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Thursday 30 June 2011

Latin Kings gang member known as "King Jake" was charged Tuesday with the October home invasion robbery

Posted On 09:50 0 comments

Latin Kings gang member known as "King Jake" was charged Tuesday with the October home invasion robbery of several Lehigh University students, police said.

Miguel Angel Estrada, of Allentown, pointed a semi-automatic pistol at two students on Oct. 26 as they sat on the front porch of their home in the 400 block of Filmore Street, Bethlehem police said. Estrada was with a second man who was carrying a baseball bat, police said.

Estrada and the other man forced the students into their home where there were two other students. Greg Turcotte, 21, Kevin Jones, 21, Brandon McGaher, 21, and Aaron Swanely, 20, were robbed in the home. The man with the bat struck Jones in the hip for failing to keep his hands in the air, police said.

Estrada ordered the students to empty their pockets, and Estrada and the other man stole keys, a wallet and even tried to steal a car, but left when the car would not start, police said.

Police said they found drugs and drug paraphernalia in the home. Jones was later charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, according to court records, and in April was accepted into the county's accelerated rehabilitative disposition program.

Police located Estrada on Tuesday at a home in the 400 block of Green Street in Allentown, according to a news release and was apprehended after a short foot chase.


arrested 17 members of the Gangster Disciples

Posted On 08:51 0 comments

arrested 17 members of the Gangster Disciples. All gang members are accused of being part of a cocaine dealing ring in Wisconsin, Texas and Illinois.

In another major bust, investigators were led to a little Racine barber shop run by 76-year-old Ruth Healy.

Related

Milwaukee County Sheriff's seize 57 grams of marijuana during I-94 traffic stop

Sheboygan drug dealer busted for trying to sell drugs to cops in a squad car

Healy, who owns Ruth's Barbershop, once told a local newspaper she believed in diversification. She runs a barbershop, clothing store and limo service from a building on S. Memorial Dr. in Racine.

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Healy's most recent business venture with cocaine and heroin attracted the attention of federal agents.

The US Attorney says an investigation into a drug dealing barber at Ruth's Barber Shop led to others. Eighteen people were indicted for drug charges. Investigators are still looking for Rodney Hagen, Willie Overstreet and Tavares Roberts.

These two busts are part of an on-going long-term effort to stop drug dealing by violent gangs in southeast Wisconsin. 115 violent gang members have been charged since June 2008.



Tuesday 28 June 2011

How gang chiefs trafficked 'gardener' to tend plants in their 'factory'

Posted On 21:16 0 comments

When police mounted a major drugs bust on a cannabis factory in Northern Ireland last year they uncovered hard and shocking evidence of a link between the drug barons and human trafficking.

Inside this makeshift 'factory' in Belfast a Chinese man was being held captive and forced to work as a 'gardener' night and day, tending to the cannabis plants.

The man had been trafficked into the province and was working to pay off his debt to his traffickers.

"That poor gentleman from China didn't even know he was in Belfast. These gardeners are located in these premises to look after the plants. They are given a little food and are forced to work to pay off their debt for their illegal immigration," Detective Chief Inspector Shaun McKee (right) of the PSNI's Organised Crime Branch said.

Crime gangs are running their cannabis factories or 'farms' from properties across Northern Ireland. The farm could be in a mid- terrace house in suburban south Belfast.

Inside these houses, which from the outside could look normal, floors have been ripped up, walls knocked down and tunnels dug. In most cases the electricity supply has been bypassed, causing a risk of fire and electrocution.

For several years Triad gangs and other gangsters from south-east Asia were heavily involved in the cultivation of cannabis here for sale across Ireland, the UK and Europe. At the height of the trade more than 100 factories were uncovered by police in one year. A crackdown by officers has seen the displacement of these gangs out of Northern Ireland and a significant reduction in the number of factories.

Cannabis remains the drug of choice here with crime bosses knowing that supply of class B drugs like cannabis can lead to a 14-year jail term, compared to a life sentence for supplying class A drugs like cocaine or heroin. "If the gangs can trade and make money from class B and class C drugs, from their point of view they would prefer to take the risk on class B and C than class A," DCI McKee explained.

However, there is still a large market for cocaine in Northern Ireland, which is making massive amounts of money for the gangs.

The average street purity of cocaine in Northern Ireland is as little as 7%, with the drug bulked out with a hazardous cocktail of chemicals.

"I have seen purity levels as low as 1% and up as high as 89%. The rest is made up of other cutting agents from the veterinary arena. The effect of the agents creates numbing of the nose: they snort it and think it is great and it is having no effect whatsoever, and they are paying £60 for a gram of coke for the pleasure."

He added: "You get some idiots going out to places like Colombia, Peru and Bolivia on coke holidays as that is where the pure coke is. The closer you go to the source country to buy, then the purer it is.

"The purity of coke found in someone's possession has a bearing on the sentence, because it shows where they sit on the food chain. You wouldn't be in possession of high-purity cocaine unless you are a drug trafficker or trusted associate."

The war on drugs is one of the few issues on which the police receive full support from all communities in Northern Ireland.

Last year after police officers came under attack during riots in Ardoyne, the next day they were receiving support from that same community during a drugs operation in the north Belfast neighbourhood.

"The very next day we did a bread-and-butter drugs operations in Ardoyne and we got many supportive phone calls coming in on the back of that. This was normal policing in that community. We even received a phone call from one individual who, in my past, would never phone police," said Mr McKee.

He added: "Every community supports us in this. Drugs destroy lives and communities. I believe we are definitely making a difference.

 


Afrika Owes, the former prep school student accused of transporting weapons for a Harlem street gang surrendered herself in court

Posted On 21:06 0 comments

Tuesday to serve another three months in jail in exchange for a plea deal and youthful offender status.

"There are all kinds of reason why this makes sense. This is a good resolution," said Theodore Shaw, an attorney for the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, which posted $25,000 of its own money to post Owes' bail. "She doesn't have to testify and when she comes out she won't have an adult felony conviction which could have enormous consequences on the rest of her life," Shaw said.

"The church continues to stand behind Afrika," Shaw added. The $25,000 bail money will be returned to Abysinnian Baptist Church, under the terms of the deal.

Owes will plead guilty to second-degree conspiracy and criminal possession of a weapon on July 7, but he case will eventually be sealed and she will be given youthful offender status, her lawyer Elsie Chandler said Tuesday. The status could spare her from having a  permanent criminal record if she doesn't get arrested again.

Owes faced 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison if convicted of the top charge.

Owes will not be testifying against her co-defendants as a condition of the deal, her lawyers said.

She elected to carry out Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Edward McLaughlin's request that she serve 90 more days at Rikers Island before being offered youthful offender status now so that she can be free by the time her senior year of high school starts in the fall, Chandler said. She will still be on interim probation in September and will have to check in with a probation officer, Chandler said.

"We anticipate that she will apply and be accepted to college and that such court proposed supervision will continue until her acceptance and entry into college," Chandler said.

"If she successfully completes these conditions, Judge McLaughlin has promised he will adjudicate Ms. Owes to a youthful offender and that she will not receive a sentence that involves further incarceration," she added at the brief court appearance.


Owes, a former student at the prestigious Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, was one of 14 people charged as part of an investigation into the Harlem street gangs "2 Mafia Family," also known as 2MF, and "Goons on Deck." Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. called the gangs, which operated at Lenox Avenue and West 137th Street, among the city's most violent.

Prominent community leaders including Rev. Calvin Butts, of Abyssinian, and Rep. Charles Rangel came out in support of the former student at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. Butts has preached about the young woman from the pulpit, saying she was "led astray." Rangel said she should not be treated as a "hardened criminal."

Owes was released from jail in April after Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Edward McLaughlin allowed Abyssinian to post her bail in what he acknowledged was an unusual scenario.

After being released from jail, Owes returned to school, her attorney Elsie Chandler said previously. The church has said it would keep an eye on Owes and make sure she did not get into further trouble.

"I'm grateful for God and my church," said Owes after attending Easter service at Abyssinian.

Owes has taken "responsibility for her own errors of judgment," Chandler said Tuesday.

"This is a young woman who could go on to do whatever it is she wants with her life." she said.


James (Whitey) Bulger, the legendary Boston crime boss, traveled to Las Vegas often to play the slots

Posted On 17:16 0 comments

James (Whitey) Bulger may have been on the lam, as they say, but he did not let it cramp his style.


During his 16 years in hiding, federal prosecutors say, Mr. Bulger, the legendary Boston crime boss, traveled to Las Vegas often to play the slots. And wearing a disguise, he even returned to Boston, “armed to the teeth” to “take care of some unfinished business.”

The disclosure came in a court filing on Monday, amid an escalating fight over whether Mr. Bulger should get free legal counsel in the two looming cases against him. Prosecutors restated their belief that he has hidden assets that could pay for his defense.

But Mr. Bulger’s temporary lawyer, Peter B. Krupp, said that Mr. Bulger, 81, had no assets beyond the more than $800,000 that the government seized from the Santa Monica, Calif., apartment where they captured him last week. Nor will Mr. Bulger ask relatives like his brother William, a former president of the Massachusetts State Senate, to pay his legal bills, Mr. Krupp said in a memorandum to Judge Mark L. Wolf of Federal District Court.

“His family has not come forward to hire counsel,” Mr. Krupp wrote, “and there is no evidence to support the government’s surmise that extended family members might be willing and able to hire counsel.”

Brian Kelly, an assistant United States attorney, wrote in the government’s court filing that Mr. Bulger’s disclosures of trips to Boston and Las Vegas (where he “claimed he won more than he lost”) suggested that Mr. Bulger “may have additional assets and/or allies willing to assist him in his current predicament.”

Much of the $822,198 seized from Mr. Bulger was found hidden inside a wall of his apartment, Mr. Kelly wrote. A judge has placed a lien on the money at the request of two of Mr. Bulger’s alleged victims.

A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Tuesday. In the meantime, Mr. Krupp asked Judge Wolf to bar the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies from leaking details of the case to the news media, saying it would already be “more challenging than in any case in modern memory” to get Mr. Bulger a fair trial. He is facing charges in connection with 19 murders and other crimes.

“The jury pool has surely been tainted by the flood of publicity about this case over the last 25 years,” Mr. Krupp wrote. “If it is now possible — and Mr. Bulger seriously questions whether it will be possible — for Mr. Bulger to receive a fair trial, law enforcement leaks of non-public information must end.”

Mr. Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, had also initially sought a court-appointed lawyer to defend her against the charge of harboring a fugitive. But on Monday, she hired Kevin Reddington, a well-known criminal defense lawyer in private practice.

Ms. Greig, a former dental hygienist who went on the run with Mr. Bulger in 1995, was arrested with him in California on Wednesday after a tipster led the F.B.I. to their apartment. Mr. Reddington’s clients have included Mo Vaughn, a former player for the Boston Red Sox, who was acquitted of drunken-driving charges in 1998.

Mr. Reddington did not respond to a phone call and e-mail; it was unclear if he was charging Ms. Greig or taking her case pro bono. She is due in court Thursday for a detention hearing.

Mr. Kelly said in the government’s court filing that Mr. Bulger had told the authorities after his arrest that William Bulger might be willing to help post bail for Ms. Greig.

Mr. Kelly asked Judge Wolf to require affidavits from William and another brother, John, before deciding whether Mr. Bulger was entitled to public counsel.


Two documented gang members were arrested Friday night for allegedly robbing a man in the 1200 block of West 8th Street

Posted On 10:57 0 comments

Two documented gang members were arrested Friday night for allegedly robbing a man in the 1200 block of West 8th Street, Merced police reported.
The incident was reported around 10 p.m., after the victim flagged down a Merced police officer, saying he'd been robbed. The victim said he was approached by two males, who accused him of stealing a stereo, according to Lt. Tom Trindad.
One of the suspects punched the victim in the face. The victim ran away, but when he returned to his car, he discovered the robbers had taken his stereo face plate. The victim knew one of the suspects, identifying him as a 17-year-old male juvenile. Officers went to the juvenile's home and found him with the second suspect, 22-year-old Jose Zarate, Trindad said.
Zarate and the juvenile were arrested on suspicion of strong armed robbery. Zarate was booked into the Merced County Jail, while the 17-year-old was booked into juvenile hall.


KILLING of a man in a Dublin pub may be the city’s first ‘Facebook murder’.

Posted On 10:01 0 comments


Gardai investigating the slaying of Darren Cogan (22) in the Black Horse Inn, Inchicore, believe taunts on the social networking site could have led to his killing.

Detectives were today carrying out a detailed trawl of Facebook to provide vital information about the latest gangland murder in the capital.

Cogan was gunned down at 12.15am on Saturday, just an hour after two masked men had burst into the pub brandishing a shotgun and handgun. Gardai had just left the pub when the murder occurred.

The gunmen had screamed “where’s the rats?” as they moved through the bar.

Sources have confirmed that the chief suspects for ordering the murder are dangerous Crumlin based criminals who are linked to ‘Fat' Freddie Thompson's drugs gang.

One of the Crumlin men used to be Thompson's driver when the gang boss was based in Dublin. This reckless cocaine user and his brother are considered the most senior of the new generation of feuding younger criminals in the Crumlin/Drimnagh area.

Gardai do not believe the shocking murder of small-time criminal Cogan is linked to the drugs trade. They believe he was shot dead over a row among two feuding factions.

A source told the Herald: “There was a row in a pub some weeks ago which then escalated when taunts and threats were being made on Facebook.

“In one instance, a close female associate of Mr Cogan had a fake Facebook account set up in her name by the rival faction which caused huge tensions in the area because it was being used to taunt people,” explained the source.

“Gardai are trawling through Facebook to see what the various factions are saying about the murder - this may yield important information,” the source added.


Sources say that Cogan had “loose” links to the gang once controlled by jailed gangland boss ‘King Ratt', but that he was not a major gang player.

His murder is the first to occur as part of the so-called ‘new generation' of feuding in the Crumlin/Drimnagh area and sources believe that it could lead to a new cycle of tit-for-tat violence.

Today it emerged that gardai are also examining if Cogan was shot because he was due to give evidence in an upcoming criminal trial.

Officers are also attempting to interview two men who were with Cogan earlier on the night of his murder.

Cogan was interviewed by gardai investigating the February 2008 gangland style murder of local man Darren Guerrine but never considered him an actual suspect in the case.

Guerrine (21) was shot in the back of the head close to his home in Bluebell, Dublin. His body was found in the Grand Canal.

The murder was ordered by a criminal who was serving a sentence at Portlaoise Prison at the time who Cogan was associated with.

Meanwhile Cogan's devastated sister Jennifer has revealed that she whispered “I love you” to him moments after he was shot in the pub.

Jennifer emerged from the toilets after her brother was shot dead and his best pal Jamie Behan was seriously injured in the shooting.


Monday 27 June 2011

MS-13 Street Gang Member Sentenced to 35 Years’ Imprisonment for Murder

Posted On 21:01 0 comments

Earlier today, Edwin Henriquez, also known as “Joker,” a member of the La Mara Salvatrucha (“MS-13”) street gang on Long Island, was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment for the September 19, 2004, murder of 16-year-old fellow MS-13 member Olivia Melendez Mendoza (“Melendez”) in Old Westbury, New York. The sentence was imposed pursuant to Henriquez’s November 3, 2010, guilty plea. The proceeding was held before Senior United States District Judge Leonard D. Wexler at the United States Courthouse in Central Islip, New York.

The sentence was announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office, and James T. Hayes, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), New York Field Office.

According to his plea allocution and documents previously filed in the case, Henriquez and other Long Island MS-13 members decided to kill Melendez because they believed that she was not abiding by the gang’s rules. Pursuant to their plan, Henriquez lured Melendez to a wooded area in Old Westbury where he shot her once in the back of the head. On April 12, 2011, Judge Wexler sentenced MS-13 member Jose Recinos, also known as “Psycho” and “Little Psycho,” to 20 years' imprisonment for aiding and abetting Henriquez in the murder.

“This sentence makes clear that gang members will pay a heavy price for such cold, calculated acts of violence,” stated United States Attorney Lynch. “Eliminating gang violence continues to be a priority of this Office and the Justice Department.” Ms. Lynch praised the work of the FBI Long Island Gang Task Force,1 which investigated the case. FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Fedarcyk stated, “Gangs resort to violence for a variety of reasons, not one of them morally defensible. In this case, as he admitted, Henriquez cold-bloodedly executed a young woman for violating MS-13 rules. For violating the rule of law, he will spend decades in prison.”

“This sentencing sends a clear message to gang members: we will deal strongly with those who ignore our laws and place our neighborhoods at risk,” said ICE/HSI Special Agent-in- Charge Hayes. “Gang violence and all of its accompanying destructive conduct will not be tolerated.”

The MS-13 is a violent international street gang comprised primarily of immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. With several chapters, which members refer to as “cliques,” MS-13 is the largest street gang on Long Island. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has obtained convictions against more than 120 MS-13 members, including ten clique leaders, for felony offenses, including racketeering, murder, assault, firearm possession, and narcotics trafficking.

 


Thursday 23 June 2011

The Terror Squad had recently established itself as the top street gang in the city

Posted On 17:29 0 comments

The Terror Squad had recently established itself as the top street gang in the city, beating out numerous rivals in a crowded field of feared brands such the Indian Posse, Crazy Cree and Native Syndicate. These aboriginal gangs, largely imported from Winnipeg, take advantage of poor or damaged inner-city youth by promising big money, a family and respect, according to various police investigations over the years. Some of them claim a racial or cultural pride motivation, but most victims of their drug dealing, prostitution and violence are aboriginal.

Most mimic the dress, slang and graffiti of African-American inner city gangs of the 1980s and attempt to structure their organizations in the image of the mafia, Hells Angels or other organized crime groups.

McNab and other Terror Squad members have been on the radar of the Saskatoon Police Service for years. In 2003, McNab was part of a small gang of two dozen people identified by police as the "West Side Boyz."

According to the court documents, the Terror Squad's main activity is drug dealing, aided by large amounts of violence and intimidation. The 38-year-old McNab - old by street gang standards - is in command.

McNab sits on a council of founding members who direct the gang's activities. Each council member is in charge of a "crew," which operates as a semi-independent businesses.

When crew members sell drugs, commit home invasions, robberies or other crimes, they are required to "kick up" a portion of the profits to the council or others designated as captains, generals or higher-ups.

Some of that money goes into a "money pot" to pay legal bills, transportation or other expenses.

"The Terror Squad is in fact a criminal organization," the documents state.

. . .

Evidence of McNab's drug dealing was apparent almost from the moment police began his phone tap.

On Oct. 27, 2010, at 6: 21 p.m., one of McNab's dealers, Jamie Sutherland, called another woman from McNab's house. The woman told Sutherland she's "done" and to come and pick up the money.

McNab is heard in the background saying "She doesn't give the f-----g orders around here." McNab then changed his mind and relents, telling Sutherland to get his money.

Seven minutes later, McNab called another woman selling for him to discuss her progress selling drugs. Six minutes after that, she called back to make arrangements for an exchange.

In another call at 9: 19 p.m., McNab told another woman to come to his house and get re-supplied.

Six hours later, at 3: 09 a.m., Sutherland called McNab and asked to buy a "quatch for 420." McNab said he could only do a "game."

Police say a quatch is a quarter ounce of cocaine and a game an eighth of an ounce.

That afternoon, an unknown man called McNab's cellphone. McNab's common-law wife, Beverly Fullerton, answered. The man said he needed Fullerton to bring him an "hour" (one gram of cocaine). Fullerton said she couldn't because she was at home alone with the kids, but he could come over to pick it up.

Just 25 minutes later, Fullerton took another call, from stabbing victim Devon Napope. Napope requested "a game or a game and a half." Fullerton, with McNab heard giving instructions in the background, agreed.

All of these calls, just a sampling of the total, occurred within 24 hours of the surveillance beginning.

In other calls, McNab showed a softer approach. When McNab learned fellow dealer Christopher Cathcart, also known as "Windshield," had a baby, he ordered his crew to help Cathcart's people sell drugs.

"Make sure Windshield makes his money to support his baby," McNab said.

When one of his crew revealed she and others were selling drugs out of her grandmother's house, McNab told her they "should all be paying her grandma 20 dollars a day."

In one early call, McNab told one unidentified man that things were going well and everybody was paying him on time. He said that's the way it should be "if I'm the leader for organized crime."

. . .

McNab appears at times disorganized and indecisive.

In one call, McNab asked Regush for the wrong quantity of drugs. On more than one occasion, he threatened to have a dealer beaten for losing his money, but then backed off. And on the afternoon of Nov. 2, 2010, the landline at his home was left off the hook while police listened to them discussing drug weights and packaging. Fullerton is heard using the word "coke" to McNab, the first time the drug is referenced directly.

McNab grew increasingly frustrated with his crew. He spewed expletives when they told him they set up a scheduling chart. He was enraged when "custies" (customers) were left waiting outside one of his drug houses while his dealers partied in the basement with the music turned up too loud.

McNab told Cathcart that house was his "bread and butter." Cathcart said he already went there and "slapped out a few people," and told them they'd be getting "minutes." In street gangs, a minute commonly refers to a 60-second, unrestricted gang beating used to punish or initiate members.

. . .

As a result of various surveillance, as well as tips from confidential informants, police raided a home on Avenue F South they believed was a McNab-Terror Squad drug house. However, since intelligence indicated there were likely weapons in the house, crisis negotiators were called to the scene. When police got in, they found no drugs or weapons. They did find smashed cellular phones, ammunition and baggies with the corners cut in a fashion used for drug packaging.

Police noted any drugs "could have easily been flushed down the toilet or sink" in the time it took police to get inside.

. . .

The informant is listed only as Source A, one of three described in very general detail in the documents.

Source A has worked with a certain officer several times per month for the past five years. "A" has a lengthy criminal record for assault, theft and other crimes. His listed motivations are personal reasons and "judicial consideration."

Source B has an even longer record of assaults with weapons and robberies with violence. "B" is motivated by the desire to impress the officer as well as "revenge." The officer notes the informant provided the information while under the influence of alcohol, but there is no further explanation.

Source C is also a convicted criminal but the information provided has been confirmed in other ways, the documents state.

Police now focused on McNab's and Fullerton's residence on Fairlight Drive.

Between Feb. 22 and March 19, police conducted extensive visual surveillance on those leaving and entering the house, as well as trips to other locations.

The house was buzzing with activity, particularly in the evening. McNab and others would often meet for just a few minutes at a time in various locations, from Walmart to Sutherland-area alleys. Some were seen wearing the gang's signature black bandanas.

"I believe Michael McNab's cocaine distribution network is continuing," one officer stated in the documents.

On March 21, the officer asked a judge to issue a search warrant for the Fairlight Drive house between 6 p.m. and 11: 45 p.m. that night.

"I believe Michael McNab is savvy in that he does not keep more than two ounces of cocaine in his possession at any given time as it is too great a risk," the officer states.

"I believe an execution of a search warrant during this busy period will maximize the results."

The judge gave permission for the raid and police moved in. It resulted in the arrest and conviction of several top members of the Terror Squad drug network.

McNab pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking and directing a criminal organization. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

At his sentencing hearing May 18, Fullerton and others wept in the gallery. His lawyer said McNab was born into the criminal life, as his father was a gang member and his uncle was involved in crime.

His mother was a prostitute before he was born and he smoked his first marijuana joint at age three, the lawyer said.

McNab has been a father to Fullerton's three children, her niece and his own natural children. Among the children's letters of support was a description of the family sitting down together for supper and discussing school, the lawyer said.

"I'm breaking their hearts right now," McNab said.

"In my heart I'm not a bad person. I'm pretty sure I'm done with all that. . I'll be apologizing to my family for the rest of my life."

McNab's DNA will go into the national data bank and he is prohibited from possessing firearms or weapons for the rest of his life.

Sgt. Wintermute said he's pleased with the results of the investigation, but isn't "naive enough" to think police have destroyed the Terror Squad or eliminated the cocaine business in Saskatoon.

"But we've put a pretty good dent in the operations," he said.

"The citizens of this city deserve to feel safe and live in a healthy environment. They shouldn't have to live in fear."


Accused Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger arrested

Posted On 09:05 0 comments

On the run for 17 years, the accused Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger and his longtime girlfriend were finally caught in California by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday.

They were arrested without incident at a residence in Santa Monica, the FBI said in a statement, just days after the agency renewed its public campaign to capture Bulger and his 60-year-old girlfriend Catherine Greig.

The 81-year-old former fugitive has been wanted on 19 counts of murder committed in the 1970s and 1980s, drug dealing, extortion, money laundering and conspiracy. He is the older brother of William "Billy" Bulger, a former president of the Massachusetts State Senate.

"Recent publicity produced a tip which led agents to Santa Monica where they located both Bulger and Greig at a residence," FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauries said in a statement.

A $2 million reward was offered for information leading to Bulger's arrest and $100,000 for details of Greig's whereabouts. He was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1999 and she was charged in 1997 with harboring a fugitive.

The FBI late on Wednesday slapped "Captured" tags on the photos they had posted on its website of Bulger and Greig, including ones enhanced of him to account for the time that had passed. Greig had multiple plastic surgeries before fleeing.

Before their capture in California, the last credible sighting of the pair was in London in 2002. Bulger is thought to have traveled extensively in the United States, Europe, Canada and Latin America.

The FBI produced a 30-second public service announcement focused on finding Greig and it began airing on Tuesday during daytime television programs in ten states. It was aimed at aimed at female viewers in the same age group as her.

The agency had hoped a hair-stylist, manicurist, doctor or other acquaintance might recognize Greig, a former dental hygienist.

The two are expected to make initial appearances in federal court in California, though it was not immediately clear when.

Bulger, said to be an avid reader and history buff who likes to take long walks on beaches, has been featured on the television show "America's Most Wanted" more than a dozen times between 1995 and 2010.


Wednesday 22 June 2011

29-year-old East Texas man has been sentenced to life in federal prison for his role in a 2007 double murder ordered by a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas

Posted On 19:00 0 comments

29-year-old East Texas man has been sentenced to life in federal prison for his role in a 2007 double murder ordered by a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.
Charles Cameron Frazier of Nacogdoches pleaded guilty in January to committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering activity in the deaths of David Mitchamore and Christy Rochelle Brown in Nacogdoches County. Frazier was sentenced Tuesday.
Federal officials say Mitchamore was killed for failing to pay a debt owed to a general in the white supremacist gang. Authorities say Brown was killed because gang members wanted to eliminate witnesses.
According to court documents, the order to kill Mitchamore was delivered to Frazier and carried out by Brent Stalsby, who also pleaded guilty and received a life sentence.


The man who ordered the hit on Penalba was Juan Rosario, also known as "King Black Rose," a reputed top leader in the Passaic chapter of the Latin Kings

Posted On 10:11 0 comments

Latin Kings boss ordered his underlings to kill a Lodi woman so she couldn't testify in the shooting death of a Hasbrouck Heights teen six years ago, an assistant Bergen County prosecutor said Monday.



Juan Rosario of Passaic being led into a courtroom in Hackensack for the start of his attempted-murder trial in the 2005 attack on Monica Penalba of Lodi.
Gang members and wannabe gang members then stabbed the woman, Monica Penalba, more than 30 times and ran her over twice with her own car, said Catherine Fantuzzi, the assistant prosecutor.

Penalba survived the attack, although she lost an eye and partial use of her arm.

The man who ordered the hit on Penalba was Juan Rosario, also known as "King Black Rose," a top leader in the Passaic chapter of the notorious street gang, Fantuzzi said.

"He was an active participant in the planning and attempted killing of Monica Penalba," Fantuzzi said as Rosario's attempted-murder trial opened Monday in state Superior Court in Hackensack.

Rosario, 50, was one of 17 defendants accused of taking part in a violent chain of gang-related events in February 2005 — a case that underscored concerns by local authorities that gangs were active in suburban communities, not just in cities.

Fantuzzi said it all began when 18-year-old Ralph Pinto of Hasbrouck Heights and a friend went to the South Hackensack home of Jose Vega to buy drugs on Feb. 17, 2005.

The two men later returned to Vega's home, beat him with a metal pipe and robbed him of his drugs, money and jewelry, Fantuzzi said.

Vega, who turned out to be a Latin Kings leader who went by the name "King June," then conspired with Rosario and recruited several underlings to kidnap Pinto the next day, she said.

The crew set up a fake drug deal, lured Pinto and his friend to a Lodi parking lot and tried to kidnap him at gunpoint, she said.

Penalba, who was 19 at the time, participated in the attempted kidnapping as a driver, Fantuzzi said.

"She was simply there because she had a car," Fantuzzi said.

Pinto, however, resisted and got into a fight with Juan Veras of Lodi, who was holding the gun, Fantuzzi said.

Veras testified in previous court proceedings that he managed to grab the gun and shoot Pinto five times.

The crew then fled, but Rosario was worried that Penalba, who was not a gang member, might talk to police about the shooting and ordered his men to kill her, Fantuzzi said.

Rosario's underlings then drove Penalba to a carwash in Paterson, where they stabbed her 32 times until she played dead, Fantuzzi said.

Penalba, who also testified in previous court proceedings, said she later opened the back door of the car and fell out as her attackers were driving around to find a place to dump her body.

One of the gang members, Veanzeil Roberts, then made a U-turn and ran her over twice, she said.

Rosario's attorney, Donald Liberman, told jurors during his opening statement that the prosecution's case against his client "doesn't make sense."

He said Rosario was not present at the time Pinto was killed and was not present when Penalba was attacked.





Slain teen a suspected H-Block gang member

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16-year-old South Side male found in a pool of blood with bullets in his chest Saturday was part of one of the city's youngest and most potentially dangerous street gangs, though detectives said they do not believe the killing was gang related.

Brandon Adkins, 16, 372 E. Philadelphia Ave., who was shot to death Saturday at 3124 South Ave., was part of the youth gang H-Block, whose territory includes Hilton Avenue on the city's South Side.

The Mahoning County coroner ruled the death the city's seventh homicide this year. The report said Adkins died from gunshot wounds to his back and abdomen.

Reports said officers found Adkins lying in a large pool of blood with a large angry crowd around him that caused officers to call for additional backup.

Witnesses said they awoke to gunshots and discovered Adkins lying in the driveway.

Another witness told officers Adkins was involved in disputes with two other males at the Ally's Food Mart.

Youngstown chief of detectives Rod Foley said Tuesday the investigation did not reveal anything that involved gang activity, and noted investigators were making progress.

The Tribune Chronicle learned of Adkins' suspected involvement in the gang during a probe of the city's gang culture.

Adkins recently had been released from the Juvenile Detention Center, where he was being held in connection to a burglary.

Foley described the gang as a hodge-podge of kids who grew up in the same area. He said they normally picked easy targets and would occasionally skip school to burglarize homes.

''A lot of times these guys are hit and miss with their everyday activities,'' he said.

The presence of H-Block in the area caused several residents to move from the area and others to consider moving. The gang has about a dozen members, including one teenager that started the gang whom law enforcement members have compared to notorious Youngstown killer William J. "Flip'' Williams.

Williams was executed in 2005 after being convicted of four counts of aggravated murder in 1991 for killing three men in order to keep his monopoly of the city's drug trade.

Law enforcement has been aware of the gang since 2009, during a string of robberies that occurred on and around South Avenue. The victims reported being robbed by kids.

''Some of these kids don't think about tomorrow,'' Foley said. ''They don't want to go to jail, but they don't fear it. They don't fear consequences.''

 


The alleged leader of the Trenton Nine Trey Gangsters who participated in a 2005 clash between three rival gangs that left three people dead pleaded guilty yesterday to a weapons charge

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The alleged leader of the Trenton Nine Trey Gangsters who participated in a 2005 clash between three rival gangs that left three people dead pleaded guilty yesterday to a weapons charge, the state Office of the Attorney General announced today.
Robert "Snoop" Christie, 25, of Trenton, agreed to a plea deal that calls for him to receive five years in state prison at his sentencing in August. The term would be added to the current 8-year sentence Christie is serving for a separate drug and weapons conviction.
Christie was one of 15 people arrested following a summer of violence in 2005 between the Nine Trey Gangsters, Sex Money Murder and Gangster Killer Bloods gangs. He was accused of firing shots at the home of a Gangster Killer Bloods member on Aug. 28, 2005.
He was also accused of threatening Bernard Green, 29, a.k.a. Petey Black, a “five-star general” in the Gangster Killer Bloods or G-Shine set who ran the gang's drug trade and ordered the violence toward rival gangs, according to the attorney general's office.
Green and 13 other alleged Gangster Killer Bloods gang members were charged with first-degree racketeering, three counts of murder, seven counts of attempted murder, and five counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
In addition, Green and 10 other alleged gang members were charged with conspiring to unlawfully possess, use and traffic in guns. Green was personally charged with being a leader of organized crime and with numerous narcotics and weapons offenses.
Green is scheduled to be in Superior Court in Mercer County tomorrow for a hearing on pending charges.
Those killed in the violent gang battle included 22-year-old Sharee Voorhees, a bystander who was shot Aug. 28, 2005 on Monmouth Street by men who were targeting a nearby car that the gunmen believed was occupied by members of the Nine Trey Gangsters.
Green and Keith "Droop" Parker, 30, are charged in the slaying of Voorhees. Green is also charged in the June 25, 2005 killing of Otis Jones, 26, who was shot to death for showing disrespect to gang members after he was robbed of a gold necklace, according to the attorney general's office.


Tuesday 21 June 2011

Casa Grande Station agents were patrolling near Sells when they apprehended an illegal immigrant who was identified as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha 13 street gang

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Three members of various Mexican street gangs and two individuals with violent criminal histories were apprehended by Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector on Friday.

On Friday, Casa Grande Station agents were patrolling near Sells when they apprehended an illegal immigrant who was identified as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha 13 street gang, according to a release from Customs and Border Protection.

Later that evening, agents from the Ajo Station apprehended another illegal immigrant northeast of Lukeville - he admitted to being a member of the Sueno Street Gang. On Saturday, Naco station agents apprehended an illegal immigrant who admitted affiliation with the 18th Street Gang. All three subjects are being criminally prosecurity for Illegal Entry.

Also on Friday, an illegal immigrant was apprehended near Amado. Records checks revealed the suspect had a prior conviction in Queens, New York for First Degree Manslaughter and Intent to Cause Serious Physical Injury. On Saturday, agents patrolling northeast of Lukeville apprehended a Mexican national with an extensive criminal history from California, including convictions for voluntary manslaughter, robbery, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. Both subjects are being prosecuted for Re-Entry of an Aggravated Felon.

Finding these criminal records was made possible with the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, officials say.

 


racketeering and conspiracy trials of five men suspected of being members of the alleged Riviera Beach gang known as Buck Wild.

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Testimony is expected to end Tuesday in the racketeering and conspiracy trials of five men suspected of being members of the alleged Riviera Beach gang known as Buck Wild.

Assistant State Attorneys Greg Kridos and Cheryl Caracuzzo since early May have been presenting jurors with evidence in their cases against Marquis Alfred, 20; James Anderson, 22; Larry Coe, 25; Quamaine Falana, 19; and James Roundtree, 22.

They rested today after questioning a records custodian from the social networking site Myspace and a woman who named Coe as the getaway driver for a gunman who robbed and nearly carjacked her.

Prosecutors say the alleged crime was just one in a string of violent acts the men committed as part of the gang. During the trial, they offered letters the men wrote while incarcerated, statements they made to police, and postings and photos on their Myspace pages as evidence of their alleged affiliation.

The mens' Myspace pages was the subject of much discussion last week after defense attorneys argued prosecutors tried to introduce the evidence improperly and that photos of some defendants holding guns could have been altered.

Palm Beach County Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes on today allowed much of the online postings into evidence, but threw out a number of photos because there was no way to prove whether they had been altered.

After prosecutors rested, jurors heard testimony from Anderson's girlfriend, who told them she and several other people living in the Gainesville apartment she shared with Anderson had access to his Myspace page, bolstering an argument from Anderson's attorney John Riordan that someone else could have made potentially incriminating statements on his page.

Kridos in his cross examination questioned her motives.

"Do you think you're helping James Anderson by saying what you're telling the jury right now?" Kridos asked at one point.

"No," she shot back. "I'm telling the jury the truth."

Defense attorneys are expected to continue presenting testimony in the case Tuesday . Kastrenakes said he expects jurors to begin deliberating the case later this month.



Two Banning brothers, who are believed to be members of the Southside Beaumont street gang, have been arrested and are being held on suspicion of multiple felonies, including carjacking.

Posted On 15:04 0 comments



James Lara, 43 and David Lara, 47, of Banning were taken into custody three days apart, June 3 and June 6, respectively, following a carjacking incident that occurred on May 30 at 10:11 a.m. in the 50000 block of Ramona Road in Cabazon.

Riverside County Sheriff Captain Ross Koepp said during the incident two men approached a man as he sat in his vehicle, brandished a knife and threatened to shoot him if he did not give up his vehicle.

“In fear for his safety, the victim complied,” Koepp said.

During the initial investigation, sheriff’s investigators learned that the suspects may be members of a local criminal street gang and asked for assistance from the San Gorgonio Special Operation Gang Task Force.

On June 3, task force members were able to identify the brothers as the suspects in the carjacking.

That same day, task force members set up suveillance at a home in the 400 block of North 40th Street in Banning and saw James Lara drive away from the residence. A traffic stop was made on Seminole Road in Cabazon and James Lara was taken into custody without incident, Koepp said. Koepp said several items of property that were in the carjack victim’s vehicle at the time of the incident were located in the truck Lara was driving.

James Lara was subsequently arrested for multiple felony charges related to carjacking, conspiracy to commit carjacking, possession of stolen property, possession of a controlled substance and gang enhancement. He is currently being held at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in lieu of $150,000 bail.

Based on information obtained during the arrest, task force members obtained a search warrant for a home in the 500 block of Wesley Street in Banning. A search of the residence led to the discovery of the vehicle taken during the carjacking, along with two grams of heroin packaged for sale. The stolen vehicle was returned to the victim, Koepp said.

As a result of the search, Haley Garcia, 22, of Banning, was subsequently arrested on felony charges related to possession of heroin for sales and possession of heroin. She is being held at the Robert Presley Dentention Center in Riverside in lieu of $25,000 bail, jail records state. Also arrested at the residence was Daniel Gonzales, 34, of Banning, for multiple misdemeanor and felony warrants totling $550,000. Jail records do not currently show that Garcia is still in custody.

On June 6, task force memebers were informed that David Lara would be appearing in a Riverside court on a unrelated matter.

“SGSOGTF members responded to the Hall of Justice in Riverside where they located David Lara and took him into custody withou incident,” Koepp said.

David Lara was arrested for multiple felony charges related to carjacking, conspiracy to commit carjacking, committing a felony while out on bail, terrorist threats and gang enhancement.

He is currently being held at Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in lieu of $1 million bail, jail records show.


75 Nuestra Familia prison gang, street gang members arrested

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State and federal agents swarmed across several small communities in and around the San Joaquin Valley town of Los Banos early Tuesday morning and arrested 75 alleged members of the Nuestra Familia prison gang and the Norteno street gang.

The raid, code-named "Red Zone," also netted weapons, including five assault rifles, $64,000 in cash and unnamed quantities of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. The operation was the culmination of a two-year effort targeting "transnational gangs" that operate across the U.S.-Mexico border, dealing in drugs, weapons and human trafficking.

"This was an example of the work of confronting this dangerous gang activity," said state Attorney General Kamala P. Harris, who traveled to Los Banos the day after the raid to congratulate local law enforcement, and bring attention to the issue. Harris has increased law enforcement efforts against transnational gangs in recent months, partly in response to the out-of-control drug war raging between cartels and the Mexican Army.

The "Red Zone" operation was initiated in August 2010 when officials from the California Department of Justice realized that a previous operation targeting Nuestra Familia in Salinas had only driven them to other areas. As law enforcement efforts have increased, gangs have sought refuge in more rural, farming areas like the San Joaquin Valley.

Officers from 31 different agencies, both federal and state, participated in the raid, which targeted middle and senior level members of the prison gang. Charges included attempted murder, drug trafficking and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Eight of the 75 face federal charges. The remainder will be handled in Merced County.

Harris said the raid and the resulting arrests were significant for all Californians because of the reach and increasing sophistication of the Nuestra Familia gang.
Oakland is just one bastion for Nortenos, the street gang most affiliated with Nuestra Familia. Oakland police believe there are approximately 400 Nortenos in the city. Debate about gang activity has raged in recent months in response to an effort to impose a gang injunction on 40 alleged Nortenos in Oakland's Fruitvale District.

 


Sunday 19 June 2011

Joaquin Guzman is currently one of the most wanted Gangster in the world.

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The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the World's Most Wanted Drug Lord
Joaquin Guzman is currently one of the most wanted criminals in the world. In fact, Guzman’s power has become so great that a senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) official recently told Forbes magazine that the kingpin is now the most influential drug runner in history. “Chapo has a vast criminal enterprise and he has become the leading drug trafficker of all time,” said the official, who asked to be left anonymous due to security concerns. “He is the godfather of the drug world.”

Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel is notorious among law enforcement officials, and it is widely regarded as the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere. Because the group is a coalition of Mexico’s top drug traffickers, it is often referred to as a “federation” of smaller drug trafficking entities which operate jointly in order to protect themselves and maintain a smoother flow of business.

As the cartel’s head, Guzman makes vast sums of money, winning him a place on Forbes’s list of the world’s wealthiest individuals for the past three years. Still, it is hard to see how "El Chapo" could rival the late Pablo Escobar in terms of wealth. While Guzman’s net worth is estimated to be around one billion dollars, in 1987 Escobar was thought to be the seventh-richest man on the planet, with a personal wealth of close to 25 billion dollars. A year before this assessment, he made headlines for offering to pay off Colombia’s·$13 billion national debt.

Although Escobar may have been wealthier than Guzman, they both worked to win the support of the public. In addition to funding various housing projects and civic associations, Escobar was responsible for the construction of a number of hospitals, schools and churches around the country. This strategy earned him a reputation as a champion of the poor, and helped him cultivate a network of supporters and informants.

Like his Colombian predecessor, Guzman also enjoys considerable support amongst lower-class sectors of Mexican society, particularly in the “Golden Triangle” region of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua states, which is the epicenter of the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations. In this rugged and mountainous area, local farmers grow opium and marijuana in vast quantities and are reportedly rewarded for their work by regular handouts and favors from Guzman. As one U.S. drug official recently told the Associated Press: "With Chapo, he's got the whole Robin Hood thing going. People in close proximity to him might not be motivated to turn him in."

This support base has made capturing him extremely difficult. According to the security consulting firm Stratfor, when the Mexican capo married his third wife in Coahuila in July 2007, the local military commander closed the area off with roadblocks, likely after receiving a payoff. Local politicians are also under the sway of the drug lord. In 2005, the New York Times reported that the mayor of Badiraguato refused to say Guzman’s name aloud to a reporter.

Another similarity between the two drug kingpins is their ability to evade the authorities. During the height of his power in the mid 1980s Escobar lived openly in Medellin and took his family to trips to the U.S., visiting Disneyland and the nation's capital. Today, Guzman is rumored to move from continent to continent using fake identities.

According to a 2009 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Mexican authorities then suspected that Guzman was hiding out in the mountains of Durango, moving between 10 to 15 safe houses around the state with an armed security detail of about 300 men. As recently as June 8, however, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom claimed that the kingpin travels between his country and Honduras. This follows reports in May that “El Chapo” had been living in Argentina throughout 2010.

Guzman shares the apparent invulnerability that Escobar enjoyed before his decline, but lacks the Colombian's high-profile status, which may be a strategic choice. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the different ways in which the two have dealt with capture. When Colombian officials managed to convince Escobar to surrender in 1991, he negotiated a deal that allowed him to stay in his own luxurious private prison, known as La Catedral.

La Catedral had amenities such as a soccer field, bar, jacuzzi and giant doll house, and the compound was often referred to as "Hotel Escobar," or "Club Medellin.” When authorities made a move to crack down, Escobar made a leisurely escape in 1992, setting into motion the massive manhunt that led to his death a year later.

Guzman has also been jailed, but did not make such a public spectacle of it. When he was captured by counternarcotics officials in Guatemala in 1993 and sentenced to twenty years in a maximum security prison in·Jalisco, Guzman simply bought off almost the entire prison staff. While in jail, the drug lord made sure that he received preferential treatment from the guards, who allowed him to smuggle contraband into the prison. When it became clear that the U.S. was seeking to extradite him, Guzman bribed a handful of the prison staff to sneak him out in a laundry basket in 2001. He has been on the run ever since.

Pablo Escobar and Joaquin Guzman represent two very different methods and historical eras of the drug smuggling industry. While it is true that -- as the anonymous DEA official told Forbes -- Guzman exports cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine while Escobar only dealt cocaine, this is likely more a product of geography and history than anything else. Due to Mexico’s position as the criminal gateway into the U.S., market demand for drugs is much higher in the country and makes them more widely available.

Additionally, the 1990s saw a series of counternarcotics crackdowns in the Carribbean, which forced South American drug producers like Escobar to channel their shipments through an increasingly complicated set of corridors in Central America. This fragmentation accounts for the rise of Mexican cartels, which (unlike their Colombian counterparts) focus more of their energy on maintaining control of the entry “plazas” into the U.S. than on the acquisition of illicit substances.

So while Guzman was able to diversify his criminal portfolio more than Escobar, it is unclear whether this is due to his business savvy or to the evolution of the trade. Cocaine trafficking in Colombia in the 1980s was an entirely different ballgame from the modern day drug industry in Mexico.

In the end, determining which of the two deserves the title of “world's greatest outlaw” may rest on a simple test: how much longer Guzman is able to hide. Mexican and American authorities are currently offering rewards of two and five million dollars, respectively, for information leading to his capture, and officials in both countries regularly claim they are getting closer and closer to catching the fugitive. Against such a formidable operation, it may be just a matter of time before Guzman, like Escobar, dies in a hail of gunfire.


Chicago-based Latin Kings gang has been purchasing cocaine from Mexican drug cartels for between $16,000 and $18,000 per kilo, roughly a third cheaper than what it would pay if it bought from its normal suppliers

Posted On 09:08 0 comments

Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a Latin KingChicago-based Latin Kings gang has been purchasing cocaine from Mexican drug cartels for between $16,000 and $18,000 per kilo, roughly a third cheaper than what it would pay if it bought from its normal suppliers in Chicago. The cost savings has also bolstered the ability of the cartels to maintain and even extend power as it fights off rivals and the Mexican army at home.
"To ensure a consistent profit stream from the wholesale drugs they purchase from Mexican DTOs, Hispanic prison gangs distribute drugs through street gangs that they largely, if not entirely, control. Through force or intimidation, Hispanic prison gangs exercise significant control over local gangs that distribute their drugs in the Southwest border region," the NDTA report goes on.
"In Texas, such ties are definitely being solidified," says Malcolm Beith, author of "The Last Narco," a recent book about the drug trade in Mexico. (Disclosure: Beith is a former colleague of mine at Newsweek.) Beith says another worry is the explosion of the methamphetamine business.
Meth production boomed in Mexico in the mid-1990s, but took a brief hit when the Mexican government banned ephedrine, the precursor to meth, in 2007. Since then, however, cartels have been importing ephedrine from Asia, and meth production has increased dramatically since 2003. The Sinaloa cartel, run by Chapo Guzman (the "last" narco of Beith's title), controls the lion's share of the burgeoning meth trade.
Each lab is thought to be producing several tons of high quality narcotic, worth millions of dollars on the American street. In the Los BaƱos raid earlier this month, detectives told me that the meth was between 94 and 99 percent pure, a mark of the NorteƱos skill at importing high-quality drugs, and keeping them pure for customers.
Beith, who spent several months investigating the drug war, says he has no direct knowledge of what is happening today in California. However, he says, his reporting did turn up evidence that "Mexican drug bosses are increasingly working on the ground in Central America and even former drug hot spots like Colombia, effectively running the show on foreign turf."
That, says Beith, may indicate that increased cooperation in California may be part of a more global trend.
Since 2001, the true reach of the major Mexican cartels has been a subject of intense debate. Beith says he has come across former DEA officials who believe, for instance, that Chapo Guzman has direct contact with other organized crime bosses, and even perhaps terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, the Shiite extremist group in south Lebanon. Beith has never confirmed these allegations himself, and says there is scant evidence to support such claims.
What worries U.S. officials most is the possible spillover of violence from Mexico. Beith says these fears are overrated. "Mexico's biggest problem is lack of law enforcement," he says, "not the number of sociopaths here."
These days, he points out, it costs around $35 to have someone killed in Sinaloa because the police are too scared to do anything. The same can't be said in this country.


Saturday 18 June 2011

Mexican police say Edgar Huerta Montiel, 22, confessed to leading the capture of two truckloads of undocumented migrants in Tamaulipas state, and the killing of 10 of the victims.

Posted On 18:00 0 comments

Mexican authorities on Friday announced the arrest of the man they say directed the kidnappings of 72 Central and South American migrants found slain in northern Mexico last year.

Federal police said Edgar Huerta Montiel, 22, told them he led the capture of two freight trucks packed with undocumented migrants in the state of Tamaulipas, then killed 10 of the victims.



Huerta, described as an army deserter who works for the Zetas drug gang, allegedly told police he also ordered the kidnappings of six busloads of passengers in the rural town of San Fernando.

Captives were taken to safe houses and tortured for information, including whether they were working for the Gulf cartel, a rival gang, said Ramon Eduardo Pequeno, head of the anti-drug division of the federal police.

Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, has seen some of Mexico's worst violence amid fighting between the gangs and the inability of Mexican authorities to establish order.

The bodies of the 72 migrants were found in August on a ranch in San Fernando after one member of the group escaped. In the same area, authorities this spring found graves containing the remains of nearly 200 people believed kidnapped from buses headed toward the border. At least 21 suspects have been arrested in those slayings.

Migrants are frequently seized by gangs hoping to extort money from the victims' loved ones.

Some Mexican news media reported that Huerta had told police that more than 600 victims had been buried in makeshift graves, though authorities did not confirm that.

Huerta and his girlfriend were arrested Thursday in the northern state of Zacatecas.

Authorities said he was a top aide to Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, an alleged Zetas chief in Tamaulipas known as "Squirrel." The Mexican government has offered a reward of about $1.3 million for information leading to Martinez's capture.

Huerta also allegedly worked with another suspected crime boss, Martin Omar Estrada Luna, who was arrested in April by Mexican marines.

 


LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG "I'm a hitwoman," she said.

Posted On 17:56 0 comments

The AK-47 and AK74 Kalashnikov Rifles and Their Variations

Maria Celeste Mendoza was among six teenage suspected gang members arrested this week by police after a shoot-out with authorities in central Mexico, one of the growing ranks of young people working for the country's drug cartels.

Dressed in combat fatigues and with her face hidden, the girl from the northern border state of Tamaulipas described how she had been trained to use Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons by the Zetas, one of Mexico's most brutal gangs.

In a listless drawl, Mendoza said she was paid 12,000 pesos ($1,000) for two weeks' work, more than three times the national average. Although she said she was trained as a hitwoman, it was unclear if she had killed anyone yet.

As is customary in Mexico, she and the other suspects, six of whom were women aged 21 or below, were paraded in front of the media by police after their capture in San Cristobal de la Barranca, near the country's second city, Guadalajara.

Rising youth unemployment, easy access to drugs and the quick cash cartels offer recruits are all blamed for felling

the delinquency that has cast a shadow over Mexico's future.

"Organized crime has become a job provider for a section of the population who don't have a lot of other options," said Victor Clark-Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana on the Mexican border with California.

"Since 2000, the age at which people start getting mixed up in organized crime has fallen," he added. "And in the last few years, the age has dropped to about 17 or 18."

Detailed figures on the role of minors in the cartels are scarce, but newspaper Reforma said the number charged with involvement in organized crime jumped to 214 last year from 8 in 2007, citing data from the attorney general's office.

The arrest of Mendoza and another 16-year-old girl with her, Isela Sandoval, is part of the trend. Sandoval also said she had been trained as a hitwoman but that she had not killed anyone yet, according to Mexican media reports.

Around 40,000 people have died in escalating drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to try to crush the cartels at the end of 2006.



Although authorities have arrested a number of teenage hitmen in the past few years, it is highly unusual for women to work as killers for drug gangs, said Clark-Alfaro.

"This may just be an isolated case. But it may mean a new pattern is emerging in the world of organized crime," he said.

Last December, Mexican soldiers captured suspected drug gang hitman Edgar Jimenez, known as "El Ponchis," a 14-year-old U.S. citizen who the army said had admitted killing several people while under the influence of drugs.

The vast quantities of narcotics moving across the country toward the lucrative markets of Europe and the United States have helped to turn Mexicans onto drugs earlier than before.

"Kids are starting to take drugs younger and younger," said Alberto Islas, a security expert at consultancy Risk Evaluation. "A decade ago, the average age was 14, now it's 10. This has the effect of lowering their perception of risks."

Coupled with the fact that youth unemployment is now double what it was ten years ago -- in a country whose growing population is one of the youngest in the Americas -- the trends present the cartels with a rich source of cheap labor.

"Young folk are recruited because they're potentially more aggressive and less likely to care about the consequences than adults. They'll take more risks," said Clark-Alfaro.

He said it is often a short career with the attorney general's office calculating that young men who get mixed up in organized crime will, on average, be dead within three or four years.

The Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico (REDIM), an advocacy group, says some 30,000 children are believed to work for criminal gangs in Latin America's No.2 economy, where delinquency is often blamed on high drop-out rates at school.

But even those who remain in the classroom are far from safe from the allure of drugs, guns and crime.

A 2009 government survey of some 55,000 secondary schoolchildren in five Mexican cities showed more than one in five had seen classmates carry a weapon and that one in eight would sell marijuana for cash if a friend egged them on.

Those who graduate toward the cartels can expect a brutal schooling from their new teachers, according to the testimony of Miguel Ortiz Miranda, a member of La Familia cartel captured last year, whose interrogation later surfaced on Youtube.

In graphic detail, he calmly described how new assassins were quickly put to the test with selected victims.

"We made (the new ones) kill them, and slit their throats and quarter them and all that. So that the new people would lose their fear of cutting an arm ... or a leg," he said.

Others end up as drug dealers, fixers or watchmen but those safer jobs do not always pay as well, according to Beatriz Hernandez, 21, one of the other women arrested with Mendoza, who said she earned 4,000 pesos every two weeks as a look-out.

With Mexico struggling to clean up its justice system or create more decent jobs, some young people see gangland murders as a real career option.

"This is about the impunity here," Islas said. "Because of it, the perception of risk attached to committing this kind of crime is very low. Murders are not solved in Mexico."


convicted Jarvon Brown, a Pierson Hood gang member, for the drive-by shooting that killed a Flint boy nearly seven years ago.

Posted On 17:52 0 comments

Genesee County jury has convicted Jarvon Brown, a Pierson Hood gang member, for the drive-by shooting that killed a Flint boy nearly seven years ago.

ABC12's Lori Dougovito was in court Friday when that verdict came down.

The case has been open almost as long as the little boy, Karibe Anderson Jr., had been alive.

It took nearly seven years for the case to get to trial, yet only one week in court and hours of jury deliberation to find Jarvon Brown guilty. He was convicted on all four counts, including first-degree murder for the shooting death of the 7-year-old.

The victim's father, Karibe Anderson Sr., testified at the trial and has been living with the death of his young son for years. He is relieved at the outcome. "Today, I feel good. I feel good .... Finally going to get some sleep and some rest. I think it's going to be OK."

During Brown's trial, prosecutors presented witnesses that weaved a series of incidents that, they say, led to Brown shooting up a home on West Baltimore in Flint, in the early morning of December 7 of 2004.

Investigators believe Brown was 'disrespected' and even shot at, while in a car on that street. In the fall of 2004, Brown was shot twice in three months. Investigators suggest he sought retaliation, but instead shot into the wrong home.

"We're pleased with the jury's decision .... I'm especially gratified for the family of the victim," Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said. "What's especially gratifying is that the jury understood. In cases like these, the witnesses are going to be people out on the streets. That's who sees these crimes. That's who has the information. We can't present boy scouts all the time, and the jury understood that. In this case, they understood that this (Brown) was the killer."

Brown will be sentenced to the mandatory life in prison, without parole, next month.


Friday 17 June 2011

The Big Diesal ordered the Main Street Crips gang to beat him up in order to recover a sex tape.

Posted On 08:29 0 comments

SnitchShaq has been accused as one of the masterminds behind the 2008 beating of a former business partner by a gang in Los Angeles. The victim, Robert Ross, claims The Big Diesal ordered the Main Street Crips gang to beat him up in order to recover a sex tape.

The sex tape reportedly showed  Shaq having sex with a woman, who was not his wife at the time. Ross later said that he only concocted the sex tape story to annoy Shaq.

Shaq has already denied the allegations by Ross during the police’s investigation over the accusation. According to records, Shaq was not included in the charges of the kidnapping, robbery and assault filed by Ross against the members of the  Main Street Crips gang.

O’Neal retired this month after 19 seasons, eight of them with the Los Angeles Lakers. Standing 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m) tall and weighing 325 pounds (147 kg), Shaq was one of the heaviest players ever to play in the NBA. Throughout his colorful career, O’Neal used his size and strength to overpower opponents for points and rebounds.

He won three consecutive championships, playing alongside Kobe Bryant, in 2000, 2001, and 2002.  O’Neal’s relationship with Bryant eventually declined into a feud.


Life plus 135 years prison sentence for Krazy Locos gang leader

Posted On 08:17 0 comments

Rolando Franco and Jonathan Gonzalez were best friends. Franco kept a picture of Gonzalez in his bedroom. He treasured a letter Gonzalez wrote, describing how they would grow old together.

However, when Franco, 22, decided to leave the violent Krazy Locos gang and build a new life, Gonzalez didn't let personal feelings stand in his way: He ordered Franco's execution.

It was all in a day's work for the ruthless gang leader, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

From his house in a quiet neighborhood west of Lantana, Gonzalez sold high-powered weapons and hand grenades. He dealt drugs. He ordered shootings and two murders.

For all of his misdeeds, exacerbated by his habit of enlisting juveniles and broken-family members to do his bidding, Gonzalez, 23, will spend the rest of his life behind bars, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra ruled.

In an emotional hearing in which loved ones of Gonzalez's victims decried his "evil soul," Marra made sure Gonzalez will never again be free. He sentenced him to life plus 135 years - 50 more years than prosecutors recommended.

Marra also meted out harsh sentences for Gonzalez's two brothers, as their mother looked on, crying softly.

The three brothers were among six gang members Marra sentenced during hearings that took most of the day.

Two others already have been sentenced in connection with the gang's two-year reign of violence but next month will ask Marra for concessions.

Marra said his challenge was making sure each was sentenced fairly, given their varying roles, their ages and their mental abilities.

He rejected arguments that Gonzalez's older brother, Christopher Gonzalez-Chamberlain, 24, who has Asperger's syndrome, and his younger brother, Ivan Isidro Santiago, 20, deserved mercy because of either their developmental disorder or youth. Marra said he heard no evidence that Asperger's syndrome, a type of autism characterized by antisocial behavior, diminishes the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

"Someone not only got shot by him, but someone died," Marra said of Gonzalez-Chamberlain's role in the February 2009 murder of Daniel Rivera, 36, and the wounding of Rivera's brother, Angel, then 31.

He sentenced Gonzalez-Chamberlain to 15 years in prison for participating in the suburban Lake Worth shootings that Gonzalez ordered, mistakenly believing the Riveras were members of a rival gang.

Santiago will serve 30 years for being Gonzalez's able assistant, training other gang members, providing guns and helping in the illegal gun sales.

Later, when asked to reduce the life sentence he already imposed on Manuel Medina, Marra said he couldn't give him the same sentence as Santiago, who directed him to kill.

After all, Marra pointed out, Medina shot Franco in the face in January 2009. Then, he shot and killed Daniel Rivera after Gonzalez-Chamberlain shot Rivera's brother.

Even though he was only 17, he could have said no, Marra said, imposing a 35-year sentence.

Alejandro Tomas, who was 16 when he drove the getaway car in the Rivera shooting, was sentenced to 19 years. Itzel Candela-Campos, 21, will spend 40 months - just over three years - in prison for trying to help her boyfriend, Santiago, thwart the investigation.

Prosecutor Marie Villafana called the case the most difficult of her 10-year career.

It began as an investigation into a man accused of turning young immigrant girls into prostitutes. It led to the Krazy Locos gang, which provided protection at the brothels.

Ultimately, guns that were sold by Gonzalez were linked to the unsolved murders of Rivera and Franco.

Villafana recalled how Franco's mother told her she thought her son's murderer would never be brought to justice because she and her family were poor immigrants.

She described how Gonzalez turned neighborhoods into war zones where people were afraid in their own homes. She talked about how he preyed on youth, getting them to carry out his heinous crimes.

"I've heard that if you live like a thug, you have to be willing to die like a thug," she said. "Jonathan Gonzalez chose the thug's life for all of them - his neighbors, his victims and their families. He chose the thug's life for his brothers as well."

 


Tuesday 14 June 2011

Violent MS-13 Gang Member Previously Deported, Rearrested in Maryland

Posted On 18:48 0 comments

, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Baltimore arrested Saul Antonio Uriba, a known MS-13 gang member who was previously deported by ICE’s legacy agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), in 1998.
Uriba, 34, from El Salvador, was convicted on July 11, 1996 in Arlington County, Va., of possessing burglary tools and tampering with an automobile. He was sentenced to three years in prison and was deported at the conclusion of his sentence.
On June 9, 2011, ICE’s ERO office in Baltimore received an anonymous tip from ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) in Williston, Vt., that Uriba had reentered the United States and was residing in Maryland. The tip was called into the LESC which provided the information to ERO in Baltimore. Within 24 hours of receiving the tip, Uriba had been arrested by ICE ERO officers and was in custody.
“Street gangs pose a growing public safety concern to our communities,” said ICE ERO Baltimore Field Office Director, Calvin McCormick. “Our ERO officers in Baltimore, working closely with the LESC, were able to identify, locate and arrest this gang member in the name of public safety and security. Removing known gang members from our streets is an important step in maintaining the safety and quality of life that the citizens of Maryland expect.”
Uriba potentially faces federal criminal prosecution for illegally reentering the country after having been formally deported.  ICE ERO enforces the nation’s immigration laws in a fair and effective manner. It identifies and arrests removable aliens, detains these individuals when necessary, and removes them from the United States. ICE ERO prioritizes the arrests and removal of convicted criminal aliens, those aliens who pose a threat to national security, immigration fugitives, and recent border entrants.
The LESC is a national enforcement operations facility administered by ICE. The LESC is a single national point of contact that provides timely customs information and immigration status and identity information and real-time assistance to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies on aliens suspected of, arrested for, or convicted of criminal activity.

 


AN ATTEMPT to re-form the notorious Westies gang was smashed when gardai foiled the kidnap of a bank worker.

Posted On 09:07 0 comments



Three former members of the gang were arrested as they tried to abduct the financial services worker.

The trio were detained with two other city criminals in a swoop by crack armed detectives.

The three Blanchardstown-based gangsters -- who were in custody today -- were members of the infamous Westies, whose leaders Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg were murdered in Spain's Costa-Del-Crime in 2004.

Officers believe they intended kidnapping a bank worker ahead of opening hours this morning.

It was also an attempt to revive the fortunes of the once notorious Westies crime network.

In a surveillance led operation by the Garda Organised Crime Unit (OCU), the suspects were arrested at 1am yesterday in a housing estate in Kill, Co Kildare. Gardai believe the gang were on their way to carry out an armed robbery.

Armed detectives recovered a sawn-off shotgun and automatic pistol and the five arrested men – aged in their late 20s and 30s - are being questioned today at three different garda stations in the city.

The Herald can reveal that two of the suspects are brothers from the Blanchardstown area, aged 30 and 35, who are extremely well known to gardai.

Sources say that the older of the brothers was very close to Westies' gang leaders Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg who were murdered in Spain in 2004.

But the two brothers fell out with the notorious mob bosses when the younger brother was shot in the leg by Sugg in 1999 in a dispute over a woman and the older brother was beaten with an armed bar.

At one stage gardai were confident that the brothers would give evidence against Sugg but this never happened and the dispute was resolved.

Three years after being shot in the leg, the younger brother was arrested with a close associate of Sugg in relation to an armed robbery at a credit union in Derry which led to five-hour siege with the PSNI outside a bed-and-breakfast.

HEROIN

His older brother is a chronic heroin addict who was given a six-month suspended sentence in February after being caught with €1,600 worth of heroin in his pocket.

The 35-year-old criminal broke his knees in a serious road traffic accident five years ago and has 13 previous criminal convictions.

Another of those still being questioned today is a very close associate of tragic Ian Tobin (25), a father-of-two,who died after he was shot through the front door of a house in Fortlawn Park, Blanchardstown, in May 2007.

Mr Tobin's close associate is aged 35 and he has numerous previous convictions.

He was shot during the robbery of a Co Meath supermarket in 1997 and has convictions for dealing heroin, burglary, criminal damage and assault.

The other two men being detained today are being held in Ballyfermot Garda Station.

Both are aged in their late 20s and are from the East Wall and Malahide areas of Dublin.

Sources say that the duo have links to other Dublin-based criminals who have been involved in tiger kidnappings in recent times.

It is understood that Sunday morning's arrests foiled a tiger kidnapping which had been planned for over two months before the five gangsters were arrested.

Gardai had the gang under surveillance for weeks and watched as they travelled out of the city in two cars and met up in a housing estate in Kill shortly before 1am.

One of the cars, a BMW, had been stolen in west Dublin on April 1 and stashed away in preparation for the robbery.

Three of the suspects, along with the two weapons, were found in the BMW.

The other two were detained close-by after a short chase through the housing estate.

All five are expected to be released without charge later this week and a file will be prepared for the DPP.

The infamous Westies gang imploded in an unprecedented round of blood-letting which resulted in the murders of all of its leaders.

These included Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg - who were murdered on the orders of a Finglas drug dealer in 2004 - Sugg's brother Bernard and crazed criminal brothers Andrew 'Madser' Glennon and his older brother Mark.


A murder hunt is under way after a 44-year-old man was shot dead in Greater Manchester.

Posted On 09:04 0 comments


The victim was thought to have been sat in a car when he was shot
The man, who has not been named, was shot in Wythenshawe, south of the city on Monday.
It is believed the man had been sat in a parked car on Floatshall Road in Baguley when shots were fired into the vehicle.
He was taken to hospital but died a short time later.


Saturday 11 June 2011

GANGLAND murder carried out by a former Huddersfield man could not have been prevented, a top-level inquiry has found.

Posted On 13:18 0 comments


The investigation into the shooting of Eccles shopkeeper Nasar Hussain, in July 2009, was launched after a court case into his death.

And the independent Police Complaints Commission has ruled that the killing of Mr Hussain, an innocent shop worker in a gang drugs war, could not have been prevented by police or the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

Mr Hussain was serving customers at an off-licence in Eccles, Greater Manchester, when Simeon Henderson strolled in with a sub-machine gun concealed in a paper bag. He shot the shopkeeper in the chest and stomach.

Mr Hussain, 27, was not the intended target and was not involved with the dispute between the two gangs in Bolton.

Henderson, 28, formerly of Hollin Avenue in Marsh and Woodville Place in Bradley, pleaded guilty to murder.

He received a life sentence with a minimum of 15 years, when he appeared at Manchester Crown Court in February.

Four other men: Mohammed Hafiz, 43, of Cheetham Hill; Arfan Rafiq, 26, of Oldham; Ryan Manning, 22, of Higher Ince and Akmal Afzal, 25, of Bolton were also jailed for their part in the incident.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission ordered a probe after it emerged that Soca had received intelligence beforehand that an armed robbery was set to take place at the shop.

The inquiry found the agency was first made aware of a potential armed robbery in the Greater Manchester area two days before the killing.


Wednesday 8 June 2011

Philistin (Crazy) Paul reputed to be an influential figure among Montreal street gangs has been sentenced to an eight-year prison term for discharging a firearm in a public place.

Posted On 01:00 0 comments



Philistin (Crazy) Paul tried to delay his sentencing by requesting he be able to change lawyers, just before Quebec Court Judge Jean-Paul Braun rendered his decision Tuesday.

Paul had been represented by three lawyers during his trial, and the question of who actually represented him was raised during a sentencing hearing in April. During that session, defence lawyer Gilles Daudelin said he was finished with the case and would no longer represent Paul.

The case was left to defence lawyer Alexandre Goyette, who asked Braun if he could leave the case so Daudelin could return and make additional arguments on sentencing.

But Braun said his decision was already made and Goyette made no compelling arguments for the delay. Braun was especially unimpressed by the fact Daudelin wasn't present Tuesday morning for the request.

Paul was acquitted this year of the attempted murder of Beauvoir Jean, a former street gang leader who now works as a social worker and counsels youth on how to avoid joining gangs. The shooting occurred in Montreal North in June 2010. It followed an argument between Paul and Jean as they stood outside a strip mall and many innocent people were nearby.

While acquitting Paul, the judge found him guilty of discharging a firearm in a public place. Paul also shot himself in the thigh while fleeing the scene.

The conviction carries a mandatory minimum five-year prison term. The maximum sentence is 14 years.


Tuesday 7 June 2011

4 killed, 2 injured in Medellin 'gang-related' shootings

Posted On 12:02 0 comments

Four people, including one minor, are killed and a further two injured in northwestern Medellin, in what authorities believe to be related to gang retaliations, as well as innocents caught in gang crossfire, Caracol Radio reported Monday.


The three separate incidents occurred in the adjacent neighborhoods of Kennedy and Castilla, with an outbreak of shooting causing many frightened citizens to flee to the safety of their houses.

Two men were seemingly killed in the crossfire, one of them identified as 44-year-old Luis Anibal Montoya Zapata, who had been living in the area for only 15 days. A 51-year-old died in the same incident as he stood at the door of a shop, while a further man remains in critical condition after receiving a bullet to the head.

In a separate incident, a young man under the age of 17 was killed in an alley near the boundary of the two neighborhoods. He was approached by an unknown assailant and shot several times with a gun using a silencer.

The final incident occurred when men in a taxi pulled up to a barbershop in Castilla and attacked too young men who were awaiting their turn. 18-year-old Christian Sepulveda died on his way to hospital, while his friend Pablo Tobon Uribe, 19, was wounded in the arm.

Authorities are investigating the incidents, although initial suspicion has fallen upon the neighborhood gangs. While investigators strongly expect some of the murders to be direct gang retaliations, they are as yet unsure whether those seemingly killed in the crossfire were in any way targeted.

 


Houston police probe dead Aryan Brotherhood head

Posted On 12:01 0 comments

The death of Frank E. Roch Jr. has been a stumper for Houston police from the moment officers found the heavily tattooed man dying slumped in his pickup truck that had crashed beside a Houston freeway.
First, there were all of the different identification cards he had on and around him — so many, in fact, that investigators had trouble identifying him. Indeed, it would be hours before they learned the man had headed the largest faction of one of the state's most infamous criminal gangs.
Roch commanded about 1,500 members of the white-supremacist Aryan Brotherhood of Texas inside prisons and outside, investigators said.
"It was widely understood, at least in law enforcement circles, he was the general of generals," U.S. Attorney John Bales of Houston told the Houston Chronicle.
That has made only made investigators more eager to learn the circumstances of his death after he was found in his truck beside U.S. 59 the night of May 19.
"It is an open case. Witnesses reported seeing the vehicle swerve and strike a concrete barrier," Houston police spokesman Kese Smith said.
The Harris County medical examiner's office has not determined what killed the 54-year-old Baytown man known to associates as "Pancho." His remains were cremated after his May 25 funeral.
Prison photos show the word "loyalty" tattooed across Roch's chest, according to the Chronicle. The 54-year-old Baytown man also has tattoos of the gang's shield, including a swastika, and a star showing his rank of general and chairman.
In recent years, federal indictments have targeted members of the Aryan Brotherhood for a variety of crimes, including murder, assaults and extortion.
According to one indictment, "Members are required to sign a blind-faith commitment in which they agree to do anything directed or requested by their superiors without question. Failure to comply may result in severe beatings, known as beat-downs, or deaths."
On Thursday, a suburban Houston man pleaded guilty in federal court in San Antonio to a racketeering charge and could get a life sentence for the slaying of a fellow member of the group. On May 25, an East Texas man was sentenced to life in federal prison for the murders of a man and woman on the orders of an Aryan Brotherhood leader.

 


alleged MS-13 gang member accused in the 2008 fatal shootings of a father and his two sons

Posted On 12:00 0 comments

alleged MS-13 gang member accused in the 2008 fatal shootings of a father and his two sons in San Francisco's Excelsior District, prosecutors said today.

Edwin Ramos, 24, was arrested three days after the killings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, on June 22, 2008.

Ramos, an El Sobrante resident, has been charged with three counts of murder and multiple special allegations involving gang membership, firearm use and multiple murders.

The Bologna family had been driving from a family picnic in Fairfield to their home in the Excelsior when they came upon another car, allegedly driven by Ramos, at the intersection of Maynard and Congdon streets.

A surviving son in the car testified at Ramos' preliminary hearing in 2009 that he saw Ramos flash a gun from inside the partly opened window of the car and begin "mugging" at them before shots were fired.

Ramos, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, has admitted to driving the car but told investigators that another man inside the vehicle fired the shots.

Two other alleged MS-13 members had been wounded in a shooting in the Mission District earlier that day, and prosecutors have speculated that the Bolognas were mistaken for rival gang members.

Pretrial motions in the case are expected to begin Tuesday, with the selection of a jury expected in the next month or so, although a date has not yet been set, district attorney's office spokesman Seth Steward said


Sunday 5 June 2011

Crips gang member pleads guilty to racketeering charges

Posted On 09:42 0 comments

A member of the criminal street gang the Crips pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to charges of conspiring to conduct a racketeering enterprise related to his membership in a Pittsburgh Crips criminal enterprise, according to a report obtained by the Organized Crime Control Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
 
Nicklas Gay, 23, aka “GK,” pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Gustave Diamond to one count of conspiracy to engage in a racketeering conspiracy.   

According to the guilty plea, Gay and others participated in a pattern of racketeering activity that included multiple acts involving robberies at gun point; attempted murders; distribution of controlled substances, including cocaine, heroin and crack cocaine; and acts of obstruction of justice and witness intimidation.

According to his allocution and court documents, Gay was a member of the Northview Heights/ Fineview Crips, a criminal street gang operating out of the Northview Heights public housing facility in the Northside neighborhood, and in the nearby Fineview neighborhood of Pittsburgh. 

The gang had been operating in Northside since 2002, and in 2003 it formed an alliance with the Brighton Place Crips to expand the gang’s drug trafficking territory and increase the gang’s capability for violence.   The Brighton Place Crips is a criminal street gang formed in the early 1990s that controlled the area of Brighton Place and Morrison Street, also known as the Mad Cave, and Federal Street in the Northside area of Pittsburgh.

The Brighton Place/Northview Heights Crips gang maintained exclusive control over drug trafficking in these neighborhoods through continuous violence and intimidation of rivals and witnesses.  Members of the gang support each other through payment of attorneys’ fees and bonds, as well as payments to jail commissary accounts and support of incarcerated members’ families.   

In addition, the Brighton Place/Northview Heights Crips gang maintains an ongoing feud with the Manchester Original Gangsters, a criminal street gang located in the Manchester area of the Northside Section of Pittsburgh.

 


Friday 3 June 2011

Officers found a shrine to one of the city’s most notorious gangsters — Jeff Fort — when they searched the home of another suspected gang leader

Posted On 14:44 0 comments

Officers found a shrine to one of the city’s most notorious gangsters — Jeff Fort — when they searched the home of another suspected gang leader last year on the Southeast Side, a police source said.

The shrine included photos of Fort locking arms with other Chicago gang kingpins.

Police also found receipts of $100 wire transfers to Fort, 64, at the supermax prison where he’s being held in Colorado, the source said.

It turned out that Fort is the uncle of Eric Gauthreaux, whose house the officers were searching.

On Thursday, Chicago Police announced Gauthreaux and 18 other people have been arrested on drug conspiracy charges in an investigation called “Operation Terror Town II.”

Police said they seized 13 vehicles; 10 guns; 900 grams of heroin, and 125 grams of cocaine.

Gauthreaux, 32, is a “prince” of the Black P Stones street gang in Terror Town, described as the area between 75th and 79th and Yates and Colfax, police said.

Fort was a co-founder of the Black P Stones in the late 1960s. He later formed the El Rukn faction. He was convicted in 1987 of conspiring with Libya to perform acts of domestic terrorism and sentenced to 80 years in federal prison. In 1988, he was convicted of the 1981 murder of a rival gang member and was sentenced to an additional 75 years in prison.

Coincidentally, Gauthreaux lived in a house next to the alley where Chicago Police Officer Michael Flisk and a civilian, Stephen Peters, were shot to death in November after Flisk responded to a report of a car burglary in the 8100 block of South Burnham, where Peters stored his car in his mother’s garage . A 19-year-old man was charged in the slayings.

Police said the investigation into Gauthreaux and his co-defendants was unrelated to the killings.

Operation Terror Town II was launched in September 2010.

The original Operation Terror Town culminated in 2009 with the arrest of four other Black P Stones.


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