Sweep busts top gangs of North Shore

Sweep busts top gangs of North Shore
By O’Ryan Johnson  |   Saturday, November 6, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage

GUN SHOW: Some of the 34 guns seized in a gang bust on the North Shore.
Photo by Patrick Whittemore

A swarm of 500 police officers, state troopers and FBI agents from New England fanned out yesterday across the North Shore, where they rounded up dozens of thugs and seized high-powered firearms in order to stamp out violence in gang-ravaged Lynn and Lowell.

The sweep, dubbed “Operation Melting Pot,” targeted members of several street gangs in Lynn and Lowell responsible for out-of-control violence, including murders of rivals, said U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

“The people of Lynn deserve a safe community in which to live and raise their children,” she said. “Unfortunately, there are a few individuals, often belonging to violent street gangs, whose illegal activities diminish the quality of life for all.”

Three years ago, an FBI roundup crippled Deuces Wild, the most powerful gang in Lynn, leaving a power vacuum, FBI agent Jeffrey Wood — the man in charge of the agency’s North Shore Gang Task Force — wrote in an affidavit.

“Similar to other experiences, however, the dismantling of the leadership of these gangs eventually emboldened remaining gangs to step into the void,” he added. “The result has been a dramatic increase in gang-related murders, shootings, stabbings and other violence in Lynn.”

Woods’ chilling document details three years of increasing bloodshed, and includes the shooting of a 16-year-old girl, knife fights inside one Lynn school, a gunfight outside another and the shooting of a teenage girl in January whose willingness to testify left her paralyzed by gunfire. Wood states that in September the FBI wire-tapped a hotel room where gang members discussed plans to attack during a baby’s christening.

Standing in front of two folding tables covered end to end with illegal firearms, police chiefs Kenneth Lavallee from Lowell and Kevin Coppinger from Lynn said the arrests and seizures take dangerous tools away from reckless criminals who have the potential to inflict untold tragedies upon their neighborhoods.

“Every time we can take a gun off the street, we prevent a potential tragedy, we prevent a potential death,” Lavallee said.

The operation targeting several warring gangs has lasted the past 18 months and has resulted in 61 arrests. Yesterday the leadership of those gangs were hauled away, which Coppinger said will send a powerful message to any gangbangers in Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, Haverhill and Chelsea.

“If you think you can come into our communities, we will target you,” he said. “We will follow you, build cases against you and prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”

The investigation was a wide-ranging probe into leaders and members of the Avenue King Crips, the Bloods, the Gangsta Disciples, the Deuce Boyz and the Latin Kings in Lynn and Lowell. Coppinger said while the gangs may carry the names of nationally recognized gangs, they are at best loosely affiliated.

“They aren’t taking orders from L.A.,” he said, though he added with the massive firepower they wielded, they were no less deadly.

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