RAID TURNS UP 174 POUNDS OF METH AT LAWRENCEVILLE HOME

Raid Turns Up 174 Pounds Of Meth At Lawrenceville Home

LAWRENCEVILLE - Elena Rostas paid little attention to the white,
two-story house a few doors down on Lawrenceville's La Maison Drive.

Some nights she caught a "weird" smell wafting from the home's
direction, something pungent like gasoline. And it seemed odd that a
red semitrailer was parked outside the home for several days recently,
she said.

Other than that, nothing fishy, she said.

Situated around a bend in the Royal Terrace subdivision, the
unassuming abode housed one of the largest, most complex
methamphetamine conversion laboratories federal authorizes have
uncovered in the United States, officials said Thursday.

The only thing missing from the docile front, said Gwinnett District
Attorney Danny Porter, "was a white picket fence."

Gwinnett became ground zero this week in the largest takedown
operation targeting a Mexican drug cartel in the history of the Drug
Enforcement Administration. The Lawrenceville home - where a reported
174 pounds of meth were found Wednesday - was the national epicenter,
providing links to operations in cities as far as Los Angeles.

Rostas, a mother of 12, found news of the raid disconcerting.

"To me, it's pretty scary," she said, a fussy child at her side. "It's
a quiet neighborhood. Maybe that's why they chose it."

Bingo, authorities said at a press conference.

The bust and others like it nationwide were the result of an
initiative called Project Coronado, leading to 31 arrests of suspect
traffickers in Gwinnett alone Wednesday. Along with the meth haul,
hundreds of local police pulled 17 kilos of cocaine, 13 firearms and
$54,000 in dirty money off Gwinnett streets, officials said.

Officials made 303 arrests nationwide.

The takedown is a crippling blow to "La Familia Michoacana," a
ruthless drug organization based in southwestern Mexico, said Rodney
Benson, a special agent with the DEA in Atlanta.

La Familia, for short, operates nationwide but has strongholds in
metro Atlanta, Dallas and greater Los Angeles. A La Familia leader is
believed to be responsible for the murder of 12 federal agents in
Mexico in July, Benson said.

Locally, authorities rescued a Dominican man from New York who'd been
kidnapped and slated for execution, Benson said.

Benson warned that the organization may try to regroup and
re-establish their financiers.

"Frankly, we have to keep the pressure on," he said, "and that's what
we're going to do."

Gwinnett police Chief Charles Walters called the case indicative of
the large-scale drug operations his officers must routinely fight.

"Complexity is the norm now - it's not a simple mom-and-pop drug
organization," Walters said. "We have taken a lot of dangerous people
out of this community."

La Familia operatives were attracted to Gwinnett - as are many
traffickers to metro Atlanta - by the area's booming Hispanic
population and plentiful homes for rent on quiet streets. Both are a
means to camouflage themselves, Porter said.

Porter said authorities were led to the meth lab through tipsters in
the community.

"People need to report suspicious smells and suspicious
comings-and-goings," he said.