(The Center Square) – As crime continues to plague Houston-area public schools, a third-grade teacher was among those arrested in a multi-agency operation targeting organized crime, violent gangs, weapons and narcotics trafficking.
"Cocaine. Meth. Machine guns and gangs. It's a recipe whose deadly consequences play out on the streets of Houston every day and every night, leaving citizens in fear," Alamdar Hamdani, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said at a news conference. "North of Greenpoint, to the southwest side of town."
Twenty people in total have been arrested including “an elementary school teacher and according to the brief we just filed, she was on the phone … taking part in that drug conspiracy, while she was at school,” he said. “And you could hear the children in the background.”
The teacher is an alleged associate of the Rich Kingz gang “who was caught on a court-authorized wiretap allegedly conducting drug deals while in class,” the FBI-Houston said in a statement.
The Houston arrests come after another major take down of Latin Kings leaders in Uvalde County on weapons and drug trafficking charges. Border towns and Houston, the largest city in Texas, are targets of multi-agency operations targeting transnational criminal activity linked to Mexican cartels, The Center Square reported.
The arrested teacher is reportedly Jessica Ferguson, employed by Garrett Elementary School in Sheldon ISD, in an unincorporated area of Harris County, KHOU 11 News reported. Parents contacted the news outlet after the district would not confirm her name but said she was put on administrative leave after she was called to the principal’s office where she was arrested.
Parents have expressed alarm about the vetting process of teachers, why an alleged drug trafficker hasn’t been fired, the fact that it took more than 24 hours to announce a teacher’s arrest and that parents weren’t told where she was allegedly trafficking drugs, KHOU 11 News reported. The district has yet to announce if she’s been fired but says it is cooperating with the investigation.
Crime has plagued Houston areas schools, including Houston ISD staff arrested by the FBI on money laundering and corruption charges, The Center Square reported.
The alleged leader of a violent gang was also arrested, Hamdani said. “Alfred Jacobi Green AKA Cobe is allegedly a documented member and one of the leaders of a gang known the Rich Kingz that’s predominantly on the south and southwest side of town.”
Green and the Rich Kingz are also affiliated with other criminal networks in the Houston area, he said, including his primary cocaine supplier and five co-conspirators who were charged in a separate case.
Another arrested was a former Harris County corrections officer allegedly working with the gang.
Overall, 20 recent arrests were “part of the Rich Kingz gang, which has been operating for years out of southwest Houston and is responsible for drug trafficking and violent crimes across our entire city, including several murders," Doug Williams, FBI-Houston Special Agent in Charge, said.
After a two-year Department of Justice Houston Violent Crime Initiative, “the violent Rich Kingz kingdom in our city has truly fallen,” FBI-Houston said.
Those arrested are believed to have information that investigators say could help solve other crimes, including roughly a dozen murder cases going back to 2020.
A federal grand jury recently returned six indictments on a range of charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, the latest of 23 indictments and 77 people charged since September 2022.
The charges encompass over 30 firearms, the seizure of meth and more than 15 kilograms of cocaine. Search warrants issued last week resulted in additional seizures of 10 firearms, $26,000 in cash, cocaine and crack cocaine, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Some were charged with “illegal possession of firearms and/or criminal possession of a machine gun – a firearm altered with a machine gun conversion device aka switch to fire automatically with one pull of the trigger.”
Fifteen were charged in two of the indictments with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and on multiple counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. Other charges include maintaining drug premises and felony possession of a firearm.
Convictions on the drug conspiracies alone carry a sentence of life in prison.
Roughly 300 officers working for multiple agencies were involved, including: the FBI; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Homeland Security Investigations; U.S. Marshals Service; Houston Police Department; Texas Department of Public Safety; Texas Department of Criminal Justice/Office of Inspector General; police departments in Sugar Land, Missouri City, Pasadena and Pearland; the Texas Anti-Gang Center; Texas Highway Patrol; Harris and Fort Bend counties district attorney’s; Brazoria, Walker, Madison, Harris and Fort Bend sheriff’s offices.
Several law enforcement agencies in Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky were also involved.
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