths, is the
father of four, helps his dad with his heart condition and has
"really turned his life around," said his mother Rhoda Hollingsworth.

"You can come in here and call him a great father, a good husband and
a good provider, but I don't know if anyone here seriously spent any
matter of time to consider what devastating consequences the use of
9,000 decks of heroin has on the people of this city," Bielamowicz
scolded Cashwell.

"Children have been abused, people have been addicted or their
addictions have been fed. You have done a great deal of damage that
can not be undone."

The judge called the March plea deal Cashwell struck with the
Attorney General's Office "extremely generous," saying his extensive
criminal record made him extensive-term eligible.

Bielamowicz could have sentenced him to life considering the
first-degree drug-dealing offense he pleaded guilty to and his long
criminal past.

He'd already been sentenced to over 20 years in jail over the years
on separate drug offenses in Elizabeth starting in 1991, the judge noted.

Bielamowicz guessed the "lure of making this much money, this
quickly," was just too appealing to give up.

In 2004 police said "Operation Golden Triangle," put a major dent
into Trenton's drug trade while sinking a multi-million dollar industry.

Seventy-five percent of the heroin trade in Trenton, as well as a
substantial portion of the statewide market, came from the crews'
gang-funded cartel.

Bielamowicz sentenced the street dealer Cashwell was arrested with,
Akeem Blue, 22, of Trenton, to 17 years in prison in August.

Ten of those years came from the "Operation Golden Triangle" arrest,
officials said.

The Office of the Attorney General's Office estimated the cartel was
distributing 20,000 doses in the city at any given time before the
operation closed it down in 2004.

Blue, prosecutors say, sold the heroin he bought from Cashwell to
lower-level street dealers.

He was to pay $43,000 for the 179 bricks Cashwell was carrying when
the dealers were ambushed at the 7-Eleven on South Broad Street in Hamilton.

Agents had intercepted "thousands, upon thousands" of drug-deal calls
made by the men, said Deputy Attorney General Frank Gennaro.

Gennaro said Cashwell worked for the cartel's alleged kingpin,
Charles "Black" Hamilton, 36, of Irvington.

"He's charged as a leader in narcotic trafficking," Gennaro said of Hamilton.

Charged with leading a narcotics trafficking network, criminal
conspiracy, racketeering and the distribution of heroin, Hamilton's
trial is slated to begin Sept. 26.

Bielamowicz will preside over that case too, Gennaro said.

A year-long covert joint-agency investigation, "Operation Golden
Triangle," headed by the Division of Criminal Justice, resulted in 12
arrests in June 2004 and the seizure of cash, guns and cars.

It was the largest single seizure in the division's history, said
then Attorney General Peter Harvey.

It also damaged the drug network's hierarchy, whose gang-controlled
heroin was being shipped to Trenton on a weekly basis and was
responsible for a substantial portion of the statewide heroin
trafficking market, Harvey said.

It didn't cripple the Trenton drug trade, Gennaro said.

"It was a significant seizure," he said. "Heroin comes from a lot of places."

At Gennaro's request the judge dropped the rest of the charges in
Cashwell's grand jury indictment including conspiracy, racketeering,
drug and weapon offenses.