Drug arrests drop in Chicago but still snare thousands in black neighborhoods

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.

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