Latest drug arrest costs Staten Island man shot at 6-month, boot-camp style prison alternative

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Despite the 11 pounds of pot and more than a kilo of cocaine police found in his house last year, Timothy Baggs could have ended up a free man after serving just six months in a boot-camp style prison program.
But an oxycodone bust on Monday sealed the Great Kills man’s fate.
Instead, Baggs, 28, pleaded guilty today to felony drug charges in exchange for a four-year prison term, and an agreement he’d waive participation in a "shock incarceration" regimen that gives non-violent offenders with drug abuse problems the chance at release in six months, said Peter N. Spencer, a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan.
Baggs, who has no prior convictions on his record, was busted on Feb. 7, 2011, after a search warrant turned up a kilo and a half of cocaine and 11 pounds of pot in his 121 Daleham St. house, authorities said.
According to a law enforcement source, that much pot would have translated into a one- to five-and-a-half year determinate sentence, while the cocaine could have meant eight years behind bars.
But under post-Rockefeller drug laws, Baggs could have been found eligible for the shock program, regardless of the prosecution’s wishes, the source said. That means he could have gotten out after completing just six months of the boot camp program.
On Monday, at about 8:50 p.m., narcotics detectives caught Baggs near the corner of Arthur Kill Road and Richmond Avenue, court papers allege. He had one oxycodone pill in his possession and had dropped another 20 to the ground, police allege.
The new arrest brought charges of third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.
"That was incentive to plead," the law enforcement source said.
Despite today's plea, Baggs still faces prosecution in the oxycodone case, and is slated to return to Stapleton Criminal Court on Friday.
The cocaine and marijuana case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Michele Molfetta.
Baggs, who remains locked up on Rikers Island, is slated to be sentenced in state Supreme Court in St. George on Feb. 15.