Eight people were arrested on drug warrants this morning as undercover SAPD officers, along with DPS Troopers and officers from VIA Metro Transit Police raided a building at Houston and Frio, just north of the downtown campus of UTSA, where a 'drug warehouse' was being operated, Police Chief Bill McManus said.
"It was not individualized dealing and buying out of here, it was organized," he said. "That is why this operation got amped up as it did, and all these organizations got involved."
McManus says a total of 32 people are named in drug warrants stemming from a two month investigation. In today's raid, another eight people who were found in the building were arrested on weapons charges, one is wanted on a warrant for sexual assault of a child.
"What we found was that this was an organized crime operation," McManus said. "The charges will include possession and delivery of cocaine, meth, marijuanja, and a lot of synthetic marijuana."
McManus said the operation was part of an effort to clean ongoing drug operations out the area just west of downtown.
"This is part of an effort to clean up this Cattlemen's Square area, which has been plagued with this kind of activity for a long, long time."
McManus said warrants are out for the other people named in drug indictments. He says undercover officers and Transit Police officers set up cameras around the building to record people going into and out of the building to build cases against them.
The new President of UTSA, Taylor Eighmy, has expressed a plan to vastly expand the downtown UTSA campus, which is located two blocks from today's raid, and adding dorms and additional classroom buildings to the campus.