Member Of Boston’s Columbia Point Dawgs Gang Sentenced For Trafficking Cocaine
BOSTON - Michael J. Ferguson Special Agent-in-Charge of the DEA’s New England Division, Acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb; Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley; Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division; Mickey D. Leadingham, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Boston Field Division; John Gibbons, U.S. Marshal for the District of Massachusetts; Colonel Richard D. McKeon, Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police; Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins; Boston Police Commissioner William Evans; and Commissioner Thomas Turco of the Massachusetts Department of Correction, announced today that a Roxbury man was sentenced in federal court in Boston for distributing cocaine.
Israel Delacruz, 39, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Senior Judge Rya W. Zobel to two years in prison and three years of supervised release. In April 2017, Delacruz pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Delacruz was supplied cocaine by Ileana Valdez and Elvin Soto. He, in turn, distributed it throughout Boston.
Delacruz is the 45th of 48 defendants tied to the Columbia Point (CPD), indicted in June 2015 on drug trafficking and firearm charges, to plead guilty. Valdez previously pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
According to documents filed in court, the CPD, also known on the street as “the Point,” was Boston’s largest and most influential city-wide gang. The criminal organization started in the 1980s in the former Columbia Point Housing (now Harbor Point) and, over the years, gang members established drug trafficking crews throughout Boston. It is alleged that the CPD was responsible for the distribution of multiple kilo quantities of heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, and oxycodone throughout Boston and Maine.
