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Seven arrested in Boston police sweep targeting violent drug ring

E-mail|Link|Comments () October 7, 2009 02:31 PM

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

A hundred police officers fanned out this morning to arrest seven people with ties to a Boston narcotics distribution ring that often engaged in acts of street violence, authorities said this afternoon.

"These individuals have been targeted because they are the most prolific shooters that we have in the city of Boston," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. "This case is going to make the city safer because bad guys are being taken off the street and we're picking up firearms."

The arrests came after a grand jury indicted 15 people on Monday who were "impact players" and other associates of the Magnolia Steelers gang. The other eight defendants in the case were already in custody, said Attorney General Martha Coakley, who appeared at a news conference with Davis and State Police Major James Hannafin.

Authorities said the drug ring sold large quantities of marijuana and cocaine in Dorchester, Roxbury, downtown Boston, and Quincy.

The investigation conducted by the attorney general's office, along with state and Boston police, with the help of numerous other agencies, was dubbed Operation 1370 because 1,370 degrees is the temperature at which steel melts, Coakley said.

Coakley said police used the latest in electronic surveillance techniques to target the gang, which has "plagued the streets of Boston," and officials believed that the probe, which began in August 2008, had thwarted a number of planned acts of violence.

Davis said one of the violent acts prevented included a possible homicide.

He said the arrests should send a message to gang members: "If they pick up firearms and they use them, we will take every tool we have in our toolbox to get them off the street."