Task force targets armed drug dealers in Clark County

A police photo from a recent raid shows several guns including a scoped AK-47 assault-style rifle, plus methamphetamine, marijuana, false IDs and MSM, which is added to meth to increase its volume and weight. (Career Criminal Apprehension Team)

Violent drug crimes remain on the rise in Vancouver, police say, dating back to a triple homicide in December, in a house where methamphetamine was found.

As a result, detectives with the Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force have spent the past month teamed up with federal agents and the interagency Career Criminal Apprehension Team.

“We’ve seen a higher rate of violent drug dealers,” said Lt. Andy Hamlin, a C-CAT supervisor. “We believe our triple homicide last December was drug-related.”

Rather than targeting the general public, such continuing violence, he said, is “more focused on other drug dealers.”

A month of targeting armed drug dealers has paid off with a dozen arrests — and seizure of 15 guns including a scope-sighted AK-47 assault-style rifle with a large ammunition clip, police said in a bulletin Monday.

Also seized: 1.3 pounds of methamphetamine, 2.2 pounds of marijuana, $106,000 in cash and some vehicles.

Police didn’t name the 12 who were arrested. Hamlin said none of them was a major ringleader, and that some of them were Mexican citizens in the U.S. illegally.

Working with local officers in the month-long crackdown were deputy U.S. marshals and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

C-CAT includes officers with the Vancouver Police Department, Clark County Sheriff’s Office, state Department of Corrections and the federal officials.

As recently as Sept. 30, police reported that two men attacked a man outside his home in the East Minnehaha neighborhood. He fought them off, causing them to flee, and suffered a forehead gash that required sutures.

Police didn’t report catching the assailants, but said the attackers likely wanted to steal the man’s marijuana and OxyContin painkillers.

In the triple homicide, which surfaced about 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 20, officers and paramedics rushed to a suspected drug house in the 9600 block of Northeast 21st Street, in the Burton Ridge neighborhood south of Burton Road. They found four men had been shot.

Killed were Luis Infante-Ramirez, 25, Cesar Nunez-Ortiz, 20, and a third man police haven’t identified. A fourth unidentified man was expected to survive, police said.

A fifth man who was found hiding in the house, Nataneal M. Nunez-Ortiz, 21, was arrested for alleged meth dealing.

Police said they were looking for 27-year-old Benjamin Vasquez-Salamanca. An arrest warrant charging him with murder was issued the day after the shootings. Police have not reported arresting Vazquez-Salamanca.

John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.