Drug Trafficking Los Angeles County

Even as Brea police continued to deny allegations that they put a 17-year-old in harm's way, well-placed law enforcement sources confirmed Monday that the police had indeed used the youth as an informant weeks before he was slain. One of the sources added, however, that Brea police maintain they cut off their relationship with Chad MacDonald Jr. before he was found tortured and strangled at the hands of suspected drug dealers.

Even as Brea police continued to deny allegations that they put a 17-year-old in harm's way, well-placed law enforcement sources confirmed Monday that the police had used the youth as an informant weeks before he was slain. Brea police maintain that they cut off their relationship with the boy, Chad MacDonald Jr., before he was found tortured and strangled, allegedly by drug dealers, one of the sources said.

After a three-year investigation by the FBI and Compton police, a dozen people were arrested Wednesday for allegedly operating two large-scale drug distribution networks. All those arrested face conspiracy and drug charges, federal officials said. The two men who allegedly headed the drug networks, Alfredo Alcaraz Jr.

Although pseudoephedrine, the primary active ingredient in Sudafed, is a chemical cousin of methamphetamine and other amphetamines, its effects are quite different. So, don't let fears of drug addiction keep you from taking care of that winter cold. Pseudoephedrine is used to relieve nasal or sinus congestion caused by the common cold, sinusitis, hay fever and allergies. It is also used to relieve ear congestion caused by ear inflammation or infection.

Southern California is taking its war on methamphetamines to an unlikely front--the counter at your neighborhood pharmacy. As the region tries to shake its reputation as the methamphetamine capital of America, an array of localities is cracking down on a source of one of the illicit drug's key ingredients--over-the-counter cold medicines.

An apparent drug-related robbery escalated into a bloody shooting rampage that took the lives of four men--three employees and the owner of a Compton carwash, police said Monday. "The intent of the perpetrators was a drug rip-off that went awry," Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor told reporters Monday. Compton police are looking for two robbers who they believe got angry during a holdup and began firing at the four men inside the Wheel's N Stuff carwash, 1400 Sportsman Drive.

The last of the four workers killed in a Compton auto repair shop has been identified, said a Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman. Shooting victim Roy Maldonado, 39, also went by the name Richard Buttanda, said Compton Police Lt. Danny Sneed. The shooting occurred just before 7 p.m. Friday at Prototype Hydraulics in the 1100 block of East Rosecrans Ave., Sneed said.

Medicinal marijuana activist Todd Patrick McCormick, a cancer patient who was arrested in July at a Bel-Air mansion filled with $20 million worth of pot plants, was indicted Tuesday on federal drug charges. McCormick, along with alleged accomplice Kirill N. Dyjine, also known as Hermes Zygott, was charged with producing 4,116 marijuana plants--a crime with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and a $4-million fine, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Fernando Aenlle-Rocha.

Crack houses attract junkies, meth labs give off fumes, but how can you tell if you're living next door to an indoor pot farm? Believe it or not, there are some telltale signs that help lead law enforcement officers to the ever-widening trail of marijuana farms inside suburban homes. Just last month Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators raided two Chatsworth houses where they found hundreds of marijuana plants growing indoors. One of the searches netted 1,669 plants.