In a blow meant to disrupt drug sales in a South Side housing complex at the center of Chicago’s fentanyl crisis, federal authorities on Wednesday lodged conspiracy charges against 47 members and associates of the street gang that controls narcotics sales there.
Hundreds of police and federal agents moved against the Mickey Cobras just after dawn in a sweep of more than two dozen people with links to the gang–including a Chicago police officer who allegedly tried to help gang members stay a step ahead of the law.
The gang’s leader, James Austin, 29, was taken into custody in Ohio and charged in what authorities described as a sophisticated drug operation that saw heroin, crack cocaine and fentanyl distributed at the Dearborn Homes housing project.
Cook County Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue on Wednesday said fentanyl has been discovered in the blood of 87 overdose victims who have died since spring 2005. As toxicology reports are completed on overdose deaths, the number of fatalities linked to fentanyl continues to grow.
Authorities said they did not believe the conspiracy case would cap the supply of fentanyl coming into Chicago, but they said they had begun to dismantle a street gang with a stranglehold on the housing complex where much of it may have been sold.
Authorities noted the investigation was well under way a year ago but accelerated after the many fentanyl-related deaths, some of which can be attributed to gang members inadvertently mixing the drug in lethal doses.
Some victims may have looked for the powerful painkiller that is many times more powerful than heroin, while some may have unknowingly purchased it.
The gang offered eight brands of heroin at the housing complex, with names such as “Drop Dead” and “Lethal Injection,” said First Assistant U.S. Atty. Gary Shapiro.
“They carry niche marketing to its extreme,” Shapiro said. “It struck everybody that had anything to do with this case, in light of everything that happened in this community, particularly in the last six or eight months, how cold-blooded the marketing seemed to be.”
In the criminal complaint, federal authorities said they have twice seized quantities of fentanyl from the gang this year. Chicago Police Supt. Philip Cline said authorities have not ruled out drug-induced homicide charges for gang members if deaths can be linked to their products.
The last time fentanyl was seized from the gang was in April, the complaint states, when authorities learned that heroin was being mixed in a building in the 2900 block of South State Street.
They arrested Jerome Johnson, 21, of Chicago, an alleged “shift supervisor” for the gang who worked with heroin brands known as “Penicillin” and “Reaper.”
Authorities said Operation Snakebite netted members at all levels of the gang, including Austin’s assistant, Johnny Shannon, 27, of Chicago and two members of the gang’s board of directors.
Chicago Police Officer Tashika Sledge, 29, also was charged with providing law enforcement information to her boyfriend, Lynn Barksdale. Barksdale, another leader of the gang, also was charged.
Some gang members charged are expected to appear at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Thursday.
