Twelve arrests have been made, more than 40 guns seized and a large quantity of illegal drugs were confiscated in a major bust, federal agents and D.C. police announced on Tuesday.
A partially unsealed criminal indictment accuses the 12 suspects of being members of a drug trafficking gang called the Kennedy Street Crew or “KDY.” The indictment claims the group operated open-air drug markets between the 100 and 1200 blocks of Kennedy Street Northwest.
“The seized drugs would have generated several [hundreds of thousands of] dollars if they were sold on our streets,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves.
Fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana were seized by the task force, which was made up of D.C. police, FBI, DEA and IRS agents.
“If an IRS criminal investigator is part of this case, you really tripped up because they’re not really looking at nickel-and-dime investigations,” said Interim D.C. Police Chief Ashan Benedict. “They’re here because the Kennedy Street Crew is not some corner crew. This is an organized criminal organization, and it took a sophisticated investigative effort to bring them down.”
The 12 men arrested range in age from 21 to 30, and are facing various charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, possession of firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Several other people are being sought in the case.
Here’s a list of the men arrested and charged in the drug bust:
- Kenneth Olugbenga, 27
- Khali Brown, 22
- Miasiah Brown, 21
- Tristan Ware, 23
- Herman Signou, 23
- Cameron Reid, 26
- Aaron Mercer, 27
- David Penn, 30
- Ronald Dorsey, 29
- Antonio Bailey, 22
- Anthony Bailey, 27
- Angel Enrique Suncar, 29
All but one of the men being charged are from the District. Reid is from Falmouth, Virginia.
“Forty-two firearms were recovered in this investigation. That’s a lot of guns,” Benedict said. “A lot of those guns were modified to shoot automatically, so machine guns.”
The crew has been operating in a part of Northwest where there have been 19 shootings and seven murders since 2021, police said.
“We all know how dangerous fentanyl is in its pill form,” Graves said. “It is estimated that three out of every five doses contain a lethal dose of the drug.”
