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The Los Angeles HIDTA region--composed of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties--is one of the most populous regions in the country with almost 17 million residents1 in over 32,000 square miles of territory. It is a principal production, transportation, and distribution center for illicit drugs available in the HIDTA region and in many other U.S. drug markets supplied by traffickers in the Los Angeles area, including Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Memphis, Tennessee; Miami, Florida; New York, New York; Omaha, Nebraska; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle and Yakima, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Washington, D.C.
Drug traffickers often exploit the region's unique geographic composition for illicit drug production--typically methamphetamine production, cannabis cultivation, crack conversion, and PCP (phencyclidine) production. The Inland Empire, which encompasses both San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, is largely a sparsely populated rural area. (See Figure 1 in Preface.) San Bernardino is the largest county by area in the United States2 and Riverside ranks fourth, which makes detection of methamphetamine laboratories and cannabis fields difficult. (See Figure 2 in Production section.) Traffickers can maintain robust cannabis crops because of ideal climate conditions in the HIDTA region. In addition, Asian (particularly Vietnamese) DTOs and criminal groups and a number of other traffickers also cultivate significant and increasing quantities of high-potency cannabis indoors, particularly in upscale suburban neighborhoods where most residents commute to and from work and have little interaction with their neighbors. Most of their crack and PCP production occurs in inner-city neighborhoods; however, PCP increasingly is produced in the high desert areas of San Bernardino County.
Mexican DTOs and criminal groups, the principal transporters of illicit drugs, smuggle multihundred-kilogram quantities of marijuana, ice methamphetamine,3 cocaine, Mexican black tar and brown powder heroin, and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy)4 from Mexico to southern California--often through ports of entry (POEs) located in the San Diego area--using private and commercial vehicles and couriers on foot (increasingly illegal aliens). Once in southern California, these traffickers usually transport illicit drugs to the Los Angeles HIDTA region in private, rental, and commercial vehicles using the region's highly developed Interstates (Interstates 5, 10, 15, 40, and 215) and other roadways. During each phase of this process, they rely on their close associations with friends and family members residing on both sides of the California-Mexico border--a border located just 90 miles south of Orange and Riverside Counties--to ensure that the flow of illicit drugs from origin to destination goes uninterrupted. (See Figure 1 in Preface.) Their reliance on overland transport also solidifies the Los Angeles HIDTA region's role as one of the most significant gateways for illicit drugs available in the United States, since all illicit drugs that are smuggled across the California-Mexico border for distribution in and outside the area very likely pass through drug markets located in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. Most of the bulk cash and monetary instruments generated by drug traffickers and other criminals in the HIDTA region and a significant portion of the drug proceeds generated in many other U.S. locations are smuggled overland from the area into Mexico for many of the same reasons that traffickers use the HIDTA region as a base for drug smuggling activities.
Mexican DTOs' and criminal groups' tight-knit associations are, to a great extent, a principal reason for much of their drug trafficking success in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. Their success is magnified by the HIDTA region's demographic composition, which includes one of the largest Hispanic (primarily Mexican) populations in the country, a characteristic that helps Hispanic drug traffickers easily blend with legitimate residents and visitors.
The Los Angeles HIDTA region also has one of the largest and most diverse economies in the world. It is home to major industrial giants such as Boeing, General Motors, and Northrop Grumman, which have factories and regional headquarters located in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. It also has highly desired entertainment and sporting events--studios, television stations, and radio stations located in Hollywood and Beverly Hills; Disneyland; Knott's Berry Farm; and Universal Studios as well as popular sports teams (Angels, Clippers, Dodgers, Ducks, Kings, and Lakers)--that attract wealthy residents as well as tens of millions of tourists each year. Both of these populations (wealthy residents and tourists) as well as many others (particularly drug traffickers) include drug abusers with large sums of cash available to purchase illicit drugs, which helps drug traffickers maintain large-scale drug operations in the Los Angeles HIDTA region. That same level of wealth helps traffickers live flashy lifestyles and/or launder large quantities of cash without attracting the same level of attention that they may attract in many other U.S. drug market areas. Their money laundering capabilities are further amplified by the region's highly developed banking and financial centers--which are among the best in the world.
1.
U.S. Census estimates indicate that approximately
46 percent of all California residents resided in the Los Angeles High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) region as of July 1, 2007, the date from which most
recent data are available.
2.
San Bernardino County is larger in area than each
of the nine smallest states in the country.
3.
Ice methamphetamine refers to methamphetamine that
has been crystallized from powder methamphetamine.
4.
According to officials with the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) Southwestern Regional Laboratory, some drug seizures that are
believed to be MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy) tablets
actually contain only methamphetamine or methamphetamine/MDMA combinations. Most
of these tablets originate in Canada.
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