Pubdate: Thu, 07 Sep 2000
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  501 N. Calvert Street P.0. Box 1377 Baltimore, MD 21278
Fax: (410) 315-8912
Website: http://www.sunspot.net/
Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro
Author: Peter Hermann
Bookmark: additional articles on cocaine are available at 
http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm  and articles on Maryland are available at 
http://www.mapinc.org/states/md.htm

POLICE BREAK UP EAST-SIDE DRUG RING

42 Arrests Made; Links To Cartel In Colombia Noted; 'We'Ve Made Quite A Dent'

A violent East Baltimore cocaine organization with direct links to a 
Colombian cartel has been dismantled, fulfilling the new police 
commissioner's vow to go after top-level drug dealers, police said yesterday.

With a state judge's permission, city detectives broke the drug ring by 
bugging the phones of suspected traffickers and eavesdropping on their 
illegal activity. It was the department's first use of a high-tech 
crime-fighting tool usually used by federal authorities, who in the past 
led investigations such as the one announced yesterday.

"We've made quite a dent in the East Baltimore drug trade," Commissioner 
Edward T. Norris said during a news conference yesterday at police 
headquarters downtown. "This is a gang that has been flourishing for years 
and has remained untouched until now."

More than 20 defendants arrested in the past several weeks were arraigned 
in Circuit Court yesterday, the same day police arrested 10 additional 
suspects in early-morning raids across the city. All were ordered held in 
lieu of bail ranging from $250,000 to $10 million.

Since April, police said, they have arrested 42 alleged ring members, some 
charged with trafficking and others with receiving the products. They have 
searched 88 homes and seized 21 guns, 20 cars and 2.5 kilograms of cocaine 
worth more than a half-million dollars on the street, they said. It was 
unclear yesterday how much business was being conducted.

Authorities displayed on a table at police headquarters a sampling that 
included bundles of $20 and $100 bills totaling $159,000, and dozens of 
vials filled with crack cocaine and ready to be sold to addicts for $20 apiece.

Authorities said they got a tip two weeks ago that Raul Varela, a suspected 
Colombian drug trafficker well known to undercover federal agents, had come 
to the city from New York with six associates - who also were arrested - 
reportedly to check up on his Baltimore operation, consisting of groups 
working East Federal, East Preston and North Durham streets.

Varela, 50, was arrested early yesterday at a motel on Moravia Road and 
charged with drug trafficking. Police said they found 1.5 kilograms of 
high-grade cocaine and $91,000 in cash in a secret compartment under the 
back seat of his 1985 Buick Regal.

"That was a bonus in all this," State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said 
at the news conference. "We really caught a big fish."

Officials declined to elaborate on the suspect and would not say which 
Colombian cartels he has been linked to, saying that could compromise the 
investigation.

Jessamy said local law enforcement agencies are finally going after a wide 
range of people connected to the illegal drug trade.

"We are going from the top down and the bottom up, and we're catching 
everyone in between," said Jessamy, who assigned four prosecutors to 
oversee the case, described as one of the largest initiated by local law 
enforcement agencies.

Norris, a former commander in the New York City Police Department, has 
complained since his appointment in May about the lack of direction and 
technology in the city's war on drugs, which is linked to many of the 
city's roughly 300 annual homicides and fueled by an estimated 55,000 drug 
addicts.

Federal authorities took the lead in 1996, as local drug lord Anthony Ayeni 
Jones was convicted and put in prison for life after city police had failed 
in their attempts to shut down the teen-ager linked to a dozen East 
Baltimore killings.

After authorities arrested Jones, police began several initiatives and 
programs that fizzled out after one or two significant busts.

Two years ago, they won the convictions of 32 members of Cherry Hill's 
Veronica Avenue Boys as part of a youth violence strike force. It was the 
group's only initiative with tangible results.

Law enforcement officials said yesterday that the age of "programs" is 
over, replaced by back-to-basics policing citywide. They offered 
yesterday's announcement as proof that the new policing strategies work and 
will target street-level pushers and addicts, and international smugglers.

Part of Norris' plan is flooding the city's violent east side with 120 
additional officers ordered to aggressively attack suspected drug corners. 
He also has boosted the undercover narcotics squad and hired John 
Pignataro, a New Yorker proficient in the most up-to-date technology and 
its use in fighting crime, to run the department's new technology section.

Norris noted that his East Baltimore initiative was "called an act of 
desperation" by a Sun editorial. "That's when you take a lot of people, 
throw them at a problem and just let them go at it and hope for the best," 
he said. "That's not what happened here."

He said officers hit the east side knowing what corners contained key drug 
figures and with an understanding of how shootings and homicides were 
linked. He said much of the information used to break up the suspected gang 
came from the east-side initiative.

"You lock people up at the lowest level," Norris said. "You squeeze them. 
You get them to flip, and you get information on people they work for."

Representatives of several jurisdictions attended the news conference, 
including Special Agent Gary Hartman, who is in charge of the federal Drug 
Enforcement Administration's Baltimore office.

Officials said federal charges against some of the suspects, including the 
Colombian, are being considered. None of the suspects appeared in state 
court with lawyers yesterday, and one told a judge that he could not speak 
English. Most are from Baltimore.

Details of where and how the suspected drug suppliers worked were not 
divulged. Police said the alleged traffickers were selling drugs to several 
city groups and that their arrests had broken up the "middle level" of a 
supply line that started in South America and went through New York before 
reaching East Baltimore.

Police said several groups were suspected of selling the drugs seized from 
the alleged ringleader. One hit yesterday is called the Boulevard Boyz, 
which operated out of a rowhouse in the 900 block of N. Patterson Park Ave.
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