Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, backed by local and federal officials, talks about the yearlong “Operation Tornado Alley” investigation of drugs and gun gangs in the city. Screengrab from CharmTV video.
Baltimore prosecutors, backed by federal and local officials, announced charges Monday against 40 individuals on guns, drugs and other charges as part of a nearly yearlong investigation that they said took down four criminal organizations in the city.
“Operation Tornado Alley” involved the Baltimore police and state’s attorney’s office, the mayor’s office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in what was described as the “largest takedown in Baltimore in decades.”
The investigation culminated with the execution of 16 search warrants last week that also included officials from the FBI, Maryland State Police, the city fire department and animal control department and police from Baltimore, Harford and Howard counties.
All told, authorities said they seized 7.25 kilograms of cocaine, 3 kilograms of a suspected fentanyl/heroin mix, 110 pounds of cannabis, more than $373,000 in cash and 65 weapons, including ghost guns and guns fitted with illegal switches that convert them to rapid-fire weapons. They also reported seizing 15 stolen cars and body armor.
“Families have been devastated by this level of organized crime,” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-7th), one of eight officials who shared the stage at Monday’s news conference, with evidence seized in the raids displayed in front of them. “The organizations that are being taken down today, if left unchecked, would have engaged in more murders and more drugs and more disarray in this city.”
The operation began as an investigation of one organization in the southwestern part of the city and soon expanded to include other suspected organizations. Local officials said they were able to convince federal officials to cooperate, allowing what Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates (D) “surveillance for 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” with wire taps that let authorities rope in “larger individuals” in each organization, rather than just “the corner boys.”
As they watched the operation over the course of the year, officials said they learned of, and were able to head off, a potential turf war between two gangs and a planned hit on one of the suspects.
“Not only the raids we did last week at 4 in the morning, we hit 15 houses at 4 in the morning, but all during the wire, they were picking things up that we had to take criminals off the street because they were going to do violence to someone else,” said Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley at Monday’s event.
Prosecutors said the four gangs were operating in the 500 block of Millington Avenue, the 1700 block of Lemmon Street, the 2000 block of W. Pratt Street and the 2800 block of Edmondson Avenue. Charges include distribution of fentanyl, distribution of cocaine, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, firearms possession and trafficking, managing and participating in a criminal organization, armed robbery, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder, among others.
“This investigation is ongoing,” Bates said. “We are looking to see if any of these suspects are tied to past additional acts of violence in our city or our state.”
Officials said 15 suspects remain at large, but that they were not worried that the news conference would tip them off because, as Bates said, “the night they kicked the doors in at 4 o’clock in the morning, they knew what was up.” He urged the remaining defendants to turn themselves in, warned friends and relatives against sheltering them.
The hard part is over now. Now the harder part starts by keeping those areas drug free.
– Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley
“We have a whole army of us,” Bates said of the authorities involved. “If their relatives want to go ahead and hold on to them, we can go ahead and charge them with obstruction of justice, too, and they can join the party as well.”
The investigation grew out of the city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy, which identifies and focuses resources on city residents at high risk of being involved in gun violence. Worley said those resources would now be directed in the areas where the gangs were operating, in an effort to keep other criminal organizations from filling the vacuum left by the arrests.
“The hard part is over now. Now the harder part starts by keeping those areas drug free,” he said. “And that’s where the Group Violence Reduction Strategy comes in … to offer all the services that are needed, to those people who haven’t been indicted, who haven’t been affected by this, other than disrupt their neighborhood, to give them their neighborhood back.”