Fort Myers drug raid yields 8 kilos of cocaine, 6 suspects

A story that only proves Lou Dobbs point about drugs coming into the US from Mexico

Got to link to see photos
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 30389/1002


It had been a long journey from the fields of South America, along dusty Mexican streets, stuffed into secret compartments of a pickup with Texas plates and along lonely stretches of highway into palm-lined Fort Myers.

The buyers were waiting anxiously.

But before the powder could feed local addictions, Lee County sheriff's deputies, at the height of a yearlong investigation, pounced.
In what has been hailed one of the largest drug busts in the county's history, local and federal narcotics officers arrested 13, including six who were operating a high-level, international cartel. They face decades behind bars. Inside a Fort Myers home, deputies discovered 8 kilos - or 17.6 pounds - of cocaine worth $22,000 for each kilo, five loaded pistols, $50,000 in cash and various paraphernalia.

The investigation is ongoing, and officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies are tracking an additional 10 kilos connected to the same group that has since circulated to other areas of the country.

Sheriff Mike Scott called the bust "significant." The biggest for his agency before this, he said, was five and one-half kilos, seized two years ago in San Carlos Park.

"As long as there is a demand for this poison, there will be a business for it," Scott said. "But we're going to make it unprofitable to do business. These drugs made it all the way from Mexico to Fort Myers, and that's where the party stopped."

Those arrested, five men and one woman, are: Ignacio Santiago-Cruz, 36, and Josue Rivera, 27, of Fort Myers; Jaime Gallegos, 22, and the only woman, Shawnn Rhodes, 18, of Lehigh Acres; Luis Torres, 31, of Naples; Martin Villegas, 49, of Texas. All are charged with trafficking cocaine and conspiring to traffic cocaine. Cruz, Torres and Villegas are additionally charged with a felony weapon offense.

According to the arrest report, surveillance was set up on Cruz's home on Oklahoma Avenue in Fort Myers - the same house where deputies broke up a 95-plant marijuana grow operation a year earlier. Each of the suspects were somehow involved in either delivering or attempting to distribute the drugs, deputies said. Each suspect faces between 25 and 50 years in prison, according to Capt. Dominick Ferrante, commander of the sheriff's narcotics unit.

"This organization," he said, "has been completely dismantled."
The sale and use of cocaine in the county has spiked dramatically in the last three years, Ferrante said.

"All you have to do is look at the number of cocaine-related arrests," he said. "There's obviously more of it coming in."

This year, the sheriff's office has already seized a kilo more than the 12 it rounded it up in 2007. And in 2006, there were 18 kilos seized compared to 10 in 2005. In Cape Coral, there were 1.1 kilos seized in 2006, and 2.9 in 2007. In Fort Myers, of the 1,000 drug-related arrests each year, 10 involved cocaine trafficking in 2006, another 18 in 2007 and four so far this year. Cocaine-related deaths in all of Florida doubled from 150 to 300 in the five years between 2000 and 2005, according to a study by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the University of Florida.
Fort Myers has always been an attractive dumping ground for cocaine dealers, Ferrante said, because of its location - smack between the metropolitan hubs of Tampa and Miami.

Most of the drug, he said, is pipelined through Mexico.
Fort Myers police Maj. Doug Baker said the group arrested is a prime example of how cocaine trafficking has evolved in the area since the 1980s.

"Years ago, we would dismantle organizations that would be 40 to 60 people strong," Baker said. "Those types of organizations no longer exist. Now you have groups of five or six. ... It's safer that way. When you're working in an organization with 40 defendants, you catch 10 and they'll roll over on the other 30. Smaller groups mean better kept secrets."
That has made catching them tougher, he said - and another reason the sheriff's bust is substantial.

"It's going to impact us all," he said, implying his and other local law agencies. "Any time one of us has a big bust, it has a positive impact on not just that community, but on those surrounding it."