Operation Turf War nets 32 arrests, sets strong tone for seasonal sprint
On June 2, the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office’s Eastern Panhandle Drug and Violent Crime Task Force—in close coordination with West Virginia’s Homeland Security Task Force—launched a large-scale takedown across two states to dismantle a drug trafficking organization.
The effort, dubbed Operation Turf War, resulted in 32 narcotics- and weapons-related arrests in West Virginia and Maryland.
“Operation Turf War was this FBI answering the call of a community that needed it the most,” said FBI Director Kash Patel of the effort. “This was a massively successful operation right in West Virginia with nearly three dozen individuals arrested using sophisticated techniques, confidential informants, and precise collaboration across the entire FBI enterprise with our partners. This is exactly what partnerships are supposed to look like.”
“Operation Turf War was this FBI answering the call of a community that needed it the most.”
Operation Turf War also kicked off the second annual iteration of Operation Summer Heat, a full-court press to root out violent crime from American streets.
“For the next 95 days, the entire country will see this FBI replicating these exact efforts across America with Operation Summer Heat—an extension of our work last year led by then Deputy Director Dan Bongino to crush violent crime,” Patel said. “We’re just getting started.”
FBI Pittsburgh SWAT team members prepare for an arrest in Maryland during Operation Turf War on June 2, 2026.
Partnering to protect our communities
Partnerships—both within the FBI and with law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local level—powered Operation Turf War.
The investigation behind Operation Turf War began in August 2025, and began with the efforts of an FBI Pittsburgh task force officer from the Martinsburg Police Department.
The case then progressed in January 2026, when the Eastern Panhandle Drug and Violent Crime Task Force and law enforcement partners executed six search warrants in a single day.
Over the course of the investigation, the FBI and our partners successfully seized approximately 13 kilograms of cocaine, about 110 pounds of marijuana, about two ounces of psychedelic mushrooms, and between 5 and 10 grams of fentanyl.
They also seized more than 20 firearms, various magazines and ammunition, 29 cellular devices, and approximately $273,035 in cash.
All told, seven SWAT teams from the FBI’s Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Washington field offices; over 100 personnel from FBI Pittsburgh—including special agents, intelligence analysts, tactical specialists, and professional staff employees—and the Bureau’s Criminal Division, Laboratory Division, Operational Technology Division, and Information Management Division supported the operation.
Our federal, state, and local agency partners—who served as critical force-multipliers in this effort—included:
- Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- U.S. Marshals Service
- U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia
- U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland
- West Virginia Air National Guard
- Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office
- Maryland State Police
- West Virginia State Police
- Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) task force
- Jefferson County Prosecutor’s Office
- Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office
- Montgomery County Police Department
- Prince George’s County Police Department
- Martinsburg Police Department
- Ranson Police Department
Setting Forensic Precedent
Operation Turf War also marked the first-ever large-scale operational deployment of the FBI Laboratory Division’s Rapid DNA system to the FBI Pittsburgh area of responsibility, and the third such deployment in Bureau history.
Rapid DNA analysis empowers the Bureau to use a mouth swab from an arrestee to develop a DNA profile—without help from a DNA lab or human intervention or review—within two hours.
The FBI can then use that profile to search that arrestee against all unsolved crimes in our Combined DNA Index System within a day’s time.
“Today we’re also announcing, for the first time ever in large format, the DNA tools that are just outside this room,” Director Patel said of the system, which the FBI Laboratory deployed to the Martinsburg Police Department in support of Operation Turf War. “And what that means is we have a program now for state and local jurisdictions where we can immediately arrest an individual, have their DNA collected and swabbed, run it against all of our databases and intelligence systems, and immediately populate derogatory information, outstanding search warrants for co-conspirators and other perpetrators around the country.
That is moving at the speed in which we need to move to combat violent crime in this country.”
