'This Is What The President Is Talking About': Pirro Celebrates Bust Of DC Drug Trafficking Group

5 months ago

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced arrests of members of a Washington DC-based drug trafficking group and praised President Donald Trump's DC takeover.

Transcript

00:00one year ago today my office along with the Washington with the Washington field

00:10office of the FBI began an investigation stemming from the sale of PCP and fentanyl

00:17in Knox place Anacostia this investigation is the culmination of what we call a title

00:24three wiretap last week on August 21st my office indicted eight individuals for PCP and fentanyl

00:36trafficking as well as conspiracy the individuals who've been indicted are the following two are from

00:43California one is from Baltimore and five of them are from the DC Maryland Virginia area now this

00:52morning in a very sophisticated and almost flawlessly run operation the FBI Washington

01:01field office along with my office executed approximately 20 residential search warrants

01:08across DC Maryland and Los Angeles and I want to thank the Metropolitan Police and DEA for assisting

01:16us this morning in DC Maryland and Los Angeles as well now at present there are 12 individuals who

01:24have been arrested seven of the eight indicted individuals there is still one fugitive on a

01:32sealed indictment five additional defendants have been arrested this morning as a result of the

01:38the operation the facts the DC based drug traffickers sold PCP and fentanyl in and around the 2900 block of

01:50Knox place southeast you may or may not be familiar with that area but it is a neighborhood that has

01:57experienced a an inordinate amount of violent crime including five homicides at least that we know of

02:06with other violent crimes in the past year the DC based narcotics traffickers sourced their narcotics

02:15through Baltimore and there was a co-conspirator who in turn was importing narcotics from California so this

02:26included a 17 gallon that's what I said a 17 gallon shipment of PCP that was intercepted outside of the

02:36side of Topeka Kansas earlier this year and today's seizures and search warrants

02:45included 18 firearms that you see in front of me right now including an AR style rifle a shotgun a Draco style

02:55pistol as well as I don't know if we have this in front of you in addition to the weapon seized a fentanyl pill press and

03:03uh we also seized approximately two kilos of narcotics that include powdered fentanyl cocaine as well as

03:12cocaine based crack the crimes conspiracy to distribute narcotics a felon in possession of a weapon possession of a

03:23firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking and one individual defendant was it was an alien who was deported three times

03:32and he was in possession of a firearm he's also charged with illegal re-entry now we use title

03:42three to identify the suppliers one individual by the name of Thomas Hancock from Baltimore the source of

03:50his supply was an individual from Los Angeles and this is what the violent crime and narcotics section narcotics

04:00trafficking section of my office does on a daily basis um and what we do are long-term investigations

04:09and they have a very maximum impact given the amount of time that we invest in these cases

04:16Doug Hennick to my left is in charge of the violent uh crime and narcotics trafficking section

04:23what we do is we work our way up the chain which is what all prosecutors look to do and we did just that we

04:31got some major prolific drug dealers based not just on what we saw but our undercovers were buying an incredible amount of drugs

04:44which tells us that the sale of drugs to people in the communities in the dc virginia maryland area uh

04:53was an incredible amount so um i would like to identify now for you the individuals who have been arrested

05:03thomas hancock 43 of baltimore maryland eric prather 43 of washington dc

05:10reginal lassiter 39 of dc leonard edwards 52 of dc daryl reilly 39 of washington dc michael thomas 49 of los

05:21angeles and sarda smith of oxen hill maryland now in addition uh we have five other individuals that we

05:31picked up sorry about that pursuant to what we saw today they are jerica missouri 35 melvina rawlings 40

05:42damian pelt petty 54 antoinette lane 64 along with terence boyd 42. this is what the president is

05:53talking about this is part of our cleaning up the district and the nation's capital and

06:00although it didn't happen in one night these arrests all 12 of them and the seizure of all

06:07these weapons indicate the seriousness of crime that is occurring in our community and we need

06:14all the help that we can get to make sure that we make the arrests and that we continue going into

06:20court with solid cases where we can get convictions and appropriate sentences and i want to thank all my

06:27partners here as i said from dea uh and the mpd and chief smith is here from the metropolitan police

06:35but i particularly want to thank uh phil banks from the uh washington field office the adic in charge

06:42of the fbi who was with us from day one on this long-running investigation

'This Is What The President Is Talking About': Pirro Celebrates Bust Of DC Drug Trafficking Group

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