Thread: DEA Boss: Mexican Drug Cartels Are So Deeply Embedded in Chicago, We Have to Operate

DEA Boss: Mexican Drug Cartels Are So Deeply Embedded in Chicago, We Have to Operate Like We‘re ’On the Border’

• Posted on September 27, 2012 at 8:41am by Jason Howerton

Special Agent in Charge for Chicago DEA Jack Riley (Photo credit: Chicago Sun-Times)

The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,” according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Because of Chicago’s location in the heart of the United States, its large Mexican population and its abundance of street gang activity, drug cartels have designated the city as one of its main hubs of operation in America, Riley told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview. Inevitably, the increasing presence of cartels has also contributed to the Windy City’s skyrocketing violent crime rates, the DEA boss revealed.
“My opinion is, right now, a number of the Mexican cartels are probably the most organized, well-funded, vicious criminal organizations that we’ve ever seen,” said Riley.
Right now, at least three major Mexican cartels are fighting for control of billions of dollars worth of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in Chicago. That includes the ruthless Zetas and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, arguably the most wanted man in North America, and perhaps the entire world.
However, the influence of drug cartels is seemingly overlooked repeatedly by the media when it reports on Chicago’s crime rate and rampant drug-related violence.
The city of Chicago, which Riley says has the “strongest police department” in the country, has been dealing with organized crime groups since the early 1930s, most notably the Italian mafia. But as ruthless as Al Capone and the mobs once were, Mexican drug trafficking organizations like the Sinaloa Cartel put them to shame, Riley said.

“If I pitted the Italian organized crime groups against for instance, ‘Chapo’ Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel, it wouldn’t be a fight,” he told TheBlaze. “In my opinion, Chapo Guzman is the new Al Capone or Scarface to Chicago. His ability to corrupt, his ability to enforce his sanctions and to really do with an endless supply of revenue is in my opinion far greater than older Italian organized crime.”
Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias "El Chapo Guzman" (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Riley is well acquainted with Guzman. In fact, he posed such a threat to the Mexican drug cartels when he ran a DEA operation on the border in El Paso, the Sinaloa Cartel boss reportedly put a bounty on his head, according to WLS-TV.
The drug cartels from Mexico have found willing business partners in more than 100,000 “documented” street gang members in Chicago. The cartel operatives hide in plain sight, within the crowds of millions of hardworking Mexican citizens living in the city.
“It’s the perfect cover,” Riley said.
The drug trafficking organizations are based in Mexico but, he explained, they have operatives in various cities across the nation. In Chicago, local gangs are used by cartels as a means to get their products onto the streets without putting their operations at risk, all the while raking in massive profits from drug sales. Cartels move every drug you can think of, including cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines.
Overall, police records indicate Chicago’s murder rate is up 31 percent from 2011. Further, Mayor Rahm Emanuel in August requested federal assistance to combat violence and drugs. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Aug. 31 that at least 82 people were injured or killed in shootings within a one week period, 10 in one night alone. Additionally, as of Aug. 23, there had been 351 shooting deaths so far in 2012.
Needless to say, violence in Chicago is a big problem.
When asked how much of a role Mexican drug cartel activity plays in the out-of-control violent crime rates, Riley said that “at some point, you have to make the correlation that yeah, it does have an impact on the violent issue here in Chicago and also across the Midwest.”
Other powerful Mexican drug cartels include:

• Los Zetas
• Gulf Cartel
• Juarez Cartel
• Tijuana Cartel
• Knights Templar

The Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center estimates that in “2009 and 2010, cartels operated in 1,286 U.S. cities. The center named only 50 cities in 2006,” according to a CNN report.
(Map source: The National Post)


Making Strides
Though they are extremely powerful and well-funded, Riley says the DEA, in cooperation with other local and federal law enforcement agencies are making strides in combating Mexican drug cartels in Chicago and throughout the Midwest.
“I was a boss for DEA at the Mexican border for several years prior to being brought up here, and one of the things that we‘ve stressed since I’ve been up here is this: we have to operate as if we are on the border,” he told TheBlaze. “Even though we are 2,000 miles away from parts of the border, the lessons we have learned along the border with our counterparts in Mexico really have to be employed here.”
How are they implementing those lessons? Riley says the Chicago Police Department, Illinois State Police, Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE), FBI, IRS, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Secret Service and DEA have all joined together to form a special “Strike Force” with the goal of dismantle the cartel command and control structure in the Midwest United States “from start to finish.”
“We share all our intelligence information… and we bring it all together,” he said. “It is a smart use of resources.”
By co-mingling all the various federal and local agencies, Riley said they can follow cartel operatives from Chicago all the way into Mexico or Columbia if necessary, working with America’s “counterparts” in those countries.
“We‘ve got to do something more proactive and implement a new way of thinking to attack what’s going on in terms of violent crime on the streets of Chicago.”

The Zambada-Niebla Court Case
Riley went on to confirm that the Sinaloa Cartel has perhaps the strongest presence in Chicago of all the Mexican drug cartels. He said federal law enforcement agencies have been largely successful in extraditing a number high-ranking members of the cartel to the United States to stand trial, most notably, Guzman’s so-called “logistics coordinator,” Vicente Jesus Zamaba-Niebla.
Vincente Zambada-Niebla, a Mexican drug suspect awaiting trial, now claims he can't be prosecuted in the U.S. because federal agents offered him immunity in return for acting as an informant. (AP)

As previously reported exclusively at TheBlaze, Zambada-Niebla was arrested in 2009 by the Mexican Army and extradited to Chicago to face federal drug charges. During his initial court proceedings, Zambada-Niebla made a number of explosive allegations about Operation “Fast and Furious” and an alleged immunity deal between the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, the DEA and other federal agencies.
Read the entire report from TheBlaze here.
Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, “the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations.”
Based on the alleged agreement, “the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of defendant’s father, Ismael Zambada-Niebla and ‘Chapo’ Guzman, were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and United States authorities capture or kill thousands of rival cartel members,” states a motion for discovery filed in U.S. District Court by Zambada-Niebla’s attorney in July 2011.
Chicago is the only city that Zambada-Niebla mentions specifically in the motion for discovery.
In this courtroom artist's drawing Jesus Vincente Zambada-Niebla appears before U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Verna Sadock)

When asked for the DEA’s official response to the allegations, Riley said, “It’s an ongoing investigation. He hasn’t been brought to trial, and I can’t speak to that.” However, he did say of Zambada-Niebla’s claim, “It is not DEA policy and in my own personal opinion, I just don‘t think it’s accurate.”
Riley also didn’t say whether an internal investigation was launched after the DEA learned about Zambada-Niebla’s shocking allegations. “I can’t say,” he reiterated, citing again the fact that the case is part of an ongoing investigation.
“The one thing they fear the most is coming to the United States and doing time here, where they can’t buy their way out, they can’t bribe the judge,” Riley added. The statement seemingly suggests that Zambada-Niebla is attempting to swindle his way out of federal drug charges, which will likely carry a hefty prison sentence.
Zambada-Niebla’s trial, which is being closely monitored by some members of Congress, is set to begin on Oct. 9 in a Chicago federal court. In April, 2012, a federal judge refused to dismiss charges against him, ruling he failed to prove that he was an informant for the DEA and was granted immunity. It is unclear whether the alleged agreement will still be part of Zambada-Niebla’s defense in the upcoming trial.
–
DEA Agent Jack Riley: Mexican Drug Cartels Are Embedded in Chicago | TheBlaze.com

100,000 “documented” street gang members in Chicago. The cartel operatives hide in plain sight, within the crowds of millions of hardworking Mexican citizens living in the city.

100,000 gangsters in just Chicago alone? That's more than our forces in Iraq!

W

100,000 in Chicago alone? I must really be out of it. I thought I read something a few years back saying there are that many in the WHOLE USA!

....and these are the people that the Tiny Dancer wants to play nicey nice with!? Good luck with that 'tardo!

Gangs in the United States

From Wikipedia


Latin Kings graffiti of the King Master along with the abbreviations "L" and "K" on the sides.



Street tag of the Crips gang.
Street gangs in the United States date to the early 20th century.^[1] Presently, the most publicized street gangs in the U.S. are African-American; black gangs were not recognized as a social problem until after the great migration of the 1910s.^[2] An exception was noted in 1853 Philadelphia.^[3]
Some^[who?] have argued that increasing gang activity is directly related to decreases in adult mentors, school failures, decreases in after-school programs and similar failures by the adults in the lives of children. While kids from more affluent neighborhoods may turn to other less dangerous alternatives, children from poorer neighborhoods often turn to gangs both as protection and a place to find love, understanding and a sense of belonging/purpose.[1]

Gangs in the United States vary by nationality, race, location and purpose/agenda (in cases when crimes are often committed). Many began, and still exist, in rural areas (pre-dating the 19th century).
Historically, Western (outlaw) and Mobster (gang) genres make up some of the most successful films in the America movie industry.

Contents [hide] 1 Gang demographics 2 Gang activity and purpose 3 Original gangsters 3.1 19th century 3.2 20th century 3.2.1 1990s 3.2.2 2000s 4 Organized gangs 5 Latino Gangs 6 Prison based gangs 7 Illegal immigration 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Gang demographics

There were at least 30,000 gangs and 800,000 gang members active across the USA in 2007,^[4][5] up from 731,500 in 2002 and 750,000 in 2004.^[6] By 1999, Hispanics accounted for 47% of all gang members, Blacks 34%, Whites 13%, and Asians 6%.^[7]

[edit] Gang activity and purpose

Most gangs in the United States are formed with some type of intention. Gangs such as Latin Kings and the Bloods say they represent "brotherhood" and unity. Police say 80% of crimes throughout the country are committed by gang members.^[8] Although most gangs started in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and New York City,^[9] they migrated to other U.S. cities such as Atlanta, Memphis, Orlando, Houston and Detroit ^[10][11][12] after becoming more sophisticated and powerful.

[edit] Original gangsters

With the exception of American cowboys, bandits, gunfighters/gungslingers and outlaws such as Jesse James, in addition to the Italian American Mafia (mobsters of organized crime) such as Al Capone, some of the original gangsters in America were the Irish Mob. Immigrants formed various gangs on the East Coast in 1783 following the American Revolution. The first recorded street gangs in the United States, such as the 40 Thieves, began around the late 1820s in New York City.
Other major gangs beginning before the 19th century were the Whyos and the Dead Rabbits. These were followed by the Italian Five Points Gang and later a Jewish gang known as the Eastman Gang. Additionally, in the late 1800s, many Chinese eventually emigrated to the Eastern United States, escaping from insecurity and economic hardship at home. The new immigrants formed Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. In some cases these evolved into Tongs, or criminal organizations primarily involved in gambling. Members of Triads who migrated to the United States often joined these tongs.

[edit] 19th century

Gangs in the 19th century were often multi-ethnic as neighborhoods did not display the social polarization that has segregated different ethnic groups in the postmodern city (see Edward Soja). A host of European nationalities including English, Scottish, Irish and German could be found in the same neighborhoods. This made territoriality for gangs much more important than ethnic homogeneity.^[2][13]
Herbert Asbury depicted some of these groups in his history of Irish and American gangs in Manhattan. He described how gangs would fight for territory, control of criminal enterprises, and simply for the love of fighting. Asbury's book was later used by Martin Scorsese as the basis for the motion picture Gangs of New York.^[14]

[edit] 20th century

With a new wave of migration in the 1960s, street gangs began to flourish in other major cities (urban areas), such as the Crips. Regarding African-Americans, the history of youth gangs extends as far back as the 1940s. Although lacking a definition, the gangs then were characterized by young people loitering on street corners.^[15] It is thought these early groups formed to protect their localities from other similar groups of youths.^{[citation needed]}
The United States attempted to fight both the Vietnam War and the war on poverty at home. Limited funding, incoherent local and national plans to combat inner-city poverty, and escalated police and military violence against blacks and immigrants all aided towards the conditions which would eventually give birth to gangs across the United States, including the infamous Bloods and Crips of Los Angeles, California.^[16]

Crip handsign.


The Crips were formed out of the poor socio-economic and repressive conditions which African-Americans living in Los Angeles were subject to in the late 1960s. As police continued to jail black youths in seeking to destroy the Black Panther Party, the Crips were formed in 1969 by Raymond Washington, loosely acting as a community organization which aimed to help disenfranchised African-American communities of L.A. The Bloods quickly followed, with a mandate to protect the community from external violence.^[17]
As job cuts continued to rise and employers began to hire from the cheaper labour pool of the expanding Latino immigrant community,^[18] unemployment rates of African-American men reached as high as 50% in several areas of South Central Los Angeles,^[19] opening up large recruitment markets for the burgeoning gangs. The increasing social isolation felt by African-American communities across the nation continued unabated in the 1980s and 90s, leading to higher rates of social pathologies, including violence.^[20]
As gang members and factions continued to grow, the introduction of crack cocaine (cheap and highly addictive) to American cities would prove fatal. Crack money now could be used to purchase unprecedented amounts of weaponry, and as newly armed gang members began to fight over 'turf', or the territory in which gangs would run their lucrative drug-trades, violence soared,^[17] as the FBI's national data of gang-related homicides show: from 288 in 1985 up to 1362 in 1993.^[21]

[edit] 1990s

As gang-violence accelerated, so too did police violence against African-American communities, which culminated in the arrest of Rodney King which sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In the aftermath of the riots, leaders of the Bloods and the Crips announced a truce (spearheaded by Compton's then mayor Walter R. Tucker, Jr.), and in May 1992, 1600 rival gang members converged on Imperial Courts, a main housing project of Watts, Los Angeles, California to demonstrate their new-found companionship. But after only a few months of relative harmony, tensions between Los Angeles County's more than 100,000 gang members (in February 1993) began to raise the murder rates, rising to resemble previous levels.^[22]
Although various institutions and initiatives were introduced during the 1990s, including the Grant Research Evaluation and Tracking (GREAT) inter-state computer tracking system, which tracks the movements of 2,000 known gang members, and the Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention act of 1998, gangs continue to plague American inner-cities. Oakland, California saw 113 drug- and/or gang-related homicides in 2002 alone, and 2003 sported similar figures.^[22] Many cities across America are still experiencing the effects of gangs on their streets, such as Baltimore, Maryland, whose gang problem is a major theme of HBO's critically acclaimed series The Wire.
In 1994, Mary "Beth" Pelz, a criminologist at University of Houston–Downtown, said that Texas lacked "a rich history of street gangs" compared to other parts of the United States. She said Houston area gangs began to branch out to newer developments in the 1980s.^[23]
The 1995 murder of Stephanie Kuhen in Los Angeles, California led to condemnation from President Bill Clinton and a crackdown on Los Angeles-area gangs.^[24][25]

[edit] 2000s


Southwest Cholos graffiti, Gulfton, Houston


According to a 2006 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, many street gangs in Texas have no organized command structures. Individual "cliques" of gangs, defined by streets, parts of streets, apartment complexes, or parts of apartment complexes, act as individual groups. Texas "Cliques" tend to be headed by leaders called "OG"s (short for "original gangsters") and each "clique" performs a specific activity or set of activities in a given area, such as controlling trafficking of recreational drugs and managing prostitution.^[26]
In 2007, History's Gangland premiered on November 1, 2007 with a special episode about the Aryan Brotherhood, a white street gang with over 20,000 members in-and-out of prison. Gangland explores the history of some of America's more notorious gangs (from various backgrounds, ethnic groups and races).
It was reported in 2008 that 1-2% of the U.S. military belongs to gangs, according to FBI gang investigator Jennifer Simon in a published article, 50-100 times the rate in the general population.^[27] In 2009, David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, said that a lot of violence in inner cities in the United States is mislabeled as "gang violence" when in fact it involves small, informal cliques of people.^[28]

[edit] Organized gangs

Main article: Organized Crime
Hallsworth and Young (2005)^[29] describe an organized gang as a group of individuals for whom involvement in crime is for personal gain (mostly financial, though could be otherwise, sexual gratification as with pedophile rings). For most, crime is their 'occupation'. These groups operate almost exclusively in the grey and illegal marketplace where market transactions are unregulated by the law.

_{Transnational organized crime groups} may be involved in crimes ranging from drug trafficking, arms trafficking, human trafficking, contract killing, piracy, counterfeiting, money laundering, extortion, and illegal gambling, to acts of terrorism, to political assassination. The complexity and seriousness of the crimes committed by global crime groups pose a threat not only to law enforcement but to democracy and legitimate economic development as well.^[30]

There are numerous organized crime groups and they can be found in the majority of small to medium sized cities at varying degrees of size and organization. All large cities will house some kind of organized crime group. A further distinction could be made with what are often termed organized crime syndicates.^{[citation needed]}
There are a number of widely known crime organizations as such whose operations span the world. Perhaps the most famous are the American Mafia (often portrayed in New York mob movies), the Irish Mob, the Chinese Triad Society, the Japanese Yakuza, the Sicilian Mafia, and the Russian Mafia. Other large cities also play host to unique types of organized criminals. For example, London's East End is home to a number of traditional crime families, and was the home of the infamous Kray Twins, and Boston's Irish Mob was portrayed in the Martin Scorsese film The Departed. Recently, Chicago's Folk Nation has broken out from a street gang into international business and is thought by many to be the newest entity of the organized crime world.

[edit] Latino Gangs


An MS-13 suspect bearing gang tattoos is handcuffed. In 2004, the FBI created the MS-13 National Gang Task Force. A year later, the FBI helped create the National Gang Intelligence Center.



Member of Mara Salvatrucha.


The Latin Kings are said to be the largest and most organized Hispanic street gang in the United States of America.^[31] The group has roots dating back to the 1940s in Chicago, Illinois. The Latin Kings first emerged in Chicago in the 1940s after several young Puerto Rican men on the north side—and later, Mexican men on the south side—organized into a self-defense group to protect their communities. The initial intention was to unite "all Latinos" into a collective struggle against "oppression" and to help each other overcome the problems of racism and prejudice that newly arriving Latino immigrants were experiencing. Hence, the name "Latin Kings and Queens", which as it denotes, is a reference to members of all Latino heritages. They organized themselves as a vanguard for their communities.
Like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and many other groups perceiving social injustices directed at their kind, the Latin Kings were broken as a movement. They lost touch with their roots and grew into one of the largest and most infamous criminal gangs in America. The group's members became involved in crimes including murder, drug trafficking, robberies and other organized criminal activities.
Mara Salvatrucha (commonly abbreviated as "MS", "Mara", or "MS-13") is a criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles and has spread to Central America, other parts of the United States, and Canada. MS-13 is one of the most dangerous gangs in the United States. The majority of the gang is ethnically composed of Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans.
Their activities have caught the eye of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who in September 2005 initiated wide-scale raids against suspected gang members, netting 660 arrests across United States. ICE efforts were at first directed towards MS-13, in its Operation Community Shield. In May 2005, ICE expanded Operation Community Shield to include all transnational organized crime and prison gangs.
ICE's Operation Community Shield has since arrested 7,655 street gang members. In the United States, the gang's strongholds have historically been in the American Southwest and West Coast states. Membership in the U.S was believed to be as many as about 50,000 as of 2005. MS-13 criminal activities include drug smuggling and sales, arms trafficking, auto theft, carjacking, home invasion, assault, aggravated assault, assault on law enforcement officials, drive-by shootings, contract killing and murder.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Prison based gangs

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007)

Main article: Prison gang
Prison gangs, like most street gangs, are formed for protection against other gangs. The goal of many street gang members is to gain the respect that comes from being in a prison gang. Prison gangs use street gangs members as their power base for which they recruit new members. For many members reaching prison gang status shows the ultimate commitment to the gang.^[32] A prison gang is a gang that is started in a prison. Some prison gangs are transplanted from the street, and in some occasions, prison gangs "outgrow" the penitentiary and engage in criminal activities on the outside. Many prison gangs are racially oriented. Gang umbrella organizations like the Folk Nation and People Nation have originated in prisons.^[33]
One prominent example of a prison gang is the Aryan Brotherhood, an organization known for its violence and calls for white supremacy. On July 28, 2006, after a six-year federal investigation, four leaders of the gang were convicted of racketeering, murder, and conspiracy charges. Founded in the mid 1960s, the gang, known as the 'Brand' or the 'Rock' in the federal and state prison systems, is famous for being affiliated with the white supremacist paramilitary hate group the Aryan Nations, with the Nazi Low Riders prison gang acting as the Aryan Brotherhood's foot soldiers. Besides fostering pseudo-theological hate, racism, sexism, violence, and intimidation, the Aryan Brotherhood is involved in drug trafficking, extortion, illegal gambling, protection rackets, and murder inside and outside of prisons.^[34]
In the mid-1980s, the Aryan League, an alliance between the Aryan Brotherhood and Public Enemy No. 1, formed. The sub-gangs (in collaboration with their wives and girlfriends who take jobs at banks, mortgage companies, and motor vehicle departments) work together in identity theft schemes.^[35] Money from the identity theft operations is used to fund the gangs' methamphetamine business. A gang hit list discovered in the Buena Park investigation has police worried that the gangs are using stolen credit information to learn the addresses of police and their families.^[35] Once out of prison, gang members tend to regroup on the outside and often cross gang lines to further their criminal careers.^{[citation needed]} One example of this is David Lind, an Aryan Brotherhood member, who joined the Wonderland Gang with several non-AB fellow prison inmates in 1981. Post prison gang activities can be brutal, as evidenced by the ruthless quadruple murder of the Wonderland gang (see "Wonderland Murders") which Lind narrowly escaped.^{[citation needed]}
There has been a long running racial tension between African American and Mexican American prison gangs and significant race riots in California prisons where Mexican inmates and African Americans have targeted each other particularly, based on racial reasons.

[edit] Illegal immigration

One of the concerns of increased illegal immigration is gang related activity - as proved by programs such as Operation Community Shield, which has detained over fourteen hundred illegal immigrant gang members.^[36] Mara Salvatrucha publicly declared that it targets the Minutemen, an anti-illegal immigration group^[37] who take it upon themselves to control the border, to "teach them a lesson",^[38] possibly due to their smuggling of various Central/South Americans (mostly other gang members), drugs, and weapons across the border.^[39] A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the twenty thousand members of the 18th Street Gang in California are illegal immigrates.<sup>[40]

Gangs in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</sup>

Chicago is also the most corrupt city in the U.S.
Chicago Most Corrupt City In America: Report

ADDED TO ALIPAC HOMEPAGE News with amended title ..

http://www.alipac.us/content/dea-bos...e-operate-981/