Suburban Home Offers Clues to Major Drug Trafficking Organization
When driving through a suburban neighborhood, it is likely that the last thing most people will associate with the area is “drug house”.” Unfortunately, drug traffickers must have a place to store weapons, drugs and money in order to drive their distribution efforts. When such activities land in suburbia, many a family find that their world is not as safe as they once assumed.
A recent news piece in the CHRON examines the findings of a three-bedroom residence with a dark past. The home was used to regularly stock guns, drugs and money as a secret operations center for a drug cartel smuggling route that served as a connection point between Mexico, Houston, Louisiana and other locations.
The house was discovered as a result of what was considered to be an obscure investigation known as Operation Gator Bait. Federal agents had been looking to take down Willie Jones Jr., a Baton Rouge resident known as “Gator” who was buying up to $1 million a month in cocaine from Houston.
The house did not fit the Hollywood description of a drug lord’s house – no big furniture, no flat screens, just a normal setting you would find in middle class America. When federal agents first arrived at the residence, they were unaware that it would come to serve as providing clues to understanding how traffickers did their business while trying to hide in what some would consider being the last place to look.
“The guy on the corner, he got it from somebody, who got it from somebody, who got it from an international drug cartel,” said David Dugas, chief federal prosecutor for the Middle District of Louisiana. “As we find tentacles of different organizations, we can work up the chain and dismantle major drug-trafficking organizations.”
Tags: drug trafficking
