Chicago’s gangs have made it easy to form relationships with Mexican drug cartels and traffic drugs here in Chicago. The Latin Kings have about 18,000 thousand members in Chicago alone (Knox, 2000). The shared ethnicity makes it much easier for the drug cartels to recruit local members. The gang that is mostly involved with Mexican drug cartels is The Latin Kings having a relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel and El Chapo Guzman (Corcoran, 2011). The Sinaloa Cartel uses the gang as a mean to sell their drugs on the streets in Chicago. The Sinaloa Cartel’s drug supply chain goes like this: drugs arrive from Colombia and drugs are delivered to the US either by speedboat, fishing vessels, cargo planes, container ships and tractor trailers, and even submarines. When the drugs reach LA they are then shipped to Chicago and put into warehouses in Chicago and Bedford (Kennis & McGahan, 2012). The problem with Chicago’s gangs being made up of Mexican nationals has made it easier for the drug cartels to form relationships with Chicago’s Mexican community because of their racial similarities. Their race plays a big role in the recruitment of more cartel members. Forming relationships with the drug cartels means that there will be drugs being brought over from Mexico into Chicago. Along with those drugs will come violence because the selling of the drugs and against the people who are selling them. Other problems that will come along with the drugs are revenge because other cartels will try to target the sellers here in Chicago to get back at the Sinaloa cartel.
1. The Sinaloa cartel buys cocaine from producers in the Andean highlands.
Price: $2,200
2. Cocaine moves to harbors in Colombia.
Price: $5,000 to $7,000
3. From Colombia, cocaine moves through various parts of Mexico, often along the Sinaloa-controlled Pacific coast or in cities along Mexico’s Caribbean coastline.
Price: $16,000
4. Next, it’s smuggled across the U.S. border, usually at crossings along Southern California or Texas.
Price: $24,000
5. Cocaine arrives in Chicago. Some stays there.
Price: $35,000
6. The rest moves on to other U.S. cities—including Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and those on the East Coast—and beyond into Canada.
Price: Varies by market
( McGahan, 2013).