Cop Arrested For Smuggling Cocaine In Queens, Taking Bribes: DA

QUEENS — An NYPD officer who once provided security for drug kingpin El Chapo's wife was arrested Wednesday on charges that he smuggled cocaine across Queens, according to prosecutors and news reports.

Staten Island cop Ishmael Bailey, 36, is accused of taking thousands of dollars to help transport kilos of cocaine throughout Queens, prosecutors announced late Wednesday.

Bailey was "known to provide security services to escorts" and was even part of the security detail that escorted Emma Coronel to the July sentencing of her husband, the notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the New York Post reported.

Prosecutors said Bailey twice provided security for an undercover cop posing as a drug courier in Queens.

On Aug. 27, Bailey took $2,500 from an undercover cop posing as a drug dealer to smuggle a duffle bag with a kilo of cocaine and packages of fake cocaine to a College Point parking lot, where another undercover cop took the bag, according to the charges.

He met with the same undercover cop in Astoria on Sept. 12 and took $10,000 to pick up two kilos of cocaine in Maspeth, prosecutors said.

"In this case, the first-class investigators of the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau identified an officer who allegedly betrayed his sacred oath to the department and to the City and built a case to weed him out," Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill said in a statement.

Bailey, a 12-year NYPD veteran, was arraigned in Queens Criminal court on charges of selling a controlled substance, drug possession, conspiracy, taking bribes and official misconduct, according to the Queens district attorney's office.

If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.