When Angel Herrera, boss of the notorious Mexican drug cartel known as the Durango Connection, is arrested and charged with possessing twelve kilograms of heroin, he turns to attorney Matt Gavin for help. The astute trial attorney agrees to represent the drug trafficker even though he knows that the 'War on Drugs' has caused DEA agents, prosecutors and judges to become maniacal enforcers of the nation's drug laws. Anyone who opposes them, drug traffickers or their lawyers who try to defend their constitutional rights, will suffer the revenge of the new law enforcement system. As the Angel Herrera case evolves from arrest through trial, the reader is given a rare insight into one of the most successful smuggling organizations in history. And through attorney Gavin's legal representation of the Bad Guys, the reader is provided with an accurate depiction of this country's drug cops, prosecutors, and judges-those who enforce drug laws with the motto: YOU HAVE TO GET AS LOW AND AS CROOKED AS A DRUG TRAFFICKER TO CATCH ONE. when this book is finished, the reader will ask: In the 'War on Drugs', just who are the Good Guys? Who are the Bad Guys? Who won? Who lost?

“His account of relationships between street gangs of this period and Chicago’s Outfit, the legacy of Al Capone and others, is especially important.” —James F. Short, author of Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime In The Insane Chicago Way, John M. Hagedorn’s lively stories of extensive cross-neighborhood gang organization, tales of police/gang corruption, and discovery of covert gang connections to Chicago’s Mafia challenge conventional wisdom and offer lessons for the control of violence today. The book centers on the secret history of Spanish Growth & Development (SGD)—an organization of Latino gangs founded in 1989 and modeled on the Mafia’s nationwide Commission. It also tells a story within a story of the criminal exploits of the C-Note$, the “minor league” team of the Chicago’s Mafia (called the “Outfit”), which influenced the direction of SGD. Hagedorn’s tale is based on three years of interviews with an Outfit soldier as well as access to SGD’s constitution and other secret documents, which he supplements with interviews of key SGD leaders, court records, and newspaper accounts. The result is a stunning, heretofore unknown history of the grand ambitions of Chicago gang leaders that ultimately led to SGD’s shocking collapse in a pool of blood on the steps of a gang-organized peace conference. The Insane Chicago Way is a compelling history of the lives and deaths of Chicago gang leaders. At the same time it is a sociological tour de force that warns of the dangers of organized crime while arguing that today’s relative disorganization of gangs presents opportunities for intervention and reductions in violence. “An intricate tale of violence, mafia influence, and police corruption.” —Chicago Reader

This second Small Wars JournalEl Centro anthology signifies the important debate that this new forum, focusing on the crime wars and criminal insurgencies taking place in Mexico and other regions of the Americas, is helping to generate in U.S. defense and homeland security circles. The debate comes at a time when neither of the two major U.S. presidential candidates were willingly to candidly discuss this issue and at the end of the recent Felipe Caldern administration which saw over 80,000 dead, 20,000 missing, and 200,000 internal refugees stemming from gang and cartel violence during its tenure in Mexico. Dave Dilegge SWJ Editor-in-Chief