For decades, the 5th and Hill gang allegedly was the biggest drug dealer in downtown Los Angeles.
The leaders lived in the suburbs and other parts of L.A., where they produced thousands of heroin balloons at their homes and then had middlemen deliver them downtown, police said. There, day laborers, homeless people and even some children as young as 12 allegedly helped peddle the heroin.
The LAPD had struggled to destroy the gang, frequently arresting low-level dealers only to see them replaced immediately.
But on Wednesday, police said that after a months-long crackdown, the gang -- and with it a main source of heroin in Los Angeles -- had been dismantled.
Police said they recovered 45,000 balloons of heroin during the 10-month investigation. They also found 85 pounds of tar heroin, they said, enough when diluted to fill half a million balloons.
Officers arrested 31 people who they alleged were leaders of the gang, as well as scores of alleged street sellers who worked for them.
They reached the kingpins, detectives said, because of video surveillance tapes that tracked the movement of drugs in and out of downtown.
The LAPD's much-touted crackdown on skid row crime has led to 5,400 arrests and a 30% drop in crime since it began in September. But the alleged demise of the 5th and Hill gang offers a glimpse into how drug dealing was able to flourish downtown for decades.
The gang thrived because its leaders stayed far away from the actual drug sales, LAPD Capt. Andrew Smith said.
Authorities believe that the gang got the heroin in bulk from Mexico. The drugs would come to the homes of the gang's leaders in Santa Fe Springs, Fontana and South Gate. There, authorities allege, women meticulously processed and diluted the heroin, packaging it in single-dose "balloons."
Downtown turned out to be an ideal spot to find dealers because of the low-income immigrants and people down on their luck there. Smith said the gang could offer some of them better money than what they could earn doing manual labor.
The gang typically charged $5 to $10 per hit of heroin, with the dealers storing balloons in their mouths to avoid detection. When they made a sale, the dealers would spit out the balloon and give it to the customer, Smith said.
Young teenagers -- some related to the dealers, other found on the downtown streets -- were used not to sell the drug but to move it among sellers, Smith said. The teenagers were given the risky job of conveying significant quantities of drugs to various street corners.
