PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Federal, state and city law enforcement officials announced a major drug operation bust in the city’s Kensington-Fairhill neighborhood on Thursday, which they say took about five dozen guns and nearly 50,000 fatal doses of fentanyl off the street.
At the top is a man named 30-year-old Wilfredo Avila who federal authorities say took over certain streets to sell drugs and supplied his drug dealers with guns. Nine other alleged members of the operation — referred to by officials as the Avila Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO) — are also in custody. One awaits extradition from another state, and a twelfth member, 28-year-old Ahmed Perez, is a fugitive and remains at large.
“Members of the Avila DTO sold significant quantities of packaged fentanyl, fentanyl pills and cocaine,” said U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero. “They pushed their poison in the area of the 2900 block of Lawrence Street, the 3300 block of North American Street.”
Authorities said the investigation was about a year and half long, and they searched more than a dozen locations. Of the five dozen guns they took off the street, it included ghost guns, pistols and assault-style rifles. In addition to the 50,000 potentially fatal doses of fentanyl, authorities also recovered two kilos of cocaine.
Philadelphia Police First Deputy John Stanford said officers will be patrolling areas where the defendants sold drugs, because many times rival groups will try to seize control of the abandoned locations, which can lead to violence.
“So if we see if there is a battle for a specific corner, that’s a part of what we do,” said Stanford. “A big part of what we do is how do we sustain those areas?”
Avila has been arrested before on drug and drug DUI charges and spent some time in jail. He now faces more than two dozen federal drug charges and 17 gun offenses. The others arrested face fewer but similar federal charges.