Yet thousands of low-level dealers and users were still swept up, and the busts included nearly 18,000 arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession despite a new law allowing cops to issue tickets instead.
What’s not news: the vast majority of the arrests—for every type of drug—were made in predominantly African-American communities where drug markets moved in years ago as legal jobs and businesses moved out.
Last week officials sent the latest message that their chief targets are major drug operators—and not the guys on the corner—when the Chicago Crime Commission and DEA named Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera “public enemy number one.” Nicknamed El Chapo, or Shorty, Guzman leads the Sinaloa cartel, which the DEA believes is responsible for 80 percent of the heroin and cocaine in Chicago.
As intended, the declaration made international news. But the situation it highlights is a little more complex than the headlines suggested.
Guzman and Sinaloa don’t actually peddle drugs on Chicago’s streets. Officials say low-level cartel affiliates, or groups who buy from them, smuggle their products to the city or nearby suburbs. From there the goods are sold to street gangs.
Such was the case with the heroin distributed on the west side by the New Breeds gang for much of the last decade. Police and federal agents determined their supplier was a northwest side native named Erik Guevara who acquired heroin and cocaine from a relative in Mexico.
“Guevara was kind of a subcontractor” for Sinaloa, says Jack Riley, the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Chicago division.
Law enforcement officials estimate that 100,000 Chicago residents are affiliated with gangs, which rely on drug sales to stay in business.
Most gang members probably have no idea they’re helping the cartels make money, Riley says. “But it’s essentially like Chapo Guzman has 100,000 Amway salesmen working for him.”
No one is eager to see the cartels extend their reach except the cartels. Riley and Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy say disrupting their networks—on down to the street level—is critical in preventing violence.