Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jan 2006
Source: USA Today (US)
Page 2A
Copyright: 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact:  http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

MS-13 GANG GROWING EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, FBI SAYS

Authorities Take Alarm at Use of Sophisticated, Violent Tactics

In early November, the FBI and Houston police learned that six
suspected members of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent Central American gang
known as MS-13, were raiding a house on Liberty Street where a rival
gang had stashed drugs.

MS-13 -- the focus of a nationwide crackdown by FBI and federal
immigration agents -- has become known in recent years for home
invasion robberies, drug dealing and machete attacks on its enemies.
But what happened in Houston on Nov. 2, FBI and Houston police
officials say, has heightened concerns that MS-13 could be far more
dangerous than thought.

The MS-13 suspects swept through the house like a well-trained assault
team, using paramilitary tactics including perimeter lookouts,
high-powered weaponry (an AK-47 rifle was among the weapons recovered
later), and a quick, room-by-room sweep of the house that was notable
for its precision and sophistication, Houston police spokesman Alvin
Wright says.

When the MS-13 suspects were challenged by authorities, the result was
an intense shootout that killed two suspects, identified as Juan
Antonio Bautista, 29, and Jose Antonio Pino, 33. The four others were
arrested and face an array of state charges, including robbery and
assault.

Bob Clifford, who directs the FBI unit created last year to combat
MS-13, says the battle symbolized MS-13's development from a
smattering of loosely organized cells across the nation to an
increasingly efficient and dangerous organization that has become a
significant threat to public safety.

"Our worst suspicions about MS-13 have been confirmed" by the Houston
shooting and other recent gang-related incidents, Clifford says.

 From low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles, MS-13 has spread
throughout the USA, largely following the migration patterns of
immigrants from El Salvador and other Central American nations. With a
U.S. membership that the FBI estimates could be as high as 10,000,
MS-13 is most active in Los Angeles, the Mid-Atlantic, Rhode Island,
Connecticut and New York.

Clifford says the group also has formed commerce routes across the
nation for drug-trafficking operations that often include "theft
crews" who steal over-the-counter cough and cold medicines from
drugstores. Such medicines, which can be abused or used to make other
drugs, are then sold to help finance MS-13 units, Clifford says.

In recent years, MS-13's reputation as a particularly brutal gang was
cemented by a series of incidents, several of them in Northern
Virginia. In one, a former MS-13 member who had become a police
informant was fatally stabbed and her head almost severed. In another,
MS-13 members used a machete to cut off several fingers of a rival
gang member.

The Houston shootout, however, raised questions about whether the gang
- -- whose original members in Los Angeles included people with
paramilitary training who fled the civil war in El Salvador during the
1980s -- is evolving into an organization that is in their image.

The Houston incident sparked an FBI investigation that has reached
into El Salvador to try to determine whether MS-13 members are
receiving formal training in weapons and military tactics before they
come to the USA -- often as illegal immigrants.

Raids of suspected MS-13 safe houses in Central America, Mexico and
the USA by federal and international law enforcement officials
resulted in more than 600 arrests and the discovery of gang
"constitutions," the FBI said.

The documents, most of them crudely handwritten codes of conduct,
listed a range of punishments -- from death to severe beatings -- for
transgressions against the gang. The seizures marked the first time
that such organizational records had been recovered in this country.

Federal agents and local police say that recent arrests of MS-13
members have shed light on how the gang is raising money in the USA.

Three months ago in Madison, Wis., local police and FBI investigators
arrested three suspected MS-13 members who allegedly were involved in
stealing tens of thousands of dollars' worth of over-the-counter
medicines from 22 Walgreens drugstores throughout the Midwest.

Madison detectives and FBI investigators later determined that the
medicines were being transported to a warehouse in Louisville to be
resold.

"We had not seen evidence of their presence here before (the arrests)
or since," says Mike Hanson, spokesman for the Madison Police
Department. "Our understanding is they were passing through here. They
knew the number of Walgreens stores and were familiar with the routes
in and out of town."

In several cases, Hanson says, the suspects used a special bag that
blocked the drugstores' electronic sensors from detecting items that
were being stolen from the stores.

"The suspects researched Walgreens throughout the Midwest and on a
routine basis averaged $45,000 to $55,000 worth of stolen merchandise
per day," Hanson says.

Clifford says "it would be dangerous to look at MS-13 as just another
street gang." 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake