{"id":16087,"date":"2012-08-13T15:32:46","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T19:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=16087"},"modified":"2012-08-13T14:54:25","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T18:54:25","slug":"gun-and-drugs-dealer-sentenced-to-31-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=16087","title":{"rendered":"Gun And Drugs Dealer Sentenced  To 31 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday,<strong> Judge Steven Merryday<\/strong> sentenced 28-year-old <strong>Zavien Brand<\/strong> to 31 years in federal prison for distribution of crack cocaine, possessing firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes, and being a felon in possession of firearms. He entered a plea of guilty on April 10, 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Court documents stated that a \u201cPines Operation\u201d was initiated by the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in an effort to combat ongoing drug and gang activity in apartment complexes located in Tampa.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities arrested 52 people on state or federal charges as a result of the operation. During the course of the operation, <strong>Brand<\/strong> allegedly sold five guns to undercover officers on five different occasions. On seven occasions, <strong>Brand<\/strong> reportedly sold crack cocaine to undercover authorities while he was carrying a firearm.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of the offenses, <strong>Brand<\/strong> had at least five prior state felony convictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, Judge Steven Merryday sentenced 28-year-old Zavien Brand to 31 years in federal prison for distribution of crack cocaine, possessing firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes, and being a felon in possession of firearms. He entered a plea of guilty on April 10, 2012. Court documents stated that a \u201cPines Operation\u201d was initiated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}