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OXFORD — Authorities dismantled a “major” Mississippi drug and gun trafficking ring after arresting 14 suspects in Greenville, Leland and Tupelo late last month, federal officials announced Wednesday.
Officials said the arrests targeted street dealers in a trafficking ring that stretched across the northern part of the state. Federal authorities said they went public with the arrests after months of covert operations, as part of an ongoing crackdown on trafficking in Mississippi.
“We have a problem with violent crime, and when I say ‘problem,’ it doesn’t do justice to this,” said Scott Leary, U.S. attorney for Mississippi’s Northern District.
Federal law enforcement banded with local police and state officers to conduct the string of investigations that resulted in the arrests — called Operation King’s Conversion, Operation Delta Fury and Operation Real Deal. Two of the operations targeted drug trafficking in the northern stretch of the state while the other investigated the flow of Glock switches into Mississippi — illegal devices that turn a regular, semi-automatic handgun into a machine gun…