Miami, February 27 Twenty-one members of the Latin Kings crime gang, including two of its leaders, were arrested and also seized large amounts of fentanyl and other drugs in southern Hillsborough County on the coast west Florida, the sheriff’s office reported Monday.

The three-month-long police operation called “Checkmate” (Checkmate) has successfully taken down “a violent gang” that was distributing “deadly narcotics” in the aforementioned state and county, where the coastal city of Tampa is located, said the Sheriff of Hillsborough, Chad Chronister.

Operation “Checkmate” led to the arrest of 21 people, “including two prominent gang leaders” and the seizure of drugs with a combined street value of nearly $1 million and “other items of value purchased with illicit money”.

Among those arrested in the operation are Omar Bravo, 32, and Fidencio Robles, 30.

The Chronister said that Robles is “one of the five highest-ranked Latin Kings gang members in Florida” and that Bravo is the gang’s “primary narcotics supplier to the entire state.”

The district attorney’s office, DEA and Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that the Latin Kings are “one of the largest gangs in the world,” a gang that “does not value human life” and that aggressively traffics “massive quantities of narcotics”.

“In a game of chess, checkmate is a term used when the king cannot escape”, and in this operation “the Latin kings and their criminal buddies have not escaped and are under arrest . It’s over for them,” Chronister noted.

Bravo, Robles and the 19 other arrested gang members “raised hundreds of thousands of dollars a month selling their poison for profit.”

The investigation and operation was led by agents from the DEA in Tampa and the Tampa County Police Department, who entered last week with a search warrant five homes in the Wimauma area, locations used by the Latin Kings as a storage and distribution point. narcotics.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said today after the news conference that investigators estimate these criminal operations generated between $300,000 and $500,000 a month.

During the search and search, officers found nearly $1 million worth of drugs, including five kilograms of fentanyl, two kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine, one kilogram of heroin and quantities of marijuana, in addition to seize 15 high-end firearms and vehicles, according to the sheriff’s office.

“How many overdoses and lost lives, right here in Tampa, can be attributed to the large amounts of fentanyl they’ve already distributed and sold?” Chronister wondered, adding that the amount of fentanyl seized “was enough to kill everyone”. in Hillsborough County twice.” EPE

emi/ar

(Photo)

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