Drug trafficking is the most widespread and lucrative organized crime operation in the United States, accounting for nearly 40 percent of this country's organized crime activity and generating an annual income estimated to be as high as $110 billion. Large trafficking organizations dominate the illicit drug market. These groups include the "families" of America's La Cosa Nostra, as well as an array of more recently identified crime groups such as the Sicilian "Mafia," outlaw motorcycle gangs and groups based in the Nigerian and Colombian communities. While La Cosa Nostra has historically been involved in narcotics trafficking, newer organizations, in many ways quite different from La Cosa Nostra, now play a major role in the drug trade. Generally, these newer groups develop solely around drug trafficking operations and are activity-specific, dependent only on drug-related criminal activity for income. They tend to be more fluidly organized than La Cosa Nostra, and are not as self-contained but are marked by a degree of violence and corruption unsurpassed by any other criminal activity.
Organized crime groups involved in drug trafficking, however, share a central feature with other organized crime groups in that they consist of a core criminal group and a specialized criminal support designed to facilitate illicit activity. This "core/support" configuration is one this Commission has found to be common to all organized crime groups today.
Cocaine is ordinarily smuggled from South America to the United States for major trafficking organizations by American citizens acting as mercenary pilots. Recruits include ex-military, commercial and private pilots, and in some cases, unlicensed aviators. The speed, mobility and evasive capabilities of air transport have made it the preferred node of shipment among Colombian traffickers, and many have built airstrips either near their processing centers or along the coastlines to permit the fast direct export of cocaine. On Colombia's north coast alone, over 150 clandestine landing strips and three international airports facilitate smuggling activities.
Individual pilots are generally responsible for purchasing or leasing transportation vehicles and hiring flight crews. Obtaining a plane for purchase seldom presents any difficulty, since many aircraft are regularly advertised for sale in a number of trade periodicals. One popular journal, Trade-a-Plane, is published three times each month and advertises thousands of aircraft available for sale in each issue. Planes are also available for purchase at numerous government auctions of seized properties. These events often allow traffickers to repurchase aircraft, which they were previously forced to forfeit.
Because traffickers attempt to ship the largest possible quantities of cocaine to the widest range of destinations in the United States, the aircraft selected for smuggling generally represent the optimum balance between range and cargo capacity. The most popular of these are conventional light twin engine planes, such as the Piper Aztec, Piper Navajo and the Cessna 400 series. Most such planes can transport about a ton of cocaine over a range of about 1,800 miles and can stay airborne for 11 and one hours with standard fuel systems. Larger airplanes such as DC-3 aircraft are common on shuttle flights between the United States and various transshipment points; the fastest aircraft are always preferred when available.
There aren't any blacks in LaCostra Nostra. And there aren't that many blacks who own big ass cargo planes. But keep on pretending that those drugs just magically show up in black communities by magic.