Coach was drug dealer, say police

A basketball coach at a Harlem school has been linked to a large drug ring that doled out Oxycodone and other drugs to buyers in Queens and Harlem, prosecutors said Thursday.

Nicholas Banks, 26, a basketball coach and school aide at Mott Hall High School in Harlem, was just one link in a larger chain where narcotics were sold and then re-sold, according to the Queens DA’s office.

Other suspects in the drug ring included a computer technician at the CUNY School of Medicine in Manhattan, who allegedly supplied the narcotics, officials said.

Banks, CUNY computer technician William Linton, 52, and three others were arrested Wednesday when the NYPD and Queens prosecutors shut the pill pipeline down, authorities said.

“The defendants in this case are alleged to have worked as a team to distribute cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs within Queens County and beyond,” acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan said Thursday. “(Banks) is a trusted high school aide and basketball coach, who allegedly had an illegal firearm in his home.”

Banks was arrested after police raided his Harlem home, finding pot, a .380caliber handgun and bullets, cops said. He’s charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance, criminal sale of marijuana, conspiracy, criminal possession of a weapon and unlawful possession of marijuana.

“This alleged behavior is extremely troubling, and this school aide was immediately suspended without pay pending the outcome of the criminal matter,” city Education spokesman Doug Cohen said Wednesday night.

Ryan said the drug ring was broken apart when the five suspects began selling to undercover NYPD detectives.

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill called the probe into the drug ring “a precise investigation.”

Four of the defendants netted in the drug sweep live in Manhattan, officials said. Only one lives in Queens.