Officers from the Bradford City Police Department’s Street
Crimes Unit – with assistance from the McKean County Drug Task
Force and Bradford Township and Foster Township police departments
– nabbed three alleged Buffalo, N.Y., drug dealers following an
investigation that began on Saturday.

McKean County District Judge Michael Kennedy arraigned Thomas
Charles Patton III, Kesha M. Burney and Sophia T. Patton, all of
Buffalo, on multiple charges each, including felony counts of
possession of crack cocaine with intent to deliver, according to
officials from the Bradford City Police Department.

All three individuals were sent to McKean County Jail in
Smethport in lieu of ,50,000 cash bail, police said. There was no
immediate word on when the trio will appear in court to answer to
the charges.

According to city police, it had been reported that multiple
individuals were selling crack cocaine out of a room in the Best
Western Bradford Inn at 100 Davis St.

Officers organized and completed two separate purchases of
crack, police said, from Room 108, using confidential informants
from the McKean County Drug Task Force.

After obtaining a search warrant, police stormed the room and
arrested the three suspects in the early morning hours Sunday, the
officials said. Police had to force entry by breaking a window
because the suspects had locked the steel exterior door with a dead
bolt, police said.

Once inside the room, officers recovered a “sizable amount of
cash,” crack cocaine packaged for sale, marijuana and digital
scales, police said. Bradford City Police Chief Mike Close said he
did not know the exact amounts of cash or crack that officers
seized.

“These people are coming in from out of town and think they can
get away with selling drugs,” Close said.

Thomas Patton pleaded “no contest” in January in McKean County
Court for an Aug. 5, 2007, incident in which Bradford City Police
arrested him for possession of “cocaine base” with intent to
deliver.

He was sentenced to six to 12 months in McKean County Jail. He
was paroled to New York state, which had a warrant for his
arrest.

“It’s just a continuation to clean up the streets of Bradford,”
Mayor Tom Riel said Sunday night.