Save the Indians -- From the Sinaloan Cowboys

EXPLOITING INDIAN ADDICTION

By MICHAEL RILEY
The Denver Post

WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION -- Natasha Washakie has lived in the depths of addiction to methamphetamine and come back up.

She's seen friends trade sex for meth. She's seen one get her own children hooked on the drug, which among its side effects suppresses the appetite.

"We used to joke that she kept her whole family high so she wouldn't have to feed them," said the 28-year-old Northern Arapaho woman, who has been clean for 15 months after a three-year addiction.

Washakie knows the drug, almost unheard of here before 2000, is slowly destroying this central Wyoming reservation.

She also knows where it comes from: a Mexican drug gang that arrived here more than four years ago hoping to shift the alcohol addiction of many tribal members to meth.

"Honestly, I think that was the best business decision they ever made," Washakie said sadly.

Authorities could hardly argue.

According to information gathered during an investigation that has so far led to more than 17 arrests, that gang is the Sinaloan Cowboys, an organization with a sophisticated structure and a Fortune 500 business plan -- when you're a drug cartel looking to expand, go where the addicts are.

Over a period of more than four years, the gang funneled nearly 100 pounds of meth with a value of more than $6.5 million into and around the reservation.

At least three gang members were dispatched from a Utah-based cell to reservation towns. They rented houses and met girlfriends. Using American Indian women, they gained entree to the reservation and established a network of more than a dozen dealers, many of them American Indian.

"They identified the reservation as an addict-rich environment, a population that for years had been addicted to alcohol," said Robert Murray, an assistant U.S. attorney in Cheyenne. He said information on the gang's plan to infiltrate the reservation had been garnered from multiple sources.

A plan born of deep cynicism, it was also a phenomenal success. In a matter of five years, tribal leaders say, meth went from a marginal drug to a virtual torrent on this 2.2 million-acre reservation.

"It's an epidemic, and I don't think we've reached the peak," said Mark Russler, executive director of Fremont Counseling Services, which treats addicts.

Russler said the number of meth addicts at two facilities in Lander and Riverton -- the region's largest -- jumped from 5 percent or 6 percent of clients in 1999 to more than 25 percent.

From 2003 to 2004 -- a year tribal police saw the worst increase in meth use -- criminal charges for drug possession on the Wind River Reservation increased 353 percent. During that period, assaults tripled, theft nearly doubled and child abuse increased by 85 percent.

Arrests and several convictions, including the sentencing of one of the cell leaders to life in prison in July, have slowed the advance of the drug here, authorities say, but many tribe members say they've seen little effect.

"There are so many people using, you can see them just walking around the store" here, said Georgia C'Hair, a reservation treatment counselor and former meth addict.

"Their skin is ashen. Those repetitive movements and jerks. It's what addicts call tweaking," she said.

Alcohol to meth

Investigators say the Sinaloan Cowboys' success here offers a frightening picture of meth's rapid rise in Indian Country, providing a snapshot into how the stimulant has grown to rival alcohol as the drug of choice on reservations throughout the West.

Experts say that about half of addictions on reservations still are to alcohol.

But meth has moved so quickly that it has left tribal governments across the region reeling. Struggling to catch up, some leaders even have ceded fiercely protected tribal sovereignty in exchange for help.

Two major busts on Wind River in the past two years were the result of an unprecedented law enforcement coalition that included the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, local tribal police and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Sprawling across a rolling prairie at the foot of the Wind River Mountains, the reservation appears the last place that would attract Mexican drug gangs that flourish in the immigrant barrios of America's major cities.

Rural and remote, the reservation is home to 6,400 American Indians split mostly between two tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho. Apart from Riverton, which is largely white, the reservation's few small towns are destitute collections of mostly sagging homes and run-down trailers.

A 1998 tribal study found that 38 percent of American Indian adults on Wind River were unemployed and that 57 percent lived in poverty.

But from the perspective of gang members, the reservation had an important plus: Jurisdictional barriers normally prevent state and local police from operating on tribal lands. And despite the apparent poverty of Indian country, many tribal members receive monthly checks from mineral royalties or other tribal income.

Members of the Mexican gang discovered that alcohol sales on other reservations spiked after members received their checks, sources told investigators, and they believed they could tap into that cash.

"It was natural to try to transfer that addiction from alcohol to meth," Murray said.

The gang's tentacles reach across a vast swath of territory from California and the Northwest through much of the Rocky Mountains, investigators say. Authorities describe the Sinaloan Cowboys as a street gang that distributes drugs for the Sinaloan cartel, one of Mexico's most brutal drug-trafficking organizations.

While the gang is active in several cities, investigators say reservations seem to hold a special attraction. As early as the mid-'90s, members of the same Ogden, Utah-based cell were dealing on reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska, Murray said.

The gang arrived in central Wyoming in the 1990s, first distributing meth to mostly white customers in Lander and Riverton. But sometime in 2001, investigators say they set their sights on the Wind River, with cell members moving onto the reservation permanently, either with girlfriends or in a rented trailer, investigators said.

It was a tried-and-true tactic for the gang: One of the cell members -- Marcelino Rocha -- already had several children with an Indian woman near a Nebraska reservation, where the gang distributed meth in the late 1990s.

Overseen by the cell's leaders, brothers Julio and Martin Sagaste-Cruz, the gang smuggled a pure form of meth -- manufactured in "superlabs" on the Mexican border -- in the drive shafts of sport utility vehicles to Utah and finally onto the reservation.

The organization was exceptionally efficient, authorities say. Including the cell leaders, five to six gang members managed a network of more than a dozen dealers, who in turned distributed enough meth for 45,000 doses.

COMMUNITY COST

Fafa Hereford, who is Eastern Shoshone, saw those drugs only through the devastation they wreaked upon her family.

A sister and brother both became hooked. They would turn suddenly violent and experience hallucinations, she said. Ultimately, her sister lost her children, who now live with Hereford's parents.

Jason Brown, an Arapaho who is in treatment for meth addiction, said the drug is easier to get on the reservation than marijuana. It's much cheaper than cocaine, and the high lasts longer.

When he was using, he'd go on monthlong binges, barely sleeping. When he did sleep, Brown said he would wake up and put a gram of meth in his coffee. Sometimes, he wouldn't return home for days.

"I wouldn't eat. All I wanted is more meth. They have these multivitamin packs. I'd take one of those and I was good to go," said Brown, 30.

Tribal officials say the cost to the community is enormous.

Women are having miscarriages because of the drug. Addicts steal from family members to support their habits. Abuse of the elderly is on the rise.

The reservation has the third-largest caseload for Child Protective Services in the state, behind only Casper and Cheyenne, the state's two largest cities.

And with no inpatient treatment programs for meth anywhere in Wyoming, the two tribes are forced to consider building one of their own, a project that will likely cost millions of dollars, said Willie Noseep, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, the tribe's governing body.

"It has an all-encompassing effect on all our programs," Noseep said.

And the reservation's close-knit community, a source of pride here, only helped speed the drug's spread, tribal members say.

"If you introduced it to someone else, you'd get it for free for a little while. That was a way to pay for your habit for a couple more months," said Washakie, the recovering addict.

Through an ex-boyfriend, Washakie's life became wrapped up with the Mexican gang and its dealers.

Her partner belonged to the family of one of the gang member's girlfriends, Geraldine Blackburn. After a year of being together, he began to beat her. She lost her four children for neglecting them.

Washakie said that gang members used Blackburn's house on the reservation as a base, though a heavily guarded one. As Spanish-speaking men came and went, it was impossible for tribal members to approach the house unless they had been vouched for by the gang's inner circle.

Sometimes gang members would purchase houses for local dealers, tribe members say.

It's those kinds of resources that make the Sinaloan Cowboys and other Mexican gangs such a potent threat here.

Brian Eggleston, a special agent for the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, said that although the organization has been dealt a blow, it's likely to quickly send in new members and start again.

"This organization is making too much money to just quit," Eggleston said.

"They've got a retail business there, and they aren't going to close their doors because they've had a bump in the road."