Articles
40 gang members face charges today in drug sweep
September 25, 2008
BY NATASHA KORECKI AND FRANK MAIN Staff Reporters
Federal and city officials decapitated a gang that controlled one of the most violent areas of the city, charging 40 people Wednesday in a massive takedown that disrupted a multimillion-dollar drug operation.
More than half of those charged are reputed "Incas," or leaders, of the Latin Kings street gang, operating in the Little Village neighborhood along 26th Street.
Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis said the gang members weren't charged with violence, but there was no denying the level of violence in the Marquette Police District — the area under Latin Kings control.
Thirty-three people were murdered in the district in the first eight months of the year, police said.
One reputed Inca, Alphonso "Ponch" Chavez, allegedly told an informant his underlings shot at a car they thought was going to be used against them in a drive-by shooting and boasted that the 2007 shooting made the news.
Chicago FBI chief Robert Grant said the gang was targeted after it "caused a tremendous amount of violence because of the drug trade." Grant said the feds learned of planned murders that were "disrupted" during the investigation.
An informant helped build the case, securing video and audio surveillance. At one meeting in 2007, an alleged high-ranking Latin King leader, Vicente Garcia, 30, of Bolingbrook, told the Incas they had to sell cocaine to help pay for "guns, attorneys and funerals," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said.
The Latin Kings were so spooked about a snitch, they used an enforcer to make sure no one showed up at the meeting wearing a wire.
The plan hit a snag.
"We're here today largely because the person they assigned to make sure no one wore a wire — wore a wire himself," Fitzgerald said.
The cooperator was a Latin Kings veteran who coordinated security for the 26th Street region.
Garcia was charged Wednesday but is a fugitive. He allegedly headed the South Side region of the Latin Kings, replacing Fernando "Ace" King after King's 2006 arrest. At that time, officials arrested 38 Latin Kings members and associates.
The feds admitted they were back in Little Village cracking down on the same gang they cleaned up two years ago. But Grant said that this time, gang leadership took a considerable hit. Twenty-four Incas were arrested, which Grant said was one-seventh of the Latin Kings' citywide leadership.