[StBernard] Criminals 'commuting'

[Westley Annis]

Criminals 'commuting'
Evacuations make crime in Louisiana more regional
By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
Advocate New Orleans bureau
Published: Nov 23, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:00 a.m.

NEW ORLEANS - Following a recent drugs-and-guns bust in St. Bernard Parish,
narcotics officers asked a suspected drug dealer why he moved from eastern
New Orleans to the suburbs.

"He said he felt safer outside the city," Warren Rivera, a spokesman for the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Metairie, said, repeating reports by
the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office. "It's pretty bad when the drug
dealers are saying that."

Acting on a tip by off-duty National Guard troops, the sheriff's raid on the
safety-minded suspect's Chalmette home turned up 13 pounds of cocaine, four
AK-47 assault rifles and $80,000 in cash. The DEA was not involved in the
bust, but federal agents were obviously impressed by the size of the bust
and the changing demographics of their moving targets.

Since Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes here in 2005, known
drug dealers here have taken up residences as far away as Houma or East
Baton Rouge Parish, said Lt. Kurt Vorhoof, a Louisiana State Police
narcotics investigator based in Metairie.
For drug deals, they - "for lack of a better term" - commute to New Orleans,
Vorhoof said.

In ways both small and large, hurricanes are changing the shadowy landscape
of the  illegal drug trade in southern Louisiana,
according to interviews with agents of the DEA, FBI, State Police and
prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans.

All of the law-enforcement  officers confirmed aspects of a local
criminologist's general theory of storm-related "crime migration."
Some raised provocative points of their own.

Peter Scharf, a research professor at the Tulane University School of Public
Health, said that hurricanes are changing the nature of violent drug crimes
in southern Louisiana and that regional strategies are needed to meet the
threat.

First, the mass evacuation during Katrina forced New Orleans drug dealers
and users to find new supply sources in host cities like Houston.

Second, criminals are more mobile, post-Katrina. Consequently, "commuter
murders" are a new phenomenon, Scharf said.

Authorities investigating drug-related murders in Baton Rouge and elsewhere
are advised to look beyond their own city limits, as New Orleans police have
done since Katrina, the professor said in a Sept. 10 interview.

In an e-mail response,  Sgt. Don Kelly, a spokesman for the Baton Rouge
Police Department, said:

"The methods, tactics and patterns of drug dealers are constantly changing
and evolving. They were doing so before Katrina and they were continuing to
do since. It's an ongoing cat-and-mouse game," Kelly said.

"While the Houston-New Orleans drug transportation corridor may have
strengthened with the post-Katrina relocations, it is certainly nothing
new."

BRPD takes a "regionalized approach" to narcotics investigations, often
working jointly with federal, state and area law enforcement, Kelly said.

"Baton Rouge did suffer a spike in crime following Katrina, which was
undoubtedly a result of our huge, sudden unprecedented growth in population
following Katrina," Kelly said. "But on balance, our overall serious crime
in Baton Rouge has been going down for several years. And the vast majority
of our homicides year after year still involve locals who are acquainted
with one another."

In one drug case, State Police gave chase to a tailgating motorist. The man
allegedly threw four kilograms of cocaine out of his car window during a
high-speed chase that began on Interstate 10 in West Baton Rouge Parish.

Dwayne Isom, 28, of New Orleans was apprehended near the I-10/I-12 split in
East Baton Rouge, after troopers and BRPD teamed up to safely "box" and halt
the suspect's car, State Police said. Isom went to jail. More than half a
kilo of cocaine was recovered.

Narcotics agents call such traffic-related drug busts "road kill."

Since Katrina, more drug couriers and small-scale dealers are apparently
trying their luck Interstate 10 and I-12 - but smuggling smaller amounts of
cocaine than before Katrina.

Despite the loss of population, overall drug-dealing activity has not
declined in Louisiana since Katrina, Rivera of the DEA said.
 "What we've seen most is cocaine," he said.

During the evacuations of 2005, thousands of New Orleans evacuees discovered
cities and towns with better schools, lower crime rates - and higher
standards of living.

The city's displaced drug dealers found advantages, too. "They discovered
they could cut out the middle man," said Rivera.

Before the storm, New Orleans drug dealers "thought Houston was on the other
end of the moon," Pat Warner, regional acting special-agent-in-charge of
DEA, said at his Metairie office.

Before the storm, dealers here would pool their money and pay a middle man
from Houston for a shipment of cocaine, Warner said. After Katrina, local
dealers met new suppliers in Houston, a major hub for illegal drugs.

"Kilos of cocaine are $19,000 to $23,000 each today," Warner said in a Nov.
10 interview. "Here in New Orleans, a 'key' goes as high as $26,000."

Many New Orleans dealers decided to save $3,000 a "key" and bring the dope
back themselves or - more likely - hire a drug "mule," he said.

"That's true exposure when you get out on the interstate," Warner said of
the couriers.

Prison time, determined partly by the weight of drugs seized, is posted on
the DEA Web site.

"It's a big cat-and-mouse game," said Maurice Landrieu, who, along with
fellow federal prosecutor Duane Evans, has prosecuted at least 700
defendants in southeastern Louisiana on drug-violence charges.

"The 'mice' are harder to find now" since Katrina, Evans said. "They are
more independent, and they realize it's a big world out there."

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten of the 13-parish Eastern District of Louisiana said
that New Orleans criminals have been "crossing parish lines to settle
scores" since Katrina. That mobility is a challenge for metropolitan area
law enforcement, Letten said.

Recent DEA intelligence reports for the four-state region (Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas) say cocaine figures in 75 percent of the
drug-related violence for the area, DEA spokesman Rivera said.

After Katrina, New Orleans police worried that better-organized drug
trafficking organizations (DTOs) from other cities would try to take over
New Orleans' fractured but lucrative cocaine trade.

That has not come to pass.

 The city's notoriety for wanton violence may be a reason.

"I've heard 'intell' that a Houston DTO considered it too violent to come
here," Warner said.

Howard Schwartz, assistant special agent in charge of the Louisiana FBI,
says probes by gangs from other cities typically fail. "They are
consistently met with such ruthlessness and violence that they don't set up
shop here," Schwartz said.

Outside DTOs have tried elsewhere in the state since Katrina, attracted by
Louisiana's proximity to source cities like Houston, DEA reports show.

In January, U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington of the Western District -
along with sheriffs from the parishes of Iberia, Lafayette, St. Martin and
St. Mary - announced indictments of alleged members of a methamphetamine
ring.

Authorities alleged that the drug-trafficking operation united an East Los
Angeles gang with drug dealers in southwestern Louisiana.

"You had a Hispanic male hooked in with an Asian gang that found some
fertile ground south of Lafayette and wanted to exploit it," Steve Krueger,
FBI supervisor for Lafayette and Lake Charles, said.

The bust knocked out more than 50 percent of the illegal methamphetamine
supply in the Lake Charles area, Krueger said.

FBI agent Richard D. Hardgrave Jr., who heads the bureau's anti-gang task
force in Louisiana, said: "The good news for places like Baton Rouge and
Lafayette is that there is no evidence of high-tier drug-trafficking
organizations." However, "home-grown" gangs can be just as lethal, Hardgrave
said.

Money laundering and "trap vehicles," with hidden compartments for drug
shipments, are red flags for the gang-wary, agent Schwartz said.

Back in Lake Charles, agent Krueger shrugged off questions about the effects
of Hurricane Katrina on drug dealer demographics, saying the "bigger story"
there is the aftermath of Ike.

Ever since the storm hit Houston in mid-September, an anti-drug task force
in Calcasieu Parish (along the Texas border) has seen a significant decrease
in narcotics seizures.

"There is an increase in the street price of crack and cocaine," Krueger
said. "There is an increase in the price of powder. If your price is
increasing, the supply has dropped. There is no change in that demand. A lot
of people who were the suppliers are gone or out of service. I can only
infer that based on what we have seen in price change."

Rick Tessier, a New Orleans criminal defense attorney, suggests that any
victory for authorities in their war on drugs is only temporary.

"Drug dealers adapt to what the federal government is doing, and what Mother
Nature is doing," Tessier said. "There is always a demand side to the
business."

Warner said Katrina did the DEA a favor by "washing out" the often-illegal
prescription "pill mills" that dotted the New Orleans area before 2005. Some
resurfaced in Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

Agent Krueger said his task force is too tied down with violent drug gangs
to take on resurging pill mills. Yet, DEA reports that prescription drugs
have displaced marijuana as the "gateway drug" for youths to use before
graduating to dangerous street drugs.

"We need to look at how law enforcement deploys," Professor Scharf said
Friday. "We don't have an adequate information-sharing network in law
enforcement except at high levels."

That may change.

Records show that President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledged to
"strengthen" DEA efforts in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast to "stop the
reestablishment of drug gangs across the region," post-Katrina. 

  
 
  
 

  
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