Hoping to end what a police official called a "cell of violence" in Southeast Baltimore, officers raided 21 houses in O'Donnell Heights yesterday and arrested 21 people.
Police also seized suspected crack cocaine, weapons and more than $1,300.
Dubbed "Operation O'Donnell Heights," the raids capped a three-month investigation that targeted violence and drug trafficking in a four-square-block area of the public housing complex.
"This was an open air [drug] market," said Lt. Steven Ossmus of the Southeastern District, one of the raid's coordinators. "The drive-by shootings were proof of the pudding."
Last year, there were at least 14 shootings in O'Donnell Heights, 10 of them determined by police to have been drug-related. Seven shootings occurred in November alone, police said.
Yesterday's raids began shortly before 5 p.m. when about 180 officers with arrest and search-and-seizure warrants hit 21 houses that police said either were known for illegal drug activity or where felons were thought to reside.
As scores of people watched, those arrested were led to police vehicles in handcuffs.
Major John Gavrilis, commander of the Southeastern, said two or three major drug rings operated out of the O'Donnell Heights housing complex and that the lead players in each operation was apprehended yesterday.
"We were very happy with how things went," Major Gavrilis said, adding that the area will now be flooded indefinitely with officers to try to stabilize it.
The raids were the latest in a series in drug- and crime-ridden sections of the city that Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier started soon after he took over the department a year ago. They are aimed at ending open-air drug markets and the violence they cause.
The O'Donnell Heights public housing community is an area of two-story, barracks-like dwellings on the southeastern edge of the city. In addition to making the arrests there yesterday, police seized nine weapons, $1,386 in cash, 50 glassine bags of suspected crack cocaine at one raided location and 119 at another.
One of the people who were arrested had 110 vials of suspected cocaine, police said.
During the raids, police said, officers shot and killed two dogs -- a pit bull and a Rottweiler -- that threatened them at separate locations. One officer received a dog bite but did not require medical attention.