Jerry Guzzetta was a narcotics detective with the Bell Police Department in Bell, [[Los Angeles|California]], a small suburb where gangster Mickey Cohen once operated. His one-man anti-narcotics campaign produced impressive results and earned him a glowing profile in the [[Los Angeles Times]] in November 1985 for taking down a large Colombian trafficking ring. Some fellow officers regarded him as a loose cannon and publicity hound, but friends said his zeal was driven by personal tragedy.[^1] ### Personal Motivation A drug dealer had killed Guzzetta's brother, shooting him in the head. The killer received only two years for involuntary manslaughter. "In a sense, a drug dealer killed my entire family," Guzzetta said. "After the guy shot my brother in the head, my father died of a heart attack. And then my mother died a couple years later." His friend Officer Tom McReynolds said: "He hated dope dealers. He hated them with a vehement passion, because a dope dealer had killed his brother, and that's one of the things that spurred him to go after these people so aggressively."[^1] ### Partnership with Federal Agents In early 1986, U.S. Customs agent Fred Ghio and IRS agent Karl Knudsen were tracking money launderers by monitoring purchases of cash-counting machines from the Glory Business Machine Co. in Bell. Their investigation led to Victor Gill, who was buying counting machines for [[Colombia|Colombian]] traffickers. Guzzetta joined the surveillance, and the trio "did some very good work together at first," Ghio said. "[We] took a lot of dope off the streets and seized a lot of cash." Guzzetta "became somewhat a local hero" at the Bell PD, mainly due to the asset forfeiture funds generated from seized cash.[^1] ### The Torres Brothers In summer 1986, IRS alerts about suspicious bank transactions led the team to [[Torres Brothers|Jacinto and Edgar Torres]], [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]]'s associates, who had over $1 million in bank accounts with no visible means of support. Guzzetta tailed the brothers and obtained search warrants. On August 11, 1986, the team raided them and found $400,000 in a closet - but no drugs, as the brothers kept money and cocaine in separate rental houses.[^1] Guzzetta and the federal agents flipped the brothers by threatening to prosecute their live-in girlfriends, who were close relatives of [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín cartel]] boss [[Pablo Escobar]]. [[Norwin Meneses]] later confirmed the relationship. "You give up Pablo Escobar's family, and you're dead," Guzzetta said. The brothers pleaded guilty under false names, received suspended sentences, and were turned over to Guzzetta as their sole law enforcement contact. "They were scared to death," Guzzetta said. "They believed very strongly, and I agreed with them, that if anyone found out they were informants, including their girlfriends, they'd be killed in a minute."[^1] ### Project Sahara During debriefings beginning August 22, 1986, the Torres brothers revealed a drug ring dumping hundreds of kilos of cocaine every week into Los Angeles's Black neighborhoods. Customs agent Ghio reported the brothers "have admitted laundering approximately $100 million since Jan. 1986" and had "approximately 1,000 kilos of cocaine currently stored in the Los Angeles area as well as between $250,000,000 and $500,000,000 secreted in various locations locally." Under Guzzetta's control, the brothers picked up and delivered 40 kilos of cocaine and collected $720,000 to prove their reliability.[^1] Guzzetta compiled his debriefing notes into reports titled "Project Sahara." He identified two Black dealers controlling the [[South Central Los Angeles|South Central]] market, [[Ricky Ross|Rick]] and [[Ollie Newell|Ollie]], generating "a conservative figure of approximately $10 million dollars a month." The brothers identified Blandón as extremely dangerous because of "his access to information" about law enforcement activity and warned Guzzetta to be "extremely careful about releasing any information to other law enforcement agencies."[^1] Realizing the scope exceeded his capacity, Guzzetta told his chief: "It's bigger than I can handle. These guys are talking about millions of dollars in cocaine, they're talking about a Nicaraguan [leader] named Calero being involved in this, Colombian families that strike fear into the hearts of mortal men." He was teamed with the [[LASD Major Violators]] squad, where his [[Project Sahara]] reports landed on the desk of Detective [[Thomas Gordon]].[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 14: "It's bigger than I can handle"