Ricky Ross (drug trafficker)

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Ricky Donell "Freeway" Ross is a convicted crack cocaine dealer, noted for his influence in the drug's growth in use in the inner cities of the United States of America in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in Los Angeles.

1 Involvement in the Drug Trade
2 In popular culture
3 External links

[edit] Involvement in the Drug Trade

[edit] Beginning

A teacher at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, who dealt drugs on the side, introduced Ross to cocaine, a drug that was becoming more popular with the upscale party crowd but not popular among inner city residents. Through the cocaine-using auto upholstery teacher, he met a Nicaraguan named Henry Corrales, who began selling Ross and his best friend, Ollie Big Loc Newell, small amounts of this new drug. In addition to creating the cheaper, and more desired variant of cocaine, crack cocaine, Ross and Newell were plugged into the LA gang scene. Thus, they were able to quickly distribute the product in South Los Angeles. Eventually Corrales introduced Ross to Danilo Blandon a major supplier from Nicaragua. From that relationship, Ross went from a small time pusher (he claimed later in an interview that he initially began dealing to pay for tennis lessons) to one of the most profitable street dealers in American history.

[edit] Growth & Downfall

Blandon eventually would provide Ross with hundreds of kilos of cocaine on consignment and during his height, it was not uncommon to move $2 million or $3 million worth of crack in one day. Ross undercut other dealers and built a flourishing drug empire that spread all over the western part of the United States across to the Midwest.

Steve Polak, former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detective, who was part of the Freeway Rick Task Force, which was set up in 1987 to put Ross out of business stated, "[with] his poison, there's no telling how many tens of thousands of people he touched. He's responsible for a major cancer that still hasn't stopped spreading."

Ross and Blandon avoided arrest for years. But in the late 1980s, the operation lost its Contra connection. Both dealers were soon arrested on drug charges. Freeway Rick started serving a ten-year sentence, while the Justice Department intervened to free the Nicaraguan Contra-connected Blandon and sent him home as a well paid Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant.

In an interview in 1994, Ross said that he was making as much as $1 to $2 million by selling as many as half a million crack rocks on any given day. With thousands of employees, Ross operated drug sales not only in Los Angeles but in St. Louis, New Orleans, Texas, Kansas City, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Seattle.

[edit] Nicaraguan Contra Connection with Cocaine Trafficking

For more, see the article on the Iran-Contra affair.

Many speculate that Ross was the link between the CIA and Nicaraguan rebels trying to over throw the Nicaraguan government during the Iran-Contra affair. The theory is that Ross was buying cocaine from Nicaraguan [drug traffickers] who were in turn funneling money back to the CIA supported rebels in Nicaragua. Gary Webb interviewed Ross several times before breaking the story in 1996 to the San Jose Mercury News. Webb was eventually criticized for the allegations he made in the story, but many had been aware of a such plot before the story, including Congresswoman Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, who vowed to get to the bottom of this scandal.

Other credible sources have made similar allegations about Contra involvement in cocaine trafficking into the United States such as the December 1985 Associated Press story that exposed the contra alliance with cocaine smugglers. "Nicaraguan rebels operating in northern Costa Rica have engaged in cocaine trafficking," wrote AP reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger, "in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua's leftist government, according to U.S. investigators and American volunteers who work with the rebels." As evidence, the reporters cited a CIA intelligence report noting the contras in Nicaragua had bought aircraft with drug profits."

After lengthy investigations, a U.S. Senate subcommittee chaired by John Kerry, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, issued a report in 1988 concluding that "individuals associated with the contra movement" were traffickers; cocaine smugglers had participated in "contra supply operations; and the U.S. State Department had made "payments to drug traffickers . . . for humanitarian assistance to the contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted . . . on drug charges."

[edit] In popular culture

It is speculated that the character Big Smoke from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is based on Ross. In the game, Big Smoke would send drug trafficking vans and bikes around the main highways of the game. These couriers would travel in between the game's two cities and ship drugs and money to and from Big Smoke to a buyer in the neighboring city.
Miami rapper Rick Ross adapted his moniker from the real Rick Ross.
Philadelphia rapper Freeway's stage name is derived from the real "Freeway", Ricky Ross.