Derrick Bines

In dawn raids across the Southland on Thursday, teams of FBI agents and local police simultaneously arrested six leaders of an organization they say is a major supplier of drugs to street gangs. According to investigators, the organization infiltrated a major airline to ship narcotics and enlisted gang members to sell them across the country.

In dawn raids across the Southland on Thursday, teams of FBI agents and local police simultaneously arrested six leaders of an organization they say is a major supplier of drugs to street gangs. According to investigators, the organization infiltrated a major airline to ship narcotics and enlisted gang members to sell them across the country.

A federal grand jury indicted seven men on charges of running a national cocaine and crack ring that allegedly supplied drugs to street gangs in South Los Angeles, the U.S. attorney's office announced this week. Two of those men and an eighth suspect were indicted for conspiring to distribute PCP, and one of them also is charged with beating a government informant with a tire iron. Another defendant was indicted on a separate count of distributing crack cocaine.

Six people pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday to charges that they operated a Compton-based organization selling large quantities of drugs in Southern California and other cities. Investigators say Derrick Bines and his associates sold hundreds of pounds of drugs a month in an operation that served as an intermediary between Mexican drug barons and Compton street gangs.