MS-13 - the focus of a nationwide crackdown by FBI and federal immigration

[Jerry D]

HEADS UP: MS-13 Gang in America...
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY


In early November, the _FBI_
(http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=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.
_El Salvador_ (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=El+Salvador) and
other Central American nations. With a 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 and Connecticut.
Routes for trafficking
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.
Stealing from drugstores
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."