Crime & Safety

Twenty-One Arrested In Lenox Street Warrant Sweep

District Attorney Daniel Conley said drug dealers were taking over the neighborhood.

Police made a slew of arrests on Tuesday in the area surrounding the Lenox Street housing project, picking up 21 alleged drug dealers as part of a special operation targeting drugs and gun violence in the area.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis announced the results of Operation Tanglewood on Wednesday, flanked by Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley and Boston Housing Authority Director Bill McGonagle. Mug shots of 21 suspects arrested on Tuesday were projected onto the wall across from him.

“The timing of yesterday’s Operation Tangelwood was not a coincidence,” Davis said. “On the first day of summer, the message sent was clear.”

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As of Monday, 18 individuals had been indicted on narcotics charges related to the buying and selling of heroin and cocaine, according to a press release issued by the police department. Police are still searching for nine suspects wanted on similar charges. Davis said he was “confident” that the remaining arrests would be made.

Police were alerted to violence and drug activity in the Lenox Street area by residents, Davis said, recalling a conversation between a resident and a Boston Police Lieutenant. 

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“She could not leave her house without being confronted by drug dealers,” he said. “There were shootings that occurred there and in other parts of the city perpetrated by the Lenox Street group.”

Suffolk County DA Daniel Conley described the area as an “open air drug market,” an atmosphere that forced many hard-working and honest residents to “walk a gauntlet” every time they left their homes. 

“The ease with which plainclothes officers were able to buy cocaine and heroin just shows how brazen these defendants had become,” he said.

During the operation, an officer posing as a customer was able to purchase a $20 bag of crack cocaine in exchange for a digital camera and a Sony play station, Conley said.

“It just goes to show you what these folks will do,” he said.

Several of the suspects were known to police from prior arrests, including one man who was found not guilty in a shooting last summer.

“Within a matter of days he’s right out there on the street selling drugs,” Conley said. “We’re going to do our level best to hold him accountable.”

Police have released a map showing the locations of the alleged drug transactions in the area, with much of the activity occurring near Tremont Street and Shawmut Avenue near Lenox Street. At least three drug sales were made at 18 Trotter Court, the site of a 2009 murder as well as an that resulted in a violent physical struggle between police and a suspect.

Two men arrested on Tuesday live in the South End. Jason Julian, 30, is charged with distributing a class B substance and a school zone violation. Johnny Torres-Santos, 60, faces two counts of distributing a class A substance, two school zone violations and two counts of distribution as a second or subsequent offence.

Not all of the suspects resided in the Lenox Street housing development, Davis said. For those that did, the Boston Housing Authority will be pursuing evictions in many cases, according to McGonagle. 

"We're going to send a clear message that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated in any housing development by the city," he said.

All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.


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