Posted on 06/26/2012 1:44:17 PM PDT by kathsua
CHICAGO — Everybody has long known that Chicago has a gang problem, but we're just beginning to understand that we have a perfect storm brewing of street gangs with ties to the Mexican narcos.
Just last week, the Chicago Police and federal agents announced more than a dozen arrests in the city and suburbs in a coordinated drug raid. The authorities think the suspects arrested have ties to a Mexican drug cartel.
Back in November, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 12 people in Chicago and charged them with drug trafficking.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said then that the charges were part of the first federal prosecution in Chicago of defendants with ties to the Zetas, one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels - and an extremely violent one.
According to federal reports, the Chicago region is one of the nation's largest drug markets and a distribution center for illicit drugs.
The feds and local cops know that gangs are increasingly involved in the retail sale of illegal narcotics across Illinois. And gangs have only one source to get drugs for resale: the Mexican cartels.
The feds say the Mexican drug cartels operate in more than 2,500 cities across the country. In Chicago, they have contact with high-level members of the Gangster Disciples, the Vice Lords and the Latin Kings, supplying them with drugs for street distribution, according to federal agencies.
Most homicides committed in Chicago are gang-related and many are the result of rival gangs fighting for turf to sell drugs.
You need only to connect the dots.
The arrest of people with alleged ties to the Zetas is very worrisome. The Zetas, formed by former members of an elite Mexican army unit, are behind some of the most gruesome violence in the Mexican drug war, a conflict that has claimed an estimated 60,000 lives since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out war against the cartels five and half years ago.
The Zetas also are capable of launching sophisticated operations, not only in Mexico but the United States.
This week, federal authorities announced they have cracked a race horse-breeding scheme on this side of the border that allowed Mexican nationals with ties to the Zetas to launder millions of dollars in drug money.
Sylvia Longmire, a retired Air Force captain and former special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, told me that Mexican drug cartels operatives live and work in the United States without calling too much attention to themselves.
"The last thing they want is to arouse the ire of the U.S. authorities by committing the kind of violence we see in Mexico," said Longmire, author of the book Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars.
Longmire said that there have been killings related to Mexican drug-trafficking groups on the Southwest border. And she pointed out that the potential for cartel-style vicious violence in the streets of American cities is very real because the cartels need to keep the business going "and they are being crunched by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies."
Curbing the spiral of violence in Chicago will require not only fighting gangs in city and suburbs, but also going after their narco friends.
I've been saying this for a while now: The narcos are already here. Copyright 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC
Conservatives need to move away from thinking about Obama as a doctrinaire liberal and expose him as a corrupt politician pretending to be a liberal.
Project Gangwalker.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/09/codrea-exclusive-project-gangwalker.html
The illegal drug industry has much of its source material coming over the Mexican border. Big time gangsters and gang bangers in the hood get their product from smugglers in Mexico. The Mexican government may even see it as an important export income. Mexican banks may have as their side activity the laundering of money from the drug sales. It is no wonder that the Obama Regime is keeping the borders porous enough to keep the illegal drug products poring in. This is why they went to the Supreme Court to keep Arizona from enforcing the immigration laws.
“The feds say the Mexican drug cartels operate in more than 2,500 cities across the country.”
No wonder the POSs 0bummer & Holder don’t want any of them questioned and DHS will just ignore (SCOTUS Ruling AZ end-run) any calls by local LEOs. Follow the money/drugs. All the way to the White Hut/Crib and DoINJ.
It is drug trafficking which fuels the money coffers of communists in this country.
There is a little known or publicized Mexican family that controls the drug trafficking in Chicago. They’re tied in politically with the Democratic Party machine, and through them the international trade unionists and the environmentalist movement.
We’re hearing a lot about drug cartels and arrests in Chicago right now, but it isn’t the established family that is being targeted. The arrests involve outside groups trying to get in on the action.
The political powers in Chicago do not want their cozy arrangement er, disarranged.
Plus he has guaranteed the drug traffickers free flow of drugs up here by (a) not enforceing federal law, (b) shutting down Arizona’s attempts at interdiction, and (c) not sealing the border.
Republicans also have to start screaming that all those who come north are not idyllic Mexicans hoping to pick fruit. No, they are Al Qaeda and other nasties with evil aims.
No, Chicago drug sales are fueled by the age-old urge to self-intoxicate. Mexican cartels are fueled by drug-war-inflated profits from that age-old urge.
And she pointed out that the potential for cartel-style vicious violence in the streets of American cities is very real because the cartels need to keep the business going "and they are being crunched by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies."
"Crunched," my heinie. Cartels are sociopathically violent because when you hyperinflate profits and restrict them to criminal hands, as the War On Drugs does, you create a circumstance where sociopathic violence pays big.
Yes, and I have always thought the Clintons did too. You don’t make 100 mil like the Clintons did on speaking engagements and salary for life being POTUS.
“perfect storm brewing of street gangs with ties to the Mexican narcos...”
Yeah, but don’t forget the biggest street gang in Chicago, the CPD.
Maybe not directly, as they can't tax it, yet.
post about the Sinaloa Cartel and the Chicago drug trade (several links)
How long until Mexican gangs get nukes?
Jesse's half brother, Noah Rob. is doing life in prison for his work in the street gang El Rukn...AKA Black ???? (numerous endings)) FerretCON converted them to Islam and they changed their name)
El Rukn, a street gang whose territory encompassed the same area that 0 worked as a CO, chief crimes were drugs, male and female prostitution, and murder for hire.
Connecting dots are easy. Finding smoking guns to convict are not.
This article expands my thinking about the Mexican connection:
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