[StBernard] Double Dealing Evacuees tap into Texas-sized drug supply for New Orleans

[Westley Annis]

 "People would be amazed how much drugs they got in this city right now, you
know, it's ridiculous. If you can't find drugs before the storm, after the
storm you just gotta knock on your next door neighbor's ... door." 
 
- Anonymous drug addict speaking to the National Development and Research
Institutes 
  
The streets of New Orleans are awash with drugs - cocaine, crack, heroin,
marijuana, ecstasy - everything to fulfill any addict's desire. 
The unprecedented amount of dope is the result of a temporary vacuum created
by Hurricane Katrina, according to federal law enforcement officials. The
storm forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate, including most of
the city's dealers. But what looked like a crippling blow to their
operations turned out to be the opportunity of a lifetime. 
  
After Katrina, New Orleans drug pushers relocated to Houston, a major
pipeline for Mexican and Colombian narcotics cartels, said Jim Bernazanni,
FBI special agent for Louisiana. 
  
There, the displaced dealers cemented bigger connections giving them access
to a virtually unlimited drug supply. 
"If they didn't have direct connections before, they do now," said Richard
Woodfork, spokesman for the New Orleans branch of the Drug Enforcement
Agency. 
  
Meanwhile, Houston drug distributors realized the New Orleans market was up
for grabs and flooded the city with narcotics, Bernazanni said. 
Ten months into fiscal year 2006, the DEA has already confiscated 1,122
kilos of cocaine in New Orleans compared with 583 kilos for all of fiscal
year 2005 - a 92 percent increase. This is in a city with less than half of
its pre-Katrina population. 
  
The fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30. 
The DEA has already intercepted 2,407 pounds of pot in 2006 compared with
476 pounds in 2005 - a 406 percent increase. 
In April, the National Development and Research Institutes, a New York
nonprofit, launched a four-year study of the hurricane's effect on the
illegal drug markets of New Orleans. One buyer told the NDRI there is so
much dope in town there aren't enough street level dealers available to
unload it. 
  
"Man, cuz we had so much drugs ... the dealers was just passin' it out,
wasn't sellin' it. They was coming back with so much drugs from Texas,
Atlanta, wherever they went they came back with quantity. Giving it away,
just giving it away so they can get your business." 
  
Unorganized crime 
  
Before Katrina, the New Orleans drug trade involved loose associations of
dealers based on neighborhoods or on a block-by-block basis. No large,
organized gangs like the Crips and Bloods were involved, said Bernazanni. 
  
In the early 1990s the Bloods tried move in on New Orleans to control the
narcotics action but they were run out of town by a bloodthirsty resident
criminal element prone to unpredictable savagery. 
  
The Crips and the Bloods are in nearly every major American city - but not
New Orleans, Woodfork said. 
  
"The average criminal here is incredibly violent and that's been the story
about New Orleans criminals for a long time," Woodfork said. "If you step on
their shoes it's enough to shoot someone." 
  
The FBI typically identifies a drug organization's leadership, membership
and financial dealings. Once done, it is easier to find a chink in the
armor, infiltrate the gang and bring the enterprise down, Bernazanni said.
But New Orleans gangs, without established structures, are much more
difficult to penetrate. 
  
And the situation has deteriorated in the wake of the storm. 
Before Katrina, an older generation of dealers exerted a semblance of
control over the action but the hurricane loosened their grip, according to
the NDRI. 
  
"Now you have voids whereas before there was entrenched neighborhood or
family associations that used lethal means to ensure they maintained control
of what they were doing," Bernazanni said. 
  
The result is a free-for-all when returning drug pushers go to war over the
20 percent of inhabitable territory remaining in New Orleans. 
Bernazanni describes today's New Orleans drug trade as a "pig in a python,"
a thin market stuffed with more dope and dealers than it can handle. 
  
Hispanic pushers absent 
  
"It was worse before Katrina and it's getting worse all over again.
Everybody got money from Katrina. Everybody that never had money wound up
with money and so, supply and demand. The more money that came out, more
dope came in. A lot more dope came in. A lot more." 
  
- Anonymous New Orleans 
addict to NDRI researchers. 
  
The long-rumored Hispanic takeover of the local drug market has not
happened, officials say. 
  
Law enforcement officials initially feared violent Latino gangs such as
MS-13 would pour into the city along with the estimated 50,000 Hispanic
workers in reconstruction. But the threat has not materialized - so far. 
  
Members of hardcore Latino gangs such as the Southwest Cholos, Latin Kings,
MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang of Los Angeles have been picked up in the
streets of New Orleans, but 
none have proved a threat to established African-American dealers. 
  
"Unlike the returning African-American legacy criminal who lives his life
mired in the drug trade, these Latin people are hard workers," Bernazanni
said. "They're skilled craftsmen, they're carpenters, they're electricians,
they're masons - they just happen to be members of gangs at night. 
  
"We don't see any organized gang emergence here. But our concern is that we
have a smattering of MS-13s from different cliques around the country and
that they may eventually coalesce and form a permanent New Orleans clique.
We're very concerned about that." 
  
To stem the massive amount of narcotics flowing from Houston into New
Orleans, the FBI set up an interdiction team along the Interstate 10
corridor. In February, they confiscated more than 50,000 hits of Ecstasy and
350 pounds of marijuana en route to an Asian gang in eastern New Orleans. 
  
"We pretty much gutted this highly organized Asian crime group but it's just
the beginning. The legacy African-American dealers are becoming more brazen
and dangerous and they're all crowded into this one small piece of land.".