Drug bust targets Spokane 'rat's nest'
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SPOKANE — The resident manager of an apartment complex that police called "a rat's nest of illegal activity" and another man have been charged with conspiring to distribute crack cocaine, sometimes from vacant units.
The two men charged Wednesday were among 23 people detained Tuesday night in what police say is the biggest drug bust in the city's history. It was an investigation involving city police, county sheriff's deputies and federal agents.
Arrest warrants were issued charging four other men with federal drug-conspiracy counts.
"This was a big operation," said Assistant Police Chief Jim Nicks. "In essence, we took over an entire apartment complex. It was just a rat's nest of illegal activity."
Police seized an undisclosed quantity of drugs and at least one weapon at the Casa Grande Apartments. Among those arrested was apartment manager Robert Butler, 44, who appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno on a federal charge of conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base, the substance used to make crack cocaine.
An FBI affidavit in support of an arrest warrant alleges that Butler gave drug dealers access to empty apartments to make sales.
Also appearing before the federal magistrate was Reginald Anderson Jr., 23. He, too, was charged with conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base.
Imbrogno ordered the two men held pending a bail hearing tomorrow. If convicted, they would face mandatory sentences of 10 years to life without parole and up to $4 million in fines.
The raid concluded four months of surveillance and dozens of undercover narcotics purchases at the apartment complex in Browne's Addition, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, police said.
Neighbors had complained for months about drug sales and prostitutes near the apartment buildings. Browne's Addition, just east of downtown, is a mixed-income neighborhood of large family homes, mansions built by the city's founders and apartment houses.