National Drug Intelligence Center   Los Angeles High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Drug Market Analysis 2009   April 2009

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, Las Vegas, Memphis, Miami, New York City, Omaha, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Seattle, St. Louis, Tulsa, Yakima, and Washington, D.C.

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, although not as well-entrenched, include 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 the Mexican DTOs' behalf.

Mexican DTOs and criminal groups (see Table 6) usually distribute their drug shipments quickly upon arrival in the Los Angeles HIDTA region; however, they frequently store drug shipments for up to a week in warehouses and other stash locations in and around the HIDTA region before repackaging the drugs for distribution--primarily because of successful law enforcement efforts over the past few 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.

Source: Inland Narcotics Clearing House; Los Angeles Clearinghouse, Los Angeles Regional Gang Information Network; 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 change service for their phones to avoid apprehension. They also intermingle various communication methods when coordinating individual aspects of the same drug transaction. For example, traffickers 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. 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," 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, is also 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 have 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.

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, such as murder, alien smuggling, kidnapping, and weapons smuggling to further their criminal enterprises and generate profits. They and their enforcers seriously injure or kill rival traffickers, law enforcement and military personnel protecting the California-Mexico border, or other individuals who threaten trafficking operations. Although a significant portion of the violence at and near the border is centered in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, some of that violence has already spread into southern California, threatening law enforcement officers' safety. 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 several 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.

Street and prison gang members commit high levels of violent crime in the Los Angeles HIDTA region,12 including assault, homicide, robbery, theft, weapons trafficking, and witness intimidation. Most of these crimes are attributed to turf battles over drug distribution territories. Most street gangs in the Los Angeles HIDTA region form along ethnic lines, predominantly Hispanic, African American, and Asian. The Mexican Mafia prison gang controls much of the Hispanic prison population as well as Hispanic street gang activities in metropolitan areas within the Los Angeles HIDTA region and in all of southern California. Mexican Mafia members and those who work on their behalf collect fees or taxes from Hispanic street gangs for the rights to distribute drugs in specific neighborhoods. Hispanic street gang members distribute illicit drugs, pay taxes to the Mexican Mafia, and enforce Mexican Mafia rules through the use of threats and violence.

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.

Many drug abusers in the Los Angeles HIDTA region--particularly methamphetamine abusers--commit property crimes and acts of identity theft to acquire money to purchase their illicit drug supplies. Officials with the Federal Trade Commission ranked California second in the number of identity theft victims per 100,000 population in 2007, the most recent data available, 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.

Footnote

12. No agency in the HIDTA region collects gang-related crime statistics by county.

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