Feds Stormed Skid Row Before Dawn and Hauled Out 23 Alleged Dealers

LOS ANGELES — The feds came before dawn Thursday. An FBI convoy rolled up to a house on Summit Avenue in Pasadena, where agents with automatic weapons set off flash-bang grenades, cleared the property, and ordered the people inside to come out. Downtown, a roughly 100-vehicle law enforcement convoy was sealing off blocks of Skid Row. By the end of the morning, agents had hauled 23 alleged drug dealers into federal custody.

The operation, dubbed "Operation Free Skid Row," is the biggest federal strike on the neighborhood's open-air drug market in years — and the people who ran it say it's only the first one.

According to a Drug Enforcement Administration press release issued Thursday, 28 people were charged in federal criminal complaints with trafficking drugs in and around the Skid Row neighborhood. Of those, 23 were arrested Thursday. (That settles a number discrepancy in Thursday's coverage: the New York Post's news report said 23 arrested; a Post opinion piece said 28 dealers were nabbed — the official count is 23 arrested out of 28 charged.)

The sweep was a Homeland Security Task Force operation — the task force stood up under Executive Order 14159 — bringing together the DEA, the FBI, the LAPD, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and IRS Criminal Investigation, with help from the U.S. Marshals Service, the Postal Inspection Service, HUD's inspector general, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and police departments in Pasadena, Huntington Park, El Segundo, Santa Monica, Simi Valley and West Covina.

The takedown had two phases. First came the pre-dawn home raids, targeting alleged dealers at their residences outside the neighborhood. Then came the midmorning sweep of Skid Row itself, with officers and agents cordoning off multiblock sections and known drug spots, searching tents and vehicles.

One of the pre-dawn targets was Manuel Vaughns, 52, of West Covina, described by federal prosecutors as a documented member of the Raymond Avenue Crips who allegedly sold cocaine inside Gladys Park. The DEA says Vaughns is associated with residences in Pasadena and West Covina as well as a single-room-occupancy unit on Skid Row. Neighbors of the Summit Avenue home told the Post they were stunned — "All they do there is work on their cars," one said, describing the gleaming low-riders parked out front.

Other defendants named in the complaints read like a Skid Row directory: Rodney Thomas, 55, a.k.a. "Jamaica"; Charles McIntyre, 65; Dwayne Richards, 62; Larry Pitre, 70, a.k.a. "Kat Daddy," of Studio City; Lionel Nelson, 57, a.k.a. "Popeye," of Watts; Tyzarioun Grimsley, 28; Eric Goring, 38; and Michael Taylor, 39.

What prosecutors say these men were running was a market that hid in plain sight. According to the DEA release, dealers dressed as homeless people or even as social workers and services providers to blend into the neighborhood. They turned tents and makeshift structures into drug storefronts — not housing, the complaints allege, but places to stash and sell. They used single-room-occupancy units and low-income housing to store product. They kept their supply in vehicles and tents not registered in their names, limiting their liability if police came through.

The release is full of specifics. At Fifth and Crocker, prosecutors say Thomas lived in a downtown high-rise near the Convention Center and drove to his tent in multiple luxury vehicles, including a white 2016 Bentley and a black 2022 Mercedes-Benz. In August, Nelson was allegedly seen selling roughly 34 grams of fentanyl for $60 out of a Mercedes parked in Skid Row. Taylor allegedly disguised himself as a transient in dirty clothes and paid local homeless people in drugs to serve as his lookouts.

Agents searched 20 residences — most of them outside Skid Row — and several tents inside the neighborhood. They seized firearms and drugs, including suspected methamphetamine, cocaine, cocaine base and pills, plus bulk currency and luxury vehicles. The Post, which rode along with agents, reported that 44 search warrants were being served in all and that at least 14 suspects were in custody by 9 a.m.

The people running the operation made no secret of who they think they're fighting for. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli — the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California — told the Post, "We're going after the dealers who prey on the homeless. This is just the first salvo." In the DEA release, he added: "Today's operation targeted drug traffickers who prey on some of the most vulnerable members of the community. ... This operation is just the beginning. More to come."

"They bet if they blended into the suffering around them, law enforcement would drive by, the public would look away, and they would go unnoticed. They bet on our apathy. Today, that bet failed."— David Olesky, DEA Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge

FBI Los Angeles Assistant Director Patrick Grandy called the traffickers "the single largest driver of violent crime in the Skid Row area." ATF's Kenny Cooper said violence against the neighborhood's vulnerable homeless residents "will not be tolerated." IRS-CI's Darren Lian described the operation as an effort to dismantle the financial networks behind fentanyl and meth distribution in Los Angeles.

Thursday's action follows a similar Homeland Security Task Force takedown earlier this year at MacArthur Park, another Los Angeles neighborhood long associated with street crime and homelessness. That operation led to 24 arrests, prosecutors said.

Skid Row covers roughly 50 blocks of downtown Los Angeles. As many as 6,000 homeless people live there, on the streets and in shelters. Prosecutors say dealers from across the L.A. area travel to the neighborhood because it's a known place to buy fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and PCP — a high-density market of buyers within a few walkable blocks. The Post reports the drugs arrive via Mexico, Central America and Colombia.

A note the government itself includes in its release: a criminal complaint contains only allegations. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. If convicted, each faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison. As agencies increasingly document major operations like this on video, departments are also rethinking how the public accesses police records — a debate playing out in Phoenix, where viral video requests just drove a records fee hike.

Political aftershock at the announcement

The raid came with a press conference — and the press conference came with a fight. Mayor Karen Bass announced the operation to reporters Thursday, and was asked about a since-deleted campaign video from her mayoral rival, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, that showed Raman repeating the phrase "only you can stop fascist liars" alongside imagery targeting LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell with a red X, branding police officers as "fascist," according to reporting on the video.

Raman's campaign has maintained that the phrase was a reference to ICE and the Trump administration's immigration enforcement, not the LAPD — and said the video's creator edited it afterward to put Bass on screen during that moment, which is why the campaign asked the creator to take it down. Asked by the Post whether the video set a dangerous precedent for a mayoral candidate, Bass didn't hesitate.

"That video, and even if it was meant in jest, is irresponsible to even tease or make fun in that kind of way. That's not the responsibility, or the behavior, or the stature, of the mayor of Los Angeles."— Mayor Karen Bass, at Thursday's news conference

The LAPD union has also condemned the video, calling the imagery over McDonnell's face dangerous. McDonnell himself has called the video "disappointing." Raman, who has pledged to replace McDonnell if elected, voted to confirm him as chief in November 2024. The mayoral race is now less than a month out, and Los Angeles's other big story this week — two unbeaten boxers finally agreeing to terms — is suddenly sharing the headlines with this one.