February 26, 2008|By Matthew Dolan | Matthew Dolan,Sun reporter
Breaking open a coded world where the police are "roscoes," a gun is "platinum" and a robbery victim is a "birthday boy," federal prosecutors announced yesterday a racketeering indictment charging 23 men and five women with participating in a Baltimore-based gang responsible for dealing drugs, beating up rivals, intimidating witnesses and killing five people.
Among those charged are one of the producers of the infamous Stop Snitching DVD and an admitted Bloods gang member who gave an extensive interview to The Sun last year about his illicit activities. The 49-page indictment reads like a primer on Baltimore gang life, starting with a glossary of terms used on the city's streets and inside its prisons where the gang's criminal exploits allegedly flourished from 2005 until this year.
Yesterday's target - a Baltimore offshoot of the Bloods' Tree Top Piru gang - was not necessarily among the city's largest or most profitable drug organizations, state prosecutors said. But the viciousness of its members, who gained entry only by committing a violent crime first, appalled experienced investigators and prompted a wide-ranging probe from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore and combined efforts of local and federal law enforcement agencies.
"There is not an area of our state that is exempt" from gang infiltration, said Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, describing TTP Bloods as the city's largest gang.
Although those indicted represented what federal and state officials said were the top echelon of the gang, officials could not provide a member estimate of the Baltimore-based gang.
U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, whose office is overseeing the federal prosecution, said the gang born inside a Maryland state prison once considered time behind bars a "temporary inconvenience," if not a rite of passage. Yesterday's indictment could bring much harsher punishment, including possible sentences of life without parole for 21 of the 28 defendants.
The potential penalties should be a warning to all gang members, Rosenstein said, that this joint law enforcement approach should have a significant impact on organized crime throughout Maryland. "We're not resting on our laurels," he added.
The detailed indictment that relies heavily on recorded surveillance once again shed light on a chronic security problem inside the state's prisons: cellular phones. Mobile phones are prohibited inside prisons because inmates can use them to coordinate criminal activities inside and outside prisons. Legislators and watchdogs have bemoaned the steady flow of such contraband into some prisons because it suggests possible corruption by prison supervisors.
Yesterday's indictment marks the second major case this month in which federal officials have alleged that criminal enterprises were being run from a prison cell. Federal prosecutors say Patrick Albert Byers Jr. used a cell phone while in jail to set up the murder of a witness, Carl Stanley Lackl, in Baltimore County in July.
According to court papers unsealed yesterday, the gang members charged are linked directly to the Bloods street gang, which originated in Los Angeles in the early 1970s.
Specifically, the Baltimore gang is based on a subset known as Tree Top Piru, based on a group of streets in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Now called TTP, they first became known as Trey 8 and later the Insane Red Devils inside a Maryland prison. The gang started in Washington County Detention Center in Hagerstown about nine years ago, according to federal prosecutors.
Over time, a group of female gang members formed a unit of TTP known as the Tree Top Pirettes. Five defendants in the indictment are women.
At the top of the gang, authorities said, was Steve "Kanibal Lecktor" Willock. From his prison cell, he enforced the rules, including a violent initiation process in which prospective members went on "missions" to rob, assault and carjack victims, the indictment says. The initiation process also involved being "jumped in" through a beating by other gang members. TTP members were required to commit acts of violence to maintain membership and advance through the ranks, according to prosecutors.
Specifically, the indictment alleges that TTP Bloods had a role in five murders, including three in Baltimore: the Sept. 21, 2005, stabbing death of Terrance J. Williams, 28; the Nov. 17, 2006, shooting death of Lamont Jackson; the Dec. 17, 2006, shooting death of Marquel Smith; the June 23, 2007, death of Jewels Cook, 36; and the Oct. 5, 2007, death of David Leonard Moore.
Federal prosecutors could not provide complete information about the killings.
