June 9, 2008, 11:35PM
HPD links Mexico cartel to Houston
Police say sweep revealed gang's narcotic activities


By CINDY GEORGE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle


The enforcement efforts that recently crippled the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico have a connection to the recent Houston indictment of two dozen alleged members and associates of a Texas-born Hispanic gang.
A Houston police investigator involved in a local drug task force told a federal magistrate Monday that a sweep of purported affiliates of the Los Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos gang resulted from business dealings with the cartel, one of Mexico's largest narcotics operations.
Houston Police Department officer Daniel Rosales also said that a seven-year probe unveiled the gruesome 2003 slaying of one of the gang leaders, has entangled the owner of shuttered Houston nightclub and connects to a high-speed Houston chase last year.

The gang, whose name translates as Brotherhood of Latin Gunmen, is considered a minor-league outfit compared to the better-known Mexican Mafia and Texas Syndicate. Still, the state's southern contingent has grown into a formidable drug-smuggling operation, officials say.

Rosales described a "vast network" that moved 100 kilos of cocaine a month across the border. The officer testified Monday at an arraignment and detention hearing that extended into the evening and is expected to resume today.
Pedro Gil III, the lead defendant of 24 people named in an indictment handed down in late May, is accused of transporting 500 kilos per load from Mexico for distribution to Laredo, Houston, Dallas and other states.

The investigation began in 2001 when informants told Laredo authorities that Gil and Daniel Avila were dealing cocaine from a local residence, Rosales said.

Houston-area authorities got involved in December 2003 when a gang leader's body was dumped in Galveston with the head, arms and legs cut off.
"It was learned that it was a murder from within," Rosales said.

By 2004, local officials began monitoring people and homes in the Houston area using telephone wiretaps, wired informants and video surveillance. Rosales said the probe determined that the gang's Houston leader is Pacino Sanmiguel, 31, who owned Bloodline Tattoos in Houston.

The indictment also names Manuel Bernard Harris, 38, who co-owned the Mercury Room, a popular downtown Houston spot that closed after becoming the subject of a federal cocaine investigation.

Harris now runs a property-management company and doesn't know the other defendants, his lawyer said.

"He's innocent of the charges," Houston lawyer Stan Broussard said.

In April 2007, HPD officers intercepted a suspected gang drug delivery, Rosales said. The traffic stop turned into a chase that ended with a wreck in Montrose and HPD retrieving a kilo of cocaine, he said.

cindy.george@chron.com






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