About 300 federal and local law enforcement officers fanned out early Wednesday morning across the Houston area, arresting more than a dozen suspected drug traffickers accused of peddling kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine throughout the region.
The arrests, part of a broader effort by the Department of Justice to combat violent crime in the nation’s fourth-largest city, were announced Thursday by Alamdar Hamdani, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
Prosecutors and investigators said the highest-profile defendant, 35-year-old Alfred Jacoby Green, is a suspected leader of the “Rich Kingz” gang and the organizer of the busted trafficking ring. Hamdani said the Rich Kingz operate out of southwest Houston, trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine throughout Houston, as well as other states stretching as far north as Ohio and Virginia to the east.
Houston FBI Special Agent in Charge Doug Williams said he hopes the arrests help investigators “connect the dots on several cases, including unsolved murders.”