A video of a group of young gang affiliated men flashing guns and drugs and discussing their participation in a dog fighting operation lead to a raid, after one of the individuals involved posted it to the internet from a residence outside of Chicago, recently.

Detectives from the police department in Harvey, Illinois were able to obtain a search warrant for the home on the 100 block of West 158 street, when they determined that illegal activity had been taking place, after viewing the 40-minute recording on Youtube. They'd moved in on the location, where the person responsible for producing the video lived and was on house arrest at the time of the bust, at around 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 29.

At least 20 of those accounted for in the video were said to have been recognized by police and identified as gang members from communities throughout Cook County. It is not clear whether someone immediately tipped them off about the convergence or if law enforcement's timely tracking of the footage was the result of an ongoing investigation. But once they were on to the recording they were also able to recognize a reputed drug dealer present among the men, and at one point, police say that the suspicions brought about by the boasting of drug selling actually materialized into a sale that was caught on camera.

“There are several people in the 40-minute video with guns and drugs,” a Harvey Police Department spokesperson told a local news source after the bust. “The group even sold marijuana to an individual while the video was being recorded. The group boasted of dog fighting and admitted that there was a deceased dog in the garage. The dog died during a fight with another dog.”

Several guns were confiscated from the scene, as was "a significant amount of a white substance, believed to be cocaine," police say. The dead dog was carted off, and two dogs that were found alive but in poor condition were taken as well. The video has since been removed from the internet.

Charges in the case are pending.

Source: boxden.com