Venezuelan gangs take over 4 apt complexes - San Antonio

[pianopraze]

"Only a handful - a handful." ~ media probably 

Not the bee
 

Report: Venezuelan gangs have taken over 4 different apartment complexes, this time in San Antonio

They are expanding South American drug and prostitution rings into major American cities! Once-great cities like San Antonio.
 
Texas authorities raided one San Antonio apartment complex, searching the over 300 units, and ended up making 19 arrests, including 5 confirmed gang members and 15 illegal immigrants.
 
There are at least three more complexes that are operation centers for the Venezuelan gang.

yeah.. this gotta stop.

[FlyingClayDisk]

When I first started seeing these stories I was having trouble wrapping my head around what was meant by "take over".  Like, what does this mean?  My initial reaction was this meant 'take over' and use as a base of operations for crimes (i.e. drugs, etc.), and I think many people understand it this way also.

So I did some research into the Colorado case.  I found out the meaning of 'take over' is completely different.  Sure, they may still run crime operations out of these 'taken over' buildings, but the meaning of "take over" in this context is...they literally 'take over' the building or complex.  And by this, what is meant is they assume actual ownership of the building.  The ownership is not legal of course, but they are literally demanding that the residents pay their rent to the Venezuelan gangs instead of the true building owners.

In the videos circulating recently where gang members are terrorizing residents, what you are witnessing is them going door to door collecting the rent from the tenants (illegally).  When the tenants refuse, the gangs beat it out of them.  The media neglects to tell viewers what they are actually seeing (no surprise there, right?).  In my mind, this is far worse than just running illegal activities out of a location.  These people are literally seizing these buildings and complexes as their own.

In one filed case I read about (the actual case documents), the gangs went to the owners and demanded that the owners of the building pay them 50% of the rent...just for allowing the owners to stay alive.  When the owners refused and went to the authorities instead they severely assaulted the manager of the building, putting him in the hospital, and then just decided to collect 100% of the rent for themselves.  Local authorities essentially said there was nothing they could do about this.  The tenants are living in fear. 

What's worse is, this has apparently been going on in the Denver/Aurora metropolitan area for well over a year.  It's just been kept on the down-low by city officials so it wouldn't get out into the media.  Now the left leaning media has the story, but they're not running the whole story (as usual), so viewers are only seeing part of the story.  All the MSM shows is thugs knocking on doors, but you have no idea why.  Now it makes more sense, and you can see how it's more endemic than the way the media is playing it off as just some random occurrence; it's nothing of the sort.  This isn't something which just cropped up recently; it's been going on a for a while now.  This is like some serious strong-arm extortion going on with these gangs!

I had no idea it was that organized.