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A suspected stash house in South Los Angeles run by gang members accused of deadly drug dealing at notoriously MacArthur Park was swarmed Wednesday morning by federal agents — who caught their targets allegedly trying to flush fentanyl down the toilet.
The Post had a front-row seat as as nearly two dozen Drug Enforcement Agency officers raided the home of alleged narco queen Mallaly Moreno-Lopez and an accomplice in the largest DEA bust in California in at least a year, authorities said.
Agents surrounded their South LA apartment and called for Moreno-Lopez and accused partner in crime Tafur Jackson-Lora to come out. When they did not, agents broke down their fortified steel door and rushed inside.
During the raid, the suspects allegedly tried to get rid of their stash by filling the toilet with baggies of fentanyl in a desperate final act.
Meanwhile, DEA agents carried two other simultaneous raids, including one at Calabasas mansion,where agents recovered nearly 40 pounds of fentanyl. In all, 25 dealers were targeted in the raids, dubbed “Operation Free MacArthur Park.”
The goal of the busts is to stem the supply of deadly fentanyl feeding addicts in MacArthur Park, which has become the locus of drug dealing in downtown LA, said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
“We’re targeting the open air drug market that has terrorized downtown Los Angeles,” he said. “Today’s operation is focused on the street-level suppliers and dealers.”
The DEA’s raid targeted the 18th Street Gang, MS-13 and the Crazy Riders, which together oversee fentanyl sales and distribution in downtown LA, prosecutors said.
The raid on the home of Moreno-Lopez and Jackson-Lora should stop fentanyl from reaching the Alvarado Street corridor of the park, authorities said.
Moreno-Lopez and Jackson-Lora are mid-level distributors, DEA agents said, acting as a liaison between the cartel and lower-level dealers.
The police and federal agents have trargeted the illegal drug trade in MacArthur Park repeatedly this year.
The Post was present when LAPD officers in March arrested Keiko “Moms” Gonzalez, the feared leader of the 18th Street Gang.
In the same raid, the mother of Moreno-Lopez was also arrested, federal agents said.
The Post was also there last month when federal agents arrested affiliates of the Mexican Mafia, the prison-based “gang-of-gangs” that calls the shots on narcotics sales in California and beyond by controlling street gangs such as 18th Street and MS-13.
By noon on Wednesday, federal agents and police had arrested 19 of 25 targets named in the federal complaint. Agents conducted three raids in total, including the one that netted Moreno-Lopez and Jackson-Lora.
At one of the raids, agents recovered more than 25 pounds of fentanyl. The busts were the culmination of more than 45 days of surveillance and investigation that included the use of drones to track the movement of suspects.
LA Mayor Karen Bass previously blasted a federal operation at MacArthur Park in July — which saw immigration agents descend on the park to root out MS-13 gangbangers and open-air drug markets —calling it “outrageous” and “un-American.”
The drug trade there has been blamed for countless deaths and unfathomable suffering.
The real aim of law enforcement, said one DEA agent, is to put and end to the pain and death.
“That’s what we notice when we’re out the most,” the agent said. “People are really suffering from the effects of those illegal drugs. They’re in a bad state.”
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