By Kim Janssen
The Chicago Sun-Times
What began as an undercover investigation of the Southwest Side’s Two-Six street gang spread to include several other gangs and saw 25 Chicago area men charged with drug and weapons violations, officials said Thursday.
More than 60 weapons, including assault rifles, handguns and sawed-off shotguns, were seized in the joint Chicago Police-FBI operation.
Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis hailed the busts as “a paradigm shift” in the way the FBI tackles street gangs because the probe focused heavily on gun trafficking.
Speaking at a press conference at Chicago FBI headquarters, Weis said, “It’s a very good day -- showing that the federal government is shifting its focus a little bit more towards the weapons.”
The guns were allegedly bought in neighboring states and were intended for gang members but were sold to undercover FBI agents for up to $1,000 per weapon.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Grant said the focus on guns was a “tactical shift” brought on, in part, by the Obama administration downgrading the penalties for crack cocaine to more closely match the penalties for powder cocaine.
“The important part is getting the bad guys off the street,” he said,
The bust, which saw 23 defendants arrested Tuesday and Wednesday, included an undercover sting against four men accused of plotting to rob what they thought was a Brighton Park cocaine stash house.
According to a federal complaint, one of the alleged robbers, Joshua Vidal, 23, of the 4500 block of West Fullerton, was filmed telling an undercover officer that “we shoot people for free, you think we’re gonna shoot people for bricks [kilos of cocaine]? We gonna shoot you two times more for some bricks.”
Thirteen defendants were charged in federal court, while a dozen were charged in Cook County Criminal Court. Three remain at large. Those facing federal gun charges face up to 10 years behind bars, while those charged with federal drug crimes face a maximum of 10 years.
Weis acknowledged that the seizures put only a small dent in the number of illegal guns on the city’s streets, but he said he expects the arrests and seized guns to be reflected in lower levels of violent crime in the Deering and Ogden districts on the Southwest Side in coming months.
Mayor Daley, speaking at a different event, said it was good to see the feds “finally’’ cracking down: he has long complained that the federal government is not doing enough to combat gangs and drugs.
The problem of “organized crime gangs,’' he said, is national in scope.
Copyright 2010 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.