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Distribution

As with most other aspects of drug trafficking, Mexican DTOs and criminal groups control the wholesale distribution of illicit drugs in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. They supply illicit drugs to distributors within the region and to distributors in most other significant drug markets throughout the country, including those in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Miami, Las Vegas, Memphis, Miami, New York City, Omaha, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Seattle, St. Louis, Tulsa, Yakima, and Washington, D.C. Their influence is so profound that the Los Angeles HIDTA region has become one of the most significant illicit drug distribution centers in the United States for cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, MDMA, and PCP.

Mexican DTOs and criminal groups facilitate their drug transactions through well-established relationships with close friends, family members, and others in Mexico, Colombia, and the United States. Their relationships with Colombian traffickers, though not as well entrenched, include both a partnership for the distribution of significant quantities of cocaine on behalf of the Colombian traffickers as well as a buyer-seller relationship for the purchase of significant quantities of cocaine for distribution on their own behalf.

DTOs and criminal groups (see Table 6) usually distribute their drug loads quickly upon arrival in the Los Angeles HIDTA region; however, they will store drug loads for up to a week in warehouses and other stash locations in and around the HIDTA region before repackaging the drugs for further distribution--primarily because of intense law enforcement pressure over the last couple years that severely diminished the number of stash houses in the HIDTA region. When their drug supplies cannot be immediately distributed, Mexican DTOs and criminal groups or those working on their behalf often store the drugs in apartments, houses, and other secure locations in Mexico or in other areas outside the HIDTA region, including Phoenix, where they believe law enforcement coverage is comparatively minimal.

Table 6. Wholesale Distributors in the Los Angeles HIDTA Region, by Drug, 2008

Distributors Drugs Distributed
Mexican DTOs and criminal groups Powder cocaine, Mexican black tar and South American heroin, marijuana, and ice methamphetamine
Colombian DTOs South American heroin, cocaine, and marijuana
Street gangs Powder and crack cocaine, Mexican black tar heroin, marijuana, ice methamphetamine, and PCP
Prison gangs Mexican black tar heroin, ice methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana
Outlaw motorcycle gangs Methamphetamine and marijuana
Local independent dealers Methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana

Source: Inland Narcotics Clearing House; Los Angeles Clearinghouse; Los Angeles Joint Drug Intelligence Group.

Traffickers often prearrange their drug transactions--with both suppliers and customers--using standard phones, multiple cellular phones, direct-connect devices, the Internet, mobile phones, prepaid telephones, push-to-talk telephones, satellite phones, two-way radios, and voice mail boxes. They pay close attention to law enforcement interdiction efforts and, as such, frequently discontinue service for their phones and replace each (sometimes every couple weeks) to avoid apprehension. They also intermingle various communications methods when coordinating individual aspects of the same drug transactions. For example, they may text message a picture of a meeting place, use the Internet to identify a date and/or time for the transaction, and use a cell phone to describe the color/make/model of a transport vehicle. The text messaging of photographs is extremely challenging for law enforcement officers who historically traced verbal communications between traffickers. When traffickers make out-of-country calls, they typically use digitally encrypted phones, being fully aware of what law enforcement can and cannot easily intercept. Although DTOs and street gang members have coordinated drug transactions using cellular phones for years, this communication method reportedly has gained popularity among prison gang members who are increasingly smuggling the phones into prisons to further their criminal enterprises. In addition, "netbagging" or the use of the Internet and social web sites by traffickers to promote their gang cultures and attract new members for drug trafficking and other illicit purposes also is increasing.

African American and Hispanic street gangs are the primary retail distributors of powder and crack cocaine, Mexican black tar heroin, marijuana, ice methamphetamine, and PCP in the Los Angeles HIDTA region; however, Mexican and Caucasian criminal groups and independent dealers, prison gangs, OMGs, and various other criminal groups and independent dealers also distribute significant quantities of illicit drugs at the retail level in the region, albeit on a smaller scale. (See Table 7.) The enhanced relationships forged between members of Mexican DTOs and criminal groups and members of street gangs, prison gangs and, to a lesser extent, OMGs has facilitated increased gang migration to major drug markets throughout the country, where the profit potential can often be significantly greater than it is in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. This migration expands the reach of Mexican DTOs and criminal groups far beyond the Los Angeles HIDTA region.

Table 7. Retail Distributors in the Los Angeles HIDTA Region, by Drug, 2008

Distributors Drugs Distributed
Street gangs Powder and crack cocaine, Mexican black tar heroin, marijuana, ice methamphetamine, and PCP
Mexican and Caucasian criminal groups and independent dealers Powder and crack cocaine, Mexican black tar heroin, marijuana, and ice methamphetamine
Outlaw motorcycle gangs Ice methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and MDMA
Prison gangs Ice methamphetamine, Mexican black tar heroin, and marijuana

Source: Inland Narcotics Clearing House; Los Angeles Clearinghouse, Los Angeles Regional Gang Information Network; Los Angeles Joint Drug Intelligence Group.

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Drug-Related Crime

Many DTOs and criminal groups in the Los Angeles HIDTA region that distribute illicit drugs also commit various other crimes--murder, alien smuggling, kidnapping, and weapons smuggling--to further their criminal enterprises and generate profits. They and their enforcers will seriously injure or kill rival traffickers as well as law enforcement and military personnel protecting the California-Mexico border and anyone else who gets in their way. Although a significant portion of the violence at and near the border is centered in Tijuana, Baja California, with over 400 gang-related murders in 2007 alone (higher than in any other area in Mexico) some of that violence has already spread into southern California, threatening law enforcement officers' safety. (See text box.) For example, in January 2008 drug smugglers ran over and killed a senior border patrol agent as he was attempting to put spikes across the road to stop their drug-laden vehicle from entering southeastern California from Mexico, the first reported incident of its kind in at least the last couple years. In addition, a number of these traffickers obtain their firearms (including assault-type weapons) by burglarizing businesses, private homes, and vehicles in the Los Angeles HIDTA region or by working with corrupt military and law enforcement officials in Mexico and, to a lesser extent, the United States to smuggle weapons into Mexico--many of which reportedly are used to wage an ongoing war against the Mexican authorities who are increasingly attempting to dismantle their drug trafficking operations and other illicit activities.

Efforts by Mexican Officials in the Baja California Area

In January 2007 the Mexican Government started to assign an increasing number of Mexican military and law enforcement personnel to the Tijuana, Baja California, area to combat criminal activities (including drug trafficking) and public corruption in the area, much of which is associated with the AFO or Tijuana Cartel. They expanded those operations in December 2007 to include the Playas de Rosarito area (near Tijuana). Drug traffickers in the Baja California area reacted violently to these measures by killing informants working for the government of Mexico and by killing local law enforcement and military officers; this made DTO activities more visible to the public. Increased visibility, coupled with an increased number of officers available to interdict illicit drugs and other commodities in Mexico, may have forced some traffickers to abandon smuggling ventures--at least temporarily--through the San Ysidro POE and other areas they consider pose an increased risk of apprehension.

Street and prison gang members have committed high levels of violent crime in the Los Angeles HIDTA region16 since at least 2002, including assault, homicide, robbery, theft, weapons trafficking, and witness intimidation. Most of these crimes are attributed to turf battles over drug distribution territories and the control of illicit drug distribution within and outside the region. For example, recent law enforcement reporting suggests that members of the Mexican Mafia, upon their release from prison, were killed during four separate incidents by Sureņos gang members, the result of an alleged power struggle that began between the two groups in mid-to-late summer 2007 over drug distribution territories.

Methamphetamine, crack, and PCP producers as well as cannabis cultivators also commit violent crimes to protect their drug operations and grow sites from law enforcement detection and competitors. Many booby-trap their production sites, a practice that can have fatal consequences for law enforcement officials as well as innocent tourists in national forests who unexpectedly happen upon a cannabis cultivation site or methamphetamine production operation, and may be repeatedly pierced with boards full of nails and encounter other life-threatening traps.

Many drug abusers in the Los Angeles HIDTA region--particularly methamphetamine abusers--commit property crimes and identity theft to acquire money to purchase their illicit drug supplies. For example, officials with the Federal Trade Commission ranked California second in the number of identity theft victims per 100,000 population in 2007, and a significant number of those victims (6,084 of 43,892) resided in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan statistical area, an area well known for its large methamphetamine abuser population.


End Note

16. No agency collects countywide gang-related crime statistics in the HIDTA region.


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