DOJ announces 81 alleged gang members indicted after Puerto Rico drug trafficking takedown
Eighty-one names. Forty-nine million in dope cash. Mayagüez public housing got the residue first.
Summary
- Fox News reports Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Thursday the indictment of 81 alleged members of Los Baja Deo, or LBD, a drug trafficking group on the western side of Puerto Rico. The FBI and Puerto Rico Police arrested 70 of them on Wednesday.
- Indictments charge drug possession and distribution tied to activity prosecutors say began in 2021. Blanche said 21 defendants also face illegal firearms counts, and that the group moved cocaine, crack, fentanyl, heroin, and marijuana that generated $49 million.
- Blanche said the supply endangered public housing projects in Mayagüez and nearby neighborhoods. The arrests followed a San Juan Homeland Security Task Force investigation.
- The same briefing covered a Wednesday operation against Ecuador-based Los Choneros and Los Lobos: 26 arrests, including four alleged Los Lobos leaders, one metric ton of cocaine, about $1 million in U.S. currency, 35 rifles, 26 vehicles, and three clandestine airstrips destroyed.
Commentary
A Mayagüez mother still wipes a linoleum stair and listens for a stairwell door the way a night nurse listens for a crash cart. She did not vote for a $49 million ledger to live in her hallway.
That is the gap. Seventy cuffs on Wednesday. Eighty-one names on the indictment. Twenty-one guns in the same file. The honest dad pays the copay for the overdose. The housing project paid first.
Ask every working father who still believes a public stairwell is not a warehouse: if $49 million can sit in a territory hallway, who still gets to call that a local problem?
Comments
Eighty-one names is a start. The next 11 who were not in the Wednesday cuff line are the test.
I stacked a raid. One metric ton plus 35 rifles in Ecuador is the same war with a second zip code.
2021 to 2026 is a five-year clock. Charge the guns. Forfeit the $49 million. Do not plea it into a seminar.
A U.S. territory hallway is an allied hallway. Fentanyl in Mayagüez is a Pacific problem with a Caribbean stamp.
Watch who cheered the presser and then shrugged at the 11 still unaccounted. Blanche already said they should not sleep.
My diesel still funds the task force. Keep the airstrips closed or I pay the residue before sunrise.
A school bus should not share a zip code with a $49 million stash. That is a family tax with a stairwell.
Keep the Homeland Security Task Force. The Ecuador ton is how the Caribbean lane becomes a continent.
Fox printed 81, 70, 21 guns, $49 million, one ton, 35 rifles, three airstrips. Argue those nouns.
Indict the rest. Seize the cash. A public housing stair is not a loading dock.
