A modern-day Ma Barker was arraigned alongside her two sons yesterday for running what cops called a massive drug ring out of her apartment in a Charlestown housing project that was guarded by a vicious pit bull and protected with a machine gun recovered in the house, police and prosecutors said.
Before bursting into the home of Elizabeth Awbrey, 40, in Mishawum Park on Tuesday night, Boston narcotics cops walked past a sign that read: “DANGER: Many Illegal Activities in Progress. Enter At Your Own Risk.” And they were nearly attacked by the family’s pit bull.
Among the illicit activities Awbrey, along with her boys, Stephen, 22, and Brent, 18, were allegedly engaged in were selling prescription drugs and growing sprawling marijuana plants - which were helped along by reflective paneling on the walls, heat ventilating machines, fluorescent lighting and specialty plant food - in the apartment.
Elizabeth Awbrey, 40, and her two sons, Brent, 18 (left) and Stephen, 22, were charged with dealing driugs.
Police also recovered a machine gun and a pistol, along with a double-edged knife, and a wad of cash.
“This was a very significant drug pinch that demonstrates the hard work of the neighborhood drug control units,” said Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll.
The Awbreys were arraigned on drug and weapons charges at Charlestown District Court. The mother and her two sons were each held on $20,000 cash bail, said Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley.
The pit bull was removed by the city’s animal control unit - only after it lunged at the officers as they tried to enter the house armed with a search warrant, Driscoll said.
This was not the first apparently dysfunctional family to profit from the drug trade in the housing development.
Two years ago, a father and son drug-dealing duo were busted on the same block for selling Oxycontin out of their Dunstable Street home. Alton Hanscom, 42, and Mark Hanscom, 19, were arrested after officers found $70,000 worth of the illegal narcotics in the home, in plain view of the elder Hanscom’s 6-year-old daughter.
Alton Hanscom later pleaded guilty to drug charges and his son was set free.
Charlestown housing projects have long been plagued by drugs and violence. The nearby Bunker Hill housing development is the most dangerous BPD reporting area in the city, according to police statistics.
Right now, burglaries, assaults, and robberies - crimes linked to drug use - are on the rise in Charlestown’s Area A-15, according to BPD statistics from Jan. 1 to July 1.
There were 60 burglaries during the first six months of 2007, up from 40 during the same period last year. Another 42 people were robbed, a number that nearly doubled from the 24 victims reported in 2006. And 40 people were assaulted, up from 32.
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This sign greeted officers outside a Charlestown home where, police say, a family ran a drug operation. (Staff photo by Stuart Cahill)
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