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By Jackie Valley (contact) 
Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Sun archives
- Drug traffickers seek to intimidate Mexican media (07-29-2012)
- Task force: Las Vegas drug seizures centered on I-15 last month (08-04-2011)
- 14 indicted in connection with major meth bust (07-22-2011)
- Record drug seizure netted $5.7 million in meth, heroin (07-14-2011)
- Las Vegas gets stiffed on aid to fight drug-related crime (07-06-2011)
- Stories related to crime in Southern Nevada
Mexican cartels are working to establish a direct foothold in Las Vegas to sell drugs here and use the region as a stepping stone to shipping large quantities of drugs to the East, law enforcement officials say.
The vast majority of drugs entering the region still come via long-established routes through Phoenix or Southern California and are overseen by middlemen. But with greater frequency, traffickers here are ordering drugs directly from cartels in Mexico, enforcement officers have found.
“There’s no denying that these cartels are slowly inching themselves into our community,” said Lt. Laz Chavez of Metro Police’s narcotics section.
Two years ago, for instance, Kent Bitsko, executive director of a Nevada-based interagency drug task force, testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that several degrees of separation still existed between the region’s drug traffickers and Mexican cartels. At the time, he could find only four or five cases over a three-year period with such ties.
Bitsko told the Sun that in the past 18 months, authorities have investigated five cases with direct cartel involvement.
“The only time we will say cartel involvement is when they have the ability to call directly to Mexico and arrange their narcotics to come up here,” he said.
The deliveries from Mexico include cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine, typically transported by vehicle in hidden compartments, Bitsko said.
Last year, task forces seized more than $66 million in drugs in Southern Nevada, more than double the amount seized in 2010, according to authorities.
Nevada’s local, state, tribal and federal drug task forces reeled in several large-scale drug busts last year, including 473 pounds of cocaine found aboard an 18-wheeler on Interstate 15. Authorities said methamphetamine continues to be the top drug threat to Southern Nevada, with several cases tied directly to Mexico. Task forces seized 559 pounds of methamphetamine last year compared with 314 pounds in 2010, according to a 2011 report produced by the task forces.
“We’ve done search warrants on homes and found (more than) 100 pounds of meth,” Chavez said. “There’s no way that much can be sold just in Las Vegas.”
Authorities suspect Mexican drug cartels are sending splinter groups — associates but not cartel leaders — to the Las Vegas area to, as Chavez puts it, “test the waters.”
They’re purchasing homes and own enough vehicles to operate in the region, all funded by money from the cartels, he said. Chavez said he thinks that as these associates attempt to set up shop, they’re keeping an eye on police activity — in other words, “how much they can get away with.”
That’s where the task forces come into play. Drug-trafficking activity has made Southern Nevada law enforcement teams just as busy as their counterparts in larger metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Chavez said.
The investigative process works similar to a domino effect with the identification of drug sellers, their bosses and ultimately the head of a regional cell, Bitsko said. The task forces are working to build cases against organization cells, not individuals.
“We don’t consider it a success unless we can get eight or 10 or 15 of the people who are running the organization,” Bitsko said.
Many of the people arrested are Mexican nationals living here illegally, Bitsko said. There’s not one cartel running Southern Nevada, though. Authorities have come across drug traffickers with direct connection to the Sinaloa, La Familia and the Knights Templar cartels.
The technology drug traffickers possess creates a constant challenge for investigators battling their influence in the region.
“The cartels have an endless budget,” Chavez said. “Obviously, we don’t.”
Above all, authorities hope violence associated with cartels — 47,000 people have died in drug-related crimes in Mexico — doesn’t spill into the Las Vegas Valley.
“Is that coming?” Bitsko said. “I don’t know.”
Other U.S. cities, including Phoenix and San Diego, have seen an increase in cartel-related kidnappings, Bitsko said.
“We just want to do whatever we can to keep that from happening,” Chavez said.
Congress is to blame for this!! They keep marijuana illegal knowing that they CAN'T stop people using the stuff. Of COURSE this is going to happen!
Their ineffective federal marijuana prohibition makes us LESS safe. It draws drug dealers into our kids' schools undermining our children's safety and making it MORE likely that they'll use drugs!
If people could get cheap coke, would they use meth?
The coke was on a Calif Central Valley to Canada bound truck, driven by a French Canadian (guy gets 5 years easy time in Canada).
Come on, everybody knows that drugs are harmless.
Well, that's what the druggies keep telling us. In reality they are horrendously destructive.
Trying to establish???????? They're already established in Las Vegas.
Maybe Obama can sell the Mexican cartels guns to track them and find out where they're really coming. Oh wait, the Department of Justice tried that already and hundreds were killed.
Here is an idea, secure our borders!
What is the President of the USA doing about all this? Has he once talked to the hard working DEA agents on his many trips to Las Vegas? I doubt it.
Put the national guard on the borders. The Mexican border is beyond porous, like water thru a sieve.
The use of dogs isn't illegal in Nevada and Nevada has never been allergic to using dogs to control drugs nor to using sheriff patrols on horseback in the desert to curtail the drugs through desert corridors. Pushing drugs through auto compartments that are hidden is slacking off under the table.
Members of these drug cartels are already living right under our own noses, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our marketplaces, and little is done about it, except for the occassional grand standing by the DEA. Citizens should be suspicious when minor children have every luxury item available to them, at their home, in their personal lives, while their peers not so. These drug cartel children fly under the radar, with the exception of their negative and anti-social behavior around other children.
Adults within these cartels here in the USA use their minor children to acquire things and simply "blend in" with onlookers deeming that child "spoiled by their parents". With all the technology and training, it is puzzling why American law enforcement has such difficulty apprehending these people. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Blessings and Peace,
Star
Now that the cartel's pal's in washington, odumba and holder have handcuffed AZ. law enforcement I guess it's time to move on up to Las Vegas.
If the cops here try to impede them they know holder will file a federal lawsuit.
vote odumba and all demonrats out.
170,000 illegals living in Nevada according to the 2010 census, some look a little Asian to me..... The democrat party's jobs plan in action.
Heretic ..yup drugs are destructive, just ask Betty Ford, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck....How come they did not do any time??? or OBAMA for that matter. Change your name from Heretic to Hypocrisy.
Mred, since I don't listen to those clowns, don't remember blaming anybody or work for the DEA, I think you need to either go back on you meds or move your trailer farther into the desert so even your crappy AM radio doesn't work.
Hypocrisy by any other name equals mred evidently.
I worked Corrections in the middle 60's through the 70's. Drug usuage was becoming more prevalent on the streets. California, was arresting for a few seeds, now you can grow your own. From that time, there has been so many new drugs it would be very difficult to name them all. For one Minute or Second do you have any hope of controling this CANCER that is killing a lot of our adults, young adults and youth. You will never stop drug usuage as long as our Laws, Lawyers, Judges and Liberals continue too condone there use. Police catches the criminal, the above named groups release them, with nothing more than "Don't let me catch you again" hahaha.
Aaronboy (Roy Keith)...Your ideas about drug abuse and incarceration seem naive and narrow-minded, especially coming from someone who worked in corrections. The federal prison population has increased by 800 percent in the last three decades. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population but holds a quarter of the world's prisoners. At the Federal level, prisoners incarcerated on drug charges comprise half of the prison population. Clearly, the war on drugs has failed.
LEAP is a non-profit organization comprised of current and former "drug warriors" who have recognized the failure of drug prohibition and now advocate for a policy of regulated legalization. Their members include retired police chiefs, judges, prosecutors, wardens, detectives, special agents, and others who have the courage to approach the drug policy issue with reason and compassion.
http://tinyurl.com/2cn3lcp
This is why we need the new Freeway to Phoenix, to help with interstate commerce
With no one watching the boarders what did you expect. The empty suit running this country doesn't care.Oh ya election time need the votes.......
Uhh Jackie - You're about a decade behind the 8-ball on this story. Cartels have had a foothold in LV since 2003.
Remember the Grandpa and his RV? Grandson was abducted after Pop-Pop stole $3million from the Cartel? It takes years before these kinds of "in-roads" are established.