Thanks for Sharing

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Nov. 14, 2007

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My father seemed every bit the academic surgeon he was. His patient, professorial airs, strikingly polite and unpretentious, draped over him like the well-tailored suits he usually wore for work and family occasions. One Thanksgiving in the mid-1990s, just after my mother called out that dinner was about ready, Dad announced that he had something he wanted to show us.

“Before we sit down to eat, I’d like everyone to come into the TV room and see a VCR from my very successful doctor’s visit,” Dad said. “It’s very short, but it’s very important, and it’s a very good sign that Grandpa’s in good shape inside,” he explained as his grandchildren, all of them old enough to understand (and very much like) the words “VCR” and “TV,” expectantly gathered around the screen.

I don’t know about the rest of the adults present, but I thought what was to come would be something quite clinical and inscrutable, like blood cells moving around with running commentary by Dad, partly in Latin. That’s the type of thing that usually happened when he waxed about medical topics.

When I heard the word “colonoscopy,” my jaw dropped. It was too late to stop what was already happening. Nearly a dozen brains tried to process the hazy pink, gray, and brown images a tiny lens and light had recorded earlier that week, while traveling up Dad’s bum. “See how pink it is?” he cooed. “Now that’s a healthy-looking colon.”

Everyone watched, paralyzed and silent, as Dad explained that the camera was now bumping up against an interior sphincter muscle, now passing through it, and now, after traveling as far up as it could go, backtracking. Thwoop, back through a muscle ring, back, back, more pinkish tissue until . . . thwoop, back through another muscle ring . . . and there it was. A picture of my father’s anus, flashed up on the TV screen. It was up there for a second or two, a still image at the end of the tape.

As soon as it was over, I told Dad in no uncertain terms that he’d just done something that I was going to tell people about over and over again for years, and he just chuckled. “I’m proud of it,” he explained, “and I wanted to share it.”

Somehow, Thanksgiving dinner went on as normal. As far as I can tell, all the grandchildren have grown up to be quite normal, too. Perhaps it is I–the one who’s committing this story to print in a newspaper–who still has issues to work out over what happened. I think not. I think, just like Dad, I simply like to share.

Randolph Edison: With hard time already under his belt, “Uncle Rudy” accused as violent BGF leader

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, May 5, 2009

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With the slow gait of the aged, 51-year-old Randolph “Uncle Rudy” Edison shuffles into a federal courtroom in Baltimore on April 22 to face charges that he helped commit violent crimes for the Black Guerilla Family prison gang in Maryland. The wear and tear of a lengthy prison stint he served in the 1990s and early 2000s (with an extra year tacked on in 2000 for assaulting a Department of Corrections employee), appears to have taken its toll on him.

In 2007, Edison was out of jail and back on the streets, and he racked up new charges–loitering, drug possession (including a state case brought in January)–that show him residing in Dundalk, where he’d been living before his 1993 murder sentence was imposed. Edison’s world-weary air in the courtroom reveals little, if any, worry about the future – except, perhaps, when it comes to getting his twice-a-day insulin shots for diabetes, something for his high blood pressure, and a doctor to take a look at the abscess on his hand.

Nonetheless, the feds have evidence portraying Edison as a plugged-in leader of the BGF, working energetically on the outside for imprisoned BGF ringleader Eric Brown.

On March 13, BGF court documents show, Edison and two other BGF co-defendants-52-year-old Zachary Norman and 59-year-old Roosevelt Drummond-were in a car that was pulled over by police in Baltimore City. Drummond had a gun and was arrested; also taken from the car were handcuffs, rubber gloves, and a mask.

Hours later, Brown used a cell phone to call Edison, initiating a conversation that was intercepted by investigators. “We just had some bad luck man,” Edison told Brown, according to court documents. “We was in the car, yeah and they pulled us over, right. You know we gonna do something, but the coon that was setting the whole degree up, he’s the rat. He set all us up.” Edison explained that Drummond had a gun, adding, “Just lucky I ain’t carry that thing,” to which Brown responded, “that’s the last thing you need boy.”

Investigators concluded from this conversation that Edison was reporting to Brown what happened with the police while he and his co-defendants were “en route to commit a drug-related armed robbery,” according to court documents.

Edison had no lawyer for his first appearance in court, but two days later, on April 24, Richard Bittner is appointed to him. After asking around the courtroom for Edison’s sister, who’s not there, and meeting briefly with an older gentleman who says he’s Edison’s friend, Bittner decides not to fight the prosecutor’s request that Edison remain in jail until after the trial. U.S. District Court magistrate judge Beth Gesner orders Edison detained, reminding him that if he chooses, he can later request a hearing over whether or not he can be conditionally released.

Rainbow Lee Williams: Murder Convict Who Mentors Schoolchildren Called a BGF Shot-Caller

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, May 1, 2009

When defense attorney Gerald Ruter was first appointed on Apr. 16 to represent Rainbow Lee Williams, a 30-year-old co-defendant in the Black Guerilla Family prison-gang federal-conspiracy case, Ruter sounded like he thought there was more to Williams than met the government’s eye.

“I have him working for a nonprofit, helping kids,” Ruter told assistant U.S. attorney James Wallner, just before Williams’ first court appearance began.

“That may be,” Wallner responds, “but he’s still indicted as a leader of the BGF.”

Five days later, Ruter said he had the verified facts about Williams’ employment, and presented them to U.S. District Court magistrate judge Beth Gesner while arguing for Williams’ conditional release pending trial. Williams, he explained, works for the nonprofit Partners in Progress Resource Center. Since shortly after his release from prison last September, when his murder sentence ended, Ruter said, Williams had been working for Partners in Progress four days a week, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., for $1,200 per month. Partners in Progress, he explained, serves a high school called the Achievement Academy at Harbor City High School, located on Harford Road.

Ruter said he got all of these facts confirmed by Partners in Progress’ director, Bridget Alston-Smith, who, he said, is “aware of Williams’ criminal history, and she says he works on the campus itself as a mentor to individuals who have behavioral difficulties and is hands-on with all of the students.”

City Paper‘s attempts to reach Alston-Smith at the phone number Ruter gave in open court were unsuccessful. According to Baltimore City Public Schools’ guide to high schools, the Achievement Academy at Harbor City is “an alternative school designed to provide under-credited students with an accelerated program of study,” has an enrollment of 383 students in 9th through 12th grade, and Partners in Progress is listed among the schools partnerships.

The Black Book, a locally published self-improvement guide for those involved in the BGF movement, features a back-cover blurb written by Alston-Smith, in which she states that men in the movement “lead well because they listen well. As they continue on the path of self-improvement they will help improve the conditions of our families and communities.”

“I find it ironic that Mr. Williams is a mentor for disaffected youth,” Wallner told judge Gesner. Wallner’s prosecutorial assessment is based on what federal investigators found out about Williams in the course of their wire-tap probe into the BGF, which provided enough evidence to support a raid of Williams residence, as well as the grand jury’s charges against him. Wallner also told the judge that Williams was in possession of ammunition for a .357 caliber firearm when he was arrested.

Williams is “one of the leaders of BGF,” court documents state, and “is a lieutenant who handles the day-to-day drug distribution network and is also involved in the smuggling of contraband into correctional facilities.” A confidential source described Williams as “an extremely violent BGF member” who “has committed multiple murders, including numerous assaults/stabbings while in prison,” and he’s “loyal to, and takes orders from, [imprisoned BGF leader Eric] Brown.”

The court documents also recount intercepted phone conversations with other alleged BGF members, in which crimes-from hits to smuggling to drug-dealing-are discussed. In one, co-defendant Marlow Bates calls Brown in March, and the two discuss how Williams failed in his attempt to transfer tennis shoes, which allegedly contained contraband, to Brown while visiting him in prison. Williams kept the shoelaces untied, to facilitate the transfer, but they were so lose that “you could see that shoe lace, like hanging. That just look like a dead give-away,” Brown explained, and as a result a guard “knocked off” the shoe transfer. “Rainbow fucked that up,” he says.

In early April, phone calls between Williams and prison inmates were intercepted, in which prison violence and the rules of BGF conduct were discussed. In one, Williams calls inmate Lance Walker to talk about the Apr. 1 stabbing murder of inmate Nathaniel King, for which inmate Kelly Toomer is the suspect, according to court documents. But Williams tells Walker that Toomer is saying he did it under orders from Williams. Williams denies this, and says the rumor puts him in danger with BGF higher-ups.

The next day, Apr. 5, Williams is called by an unidentified prison inmate, who tells him that Willliams is believed to have passed on Eric Brown’s order to hurt another inmate named “Coco.” A conference call with other BGF members ensued, to go over the rules of the BGF, and the penalties for breaking them. In other calls, Williams acts as a mediator, trying to settle beefs between rivals in the BGF drug game.

Wallner also fingers Williams as “one of the leaders” of the BGF meeting in Druid Hill Park, held on Apr. 13 and attended, according to court documents, by about 100 people described as BGF members. “Following this incident,” court documents state, “calls were intercepted over the wiretaps in which Eric Brown chastised Rainbow Williams for holding the meeting in such a manner as to draw the attention of law enforcement. Brown stated in a scolding manner, `I been tellin’ you and tellin’ you, and you ain’t listenin.’ In reference to being stopped by the police, Brown added, `Ain’t nothin’ good about that, yo.'”

All of these activities ascribed by investigators to Williams occurred while, according to Ruter, Williams was employed by Partners in Progress as a youth mentor. Despite Ruter’s best efforts–and despite Williams’ boyish, fresh-faced looks, which he indignantly flashed in response to Wallner’s allegations–judge Gesner ordered Williams detained pending trial.

Nelson Arthur Robinson: Unemployed Truck Driver Said to be Caught Holding Bag of BGF Drugs

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Apr. 30, 2009

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It’s not clear whether 45-year-old Nelson Arthur Robinson recognizes his prosecutor, but he should. As Robinson is ushered into a federal courtroom in Baltimore on Apr. 15 by U.S. marshals, set to be arraigned on accusations that he’s part of the sprawling Black Guerilla Family prison-gang conspiracy, assistant U.S. attorney James Wallner is there at the prosecution table. A decade ago, in 1999, Wallner was the assistant Baltimore City state’s attorney who secured Robinson’s guilty plea on a pot-possession charge, for which Robinson got a one-year sentence, all but a day suspended. This time, Wallner’s stone-faced demeanor belies a grim determination to get a bigger piece of Robinson.

When asked by the court clerk to raise his right hand to take an oath, Robinson instead raises his left and has to be corrected. His obliviousness doesn’t fit the profile of a stone-cold gangster, and, in fact, Robinson didn’t even rate enough to make it into the BGF indictments. Instead, he’s a collateral catch.

Robinson was arrested Apr. 15 while agents were busy raiding 12 BGF-linked locations. He was seen leaving an apartment at 1617 Bluffdale Road in Woodlawn, according to the government’s case. The location was under surveillance as part of the BGF take-down because it was associated with Tyrone Dow, a BGF co-defendant believed to be a supplier of drugs for another co-defendant, Kevin Glasscho. Robinson started to get into a truck parked nearby when, as agents approached him, he tossed aside a bag that was found to contain 175 grams of heroin. Robinson had left his keys in the door of the apartment, which was searched and found to contain another 225 grams of heroin, along with pressers and grinders used to process and package the drug.

The charges “smack of a lack of probable cause,” protested Robinson’s lawyer, David Solomon, during Robinson’s Apr. 20 detention hearing before U.S. District Court magistrate judge James Bredar. Solomon added that, though an “indictment may be imminent” against his client, as it stands a grand jury has yet to accuse him, and there “may be problems” with the case. Solomon urged the judge to take into account Robinson’s “relative good standing within the justice system,” given his recently ended “11-year hiatus” from criminal charges, and allow him to be released to the custody of his wife, Florence Robinson, until after the trial.

Instead, Bredar ordered Robinson on 24/7 lock-down at a half-way house, once a bed becomes available. “He gets in line” for half-way house placement, Bredar said. “Until then, he stays locked up.”

One week later, on April 22, the grand jury indicted Robinson.

New Black Guerrilla Family indictment shows inmates in charge of jails, adds to Maryland prison bureaucracy’s embarrassments

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Apr. 24, 2013

When the lat­est Black Guer­rilla Fam­ily (BGF) prison gang rack­e­teer­ing indict­ment was announced at an April 23 press con­fer­ence, detail­ing that 13 of the 25 defen­dants are Mary­land cor­rec­tional offi­cers (COs) who allegedly facil­i­tated the gang’s oper­a­tional takeover of two Bal­ti­more deten­tion facil­i­ties, their boss, Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safety and Cor­rec­tional Ser­vices (DPSCS) sec­re­tary Gary May­nard, noted the obvi­ous: that he had egg on his face.

“It’s totally on me,” May­nard said, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post. “I don’t make any excuses,” he con­tin­ued, adding that “we will move up the chain of com­mand, and peo­ple will be held accountable.”

The last round of fed­eral BGF charges that included COs were handed down in 2009 and 2010, show­ing how DPSCS per­son­nel had worked to help the gang deal drugs, laun­der money, engage in extor­tion, and smug­gle con­tra­band into pris­ons. Despite the over­whelm­ing evi­dence of cor­rup­tion among COs that emerged in those cases, and other evi­dence emerg­ing from civil law­suits show­ing that, as far back as 2006, DPSCS had iden­ti­fied numer­ous COs as being mem­bers or affil­i­ates of gangs who helped facil­i­tate gang-related prison vio­lence, yet ordered the lieu­tenant who’d devel­oped the infor­ma­tion to stop writ­ing such reports, in 2010 the Mary­land Gen­eral Assem­bly passed a law giv­ing greater pro­tec­tions for COs accused of wrong­do­ing by estab­lish­ing a Cor­rec­tional Offi­cer Bill of Rights (COBR).

The cur­rent charges, spelled out in a 48-page indict­ment and detailed in a 67-page search-warrant affi­davit, are déjà vu all over again: drug-dealing, extor­tion, money laun­der­ing, smug­gling. The main dif­fer­ence seems to be that, this time, the BGF appar­ently has dropped all pre­tense of try­ing to be a pos­i­tive force for social change, as was its hall­mark in the 2009 and 2010 cases. Yet Maryland’s prison bureau­cracy under May­nard, who’s been in place since Gov. Mar­tin O’Malley (D) appointed him in 2007, has demon­strated rigid resis­tance to pos­i­tive reform, given its repeated his­tory of CO cor­rup­tion that has emerged in the courts. And, pre­dictably, the COBR has only made mat­ters worse — as the FBI makes clear in doc­u­ments filed in the most recent case.

Add the 13 COs charged fed­er­ally in the cur­rent BGF indict­ment to the 15 COs charged in an ongo­ing FBI civil-rights inves­ti­ga­tion into retal­ia­tory inmate beat­ings and sub­se­quent cover-up and obstruc­tion of jus­tice, alleged to be part of a cor­rupt cor­rec­tional cul­ture in Mary­land, and the total num­ber of COs cur­rently fac­ing fed­eral charges in Mary­land comes to 28. That’s not count­ing another CO fac­ing immigration-fraud charges, or the unknown num­ber of COs – includ­ing Michael McCain, charged with smug­gling drugs into prison – fac­ing state crim­i­nal charges tied to their offi­cial duties.

Maynard’s com­ments at the Apr. 23 press con­fer­ence sug­gest other shoes will drop in the BGF case, and how they drop will be intrigu­ing, since doc­u­ments in the cur­rent case sug­gest the accused COs merely car­ried out a scheme okayed by their supe­ri­ors. In the scheme, BGF leader Tavon White – an inmate and the lead defen­dant in the rack­e­teer­ing indict­ment – believed he, not DPSCS super­vi­sors, was the ulti­mate decider of what went down in the Bal­ti­more City Deten­tion Cen­ter (BCDC) and the Bal­ti­more City Book­ing Intake Cen­ter (BCBIC).

The search-warrant affi­davit in the case was signed by FBI spe­cial agent Sarah Lewis, whose boss, FBI spe­cial agent in charge Stephen Vogt, said in a state­ment that “in this case, the inmates lit­er­ally took over ‘the asy­lum,’ and the deten­tion cen­ters became safe havens for the BGF.” An “impor­tant cause” of this, Lewis writes in her affi­davit, “is the power that White and the BGF are granted by staff mem­bers at all levels.”

In in inter­cepted phone call White made to a friend, he claimed: “This is my jail, you under­stand that. I’m dead seri­ous. I make every final call in this jail, every­thing come to me.” On another call, White told co-defendant Adrena Rice, a CO: “I am the law. My word is law. So if I told any mother-fucking body they had to do this, hit a police, do this, kill a mother-fucker, any­thing, it got to get done. Period.”

Infor­ma­tion gleaned from inmates and DPSCS staff dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion “revealed that some prison offi­cials have infor­mal ver­bal under­stand­ings with White and other BGF lead­ers” that “BGF lead­ers reduce the vio­lence inside the prison, and, in exchange, the offi­cials turn a blind eye to con­tra­band smug­gling and actively pro­tect White and the BGF by warn­ing them of inves­ti­ga­tions and inter­dic­tion efforts.”

White’s heir-apparent as BGF leader in the deten­tion facil­i­ties was co-defendant Joseph Young, accord­ing to Lewis’ affi­davit, and on Nov. 12, 2012, Young spoke with another co-defendant, CO Kim­berly Den­nis, about a cor­rec­tions lieu­tenant. The call was inter­cepted on a wire­tap, and Lewis summed it up like this: “Recently the lieu­tenant pulled Young aside and told Young that the lieu­tenant knew Young would be tak­ing over con­trol of the prison if White was released from jail and agreed to let Young make money by sell­ing con­tra­band inside of BCDC if Young and BGF would keep down the inci­dence of prison violence.”

Lewis’ affi­davit also explains how the 2010 law estab­lish­ing COBR allowed cor­rup­tion to pro­lif­er­ate in an envi­ron­ment where bad con­duct goes on with rel­a­tive impunity. It estab­lished a dis­ci­pli­nary regime that “has proven to be very dif­fi­cult” to pur­sue within estab­lished dead­lines, “so cases are dropped,” she wrote, and thus “it is well known to COs that it is very unlikely that they will be fired or severely dis­ci­plined for smug­gling con­tra­band or frat­er­niz­ing with inmates.” Lewis con­cludes that “the inter­nal review process set up by COBR is inef­fec­tive as a deter­rent to COs smug­gling con­tra­band or get­ting sex­u­ally involved with BGF gang mem­bers at BCDC or BCBIC.”

An illus­tra­tive case is one of the co-defendants, Anto­nia Alli­son, a 27-year-old CO at BCDC. Alli­son was 20 when her alleged ties to inmate gangs were first doc­u­mented by DPSCS, in a Nov. 22. 2006, memo writ­ten by Lt. San­ti­ago Morales, then of the Crim­i­nal Intel­li­gence Unit of the DPSCS’ Divi­sion of Pre­trial and Deten­tion Ser­vices, to BCDC’s then-warden, William Fil­bert. Yet she remained employed at the same facil­ity, even though this was long before the COBR was estab­lished. Morales, on the other hand, was ordered to stop writ­ing reports about gang-tied COs, and ended up re-assigned shortly there­after to night shift at a non-investigative post.

Even after the Mary­land Attor­ney General’s Office defended Alli­son against charges that she’d facil­i­tated a bru­tal, gang-related attack against an inmate, Tashma McFad­den, who, when faced with threats of being killed by inmate gang-members for suing Alli­son, agreed to set­tle the case before trial, Alli­son remained on the job. The threat let­ter, which sur­faced in court fil­ings in 2010, described Alli­son as “our sis­ter” who is “doing right by us,” and “all she asked of her broth­ers was to keep her safe.”

Now, nearly seven years after Alli­son was first sus­pected by DPSCS as being cor­rupt, she’s finally fac­ing the real pos­si­bil­ity that she will no longer be allowed to carry the department’s badge.

Maynard’s pre­pared state­ment regard­ing the lat­est BGF indict­ment involv­ing COs says 99 per­cent of them “do their jobs with integrity, hon­esty, and respect,” and spins the embar­rass­ing turn of events by say­ing that “today’s indict­ment, along with those in the past, show that our Depart­ment will not stand idly by and let a few bad actors affect the secu­rity of our institutions.”

Yet his con­tention that only one per­cent of DPSCS staff is cor­rupt is belied by the FBI’s Lewis, whose inves­ti­ga­tion devel­oped an inmate source that described a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture: “the inmate esti­mated that 60 to 70% of the COs at BCDC are involved in con­tra­band smug­gling and/or hav­ing sex­ual rela­tion­ships with inmates.”

The Wash­ing­ton Post cov­er­age of the indict­ment says it “comes at a sen­si­tive time for” O’Malley, “who is weigh­ing a 2016 pres­i­den­tial bid” built in part by “his record as a ‘performance-driven’ man­ager of state gov­ern­ment,” and quoted a state­ment from O’Malley: “We have zero tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion among cor­rec­tional offi­cers, and we will con­tinue striv­ing to make all cor­rec­tional facil­i­ties as secure as they can pos­si­bly be.”

Based on the avail­able court record of CO cor­rup­tion, it appears that Maryland’s “zero tol­er­ance” pol­icy hasn’t been working.

“Rare Internal Smuggler” Caught with Heroin Pellets at BWI

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Apr. 1, 2009

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Frank Aidoo must have an accommodating stomach. When he arrived at Baltimore-Washington International Airport last Friday evening, March 27, from London, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) already had information that he was suspected of being part of a Nigerian heroin-smuggling outfit, and he didn’t hold up well under questioning by agents. As soon as his initial story didn’t check out, Aidoo, a 55-year-old Ghana-born Dutch citizen, admitted to having ingested pellets of heroin-and later he passed 100 of them, containing a total of 1.2 kilograms of heroin, according to federal charging papers.

“Internal smugglers are relatively rare, especially here at BWI, so these CBP officers should be applauded for detecting this seriously dangerous concealment method and keeping heroin off our nation’s streets,” said James Swanson, CBP Port Director for the Port of Baltimore, in a press release sent out today. “Carriers run an enormous risk of a pellet breaching. It could mean almost certain death if only one pellet breached inside a carrier’s body.” Aidoo is “lucky to be alive,” Swanson concluded. The press release included a photo of the pellets that had traveled inside Aidoo’s intestinal tract.

Two weeks earlier, hotel security at Baltimore’s Marriott Waterfront Hotel alerted law enforcement to a half-kilo of heroin in a room rented by Edward Aboagye, a 27-year-old Ghanian who prosecutors accuse of being part of a conspiracy that was smuggling heroin pellets (“Room Service,” Mobtown Beat, March 25). Aboagye, a Morgan State University senior and car salesman, maintained his innocence, insisting that he rented the hotel room in order to meet a man about a car transaction.

Other than the alleged use of pellets and the fact that both defendants are of Ghanian descent, there appears to be no connection between the two arrests-though Aidoo’s case, coming so quickly on the heels of Aboagye’s, suggests that Ghana-tied “internal smuggling” may not be so rare, after all. Turns out, there’s a track record of busting similar operations in Maryland.

In 2006, a couple from Bowie, Godfrey Bonsu and Victoria Boateng, were convicted of heroin smuggling by a federal jury. They had been bringing heroin into the U.S. from Ghana, Germany, and the United Kingdom, using Ghanian couriers who swallowed pellets, arrived at BWI, and delivered them at hotel rooms, where Boateng and Bonsu retrieved the drugs.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), “West African criminal groups, primarily Nigerian, employ couriers to transport heroin” to BWI on “twice-weekly commercial flights from Ghana.” In August 2000, the NDIC report continues, two such couriers were arrested within a week of one another at the airport, bringing in a combined total of nearly two kilograms of heroin.

Since Ghana is known as a country from which travelers to BWI smuggle heroin pellets, another recent federal case involving a Ghanian arriving at BWI is worthy of mention.

On March 23-between the arrests of Aboagye and Aidoo-a woman arriving from Ghana on British Airways flight 229 (the same that Aidoo took, days later) presented herself as a U.S citizen, returning from a three-month visit with friends and family in Ghana. She had a passport in the name of Melinda Rochelle Chapman, but in her baggage were photo IDs bearing the name Mabel Penelope Aryee. Under questioning, according to the charging papers, the woman admitted that she is actually Aryee, is from Ghana, and is not a U.S. citizen.

Given the sudden prevalence of Ghanian heroin pellets arriving at BWI, it’s a pretty good guess that the questions law enforcers have for Aryee are only just beginning.

Confessions of a Junkie Tracker: The Nose Follows a Dope Fiend to His Suburban Home

By The Nose

Published in City Paper, May 30, 2007

Drugs were being dealt all around the Nose as we got in our car on a recent Saturday afternoon in West Baltimore. Bad drugs, if a young dealer’s overheard admonition to his slightly older re-up man was true: “Man,” he said to his supplier, “that shit is dirty. Niggers around here are laughing about how dirty that shit is.”

Dirty or not, the shit was moving. The driver of the vehicle in front of us–a Ford Explorer with a Baltimore Ravens sticker–copped some junk from the dealer. We followed when the Explorer pulled off. Got to get to know the geography of The Game.

The Explorer drove slowly and erratically until, half an hour later, it stopped in front of a well-kept house in Hillendale, with a freshly mowed yard adorned with lawn ornaments. It was the picture of suburban bliss, safely north of the city line.

The Nose approached and asked the man whether he scores regularly at that particular drug market.

“Nah, I don’t go much,” he said. He was white and looked a decade older than his late 40s. He’s a pipe fitter, he explained. Records show he owns the house with a woman who shares his last name. They purchased the 1,300-square-foot home on a quarter-acre lot a couple of years ago for nearly $200,000. Prior to that, the man had sold his 1,150-square-foot South Baltimore rowhouse for about the same price.

We asked him about the notion that the city’s poor drive demand in the city’s billion-dollar drug trade.

“Nah, it ain’t like that,” he said. “It’s a business down there.” A drug corner, in other words, that doesn’t discriminate based on race or class or anything other than ready cash in small denominations. When told about the dealer’s earlier conversation with his supplier about the dirty shit they were selling that day–the same shit the junkie bought–he shrugged and said, “I don’t doubt that.”

Follow a junkie home and end up in the burbs. Maybe the burbs, which so generously share demand for city drugs, should have more of their own drug corners. The closer the market is to the junkie, the less the junkie will drive. Hell, city junkies hardly drive at all, so few own cars. And if our junkie is any indication–he never even noticed the Nose was on his tail until he was out of his Explorer and walking across his lawn–junkies really shouldn’t drive.

Collateral Catch: Investigation into indicted bailbondsman snared other members of troubled waterfront union

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Mar. 31, 2010

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the nation’s largest union of maritime workers with some 43,500 members stationed along U.S. and Canadian coasts, has deep roots in Baltimore. Baltimore native Richard Hughes Jr. has been its president since 2007, and he is also the business agent for ILA Local 953, based in Locust Point. Del. Brian McHale (D-46th District), who represents Baltimore’s waterfront in the state House of Delegates, is on Local 953’s roster as a steamship clerk. One of the ILA’s vice presidents, Horace Alston, heads the union’s Baltimore District Council. He and former ILA general vice president John Shade are trustees of Baltimore’s ILA Local 333.

But amid the well-connected ILA members in Baltimore, one longshoreman in particular raised the union’s profile recently: Milton Tillman Jr.

A politically connected ex-con and real-estate investor who is the dominant force in Baltimore’s bailbonds industry, Tillman Jr. is also a member of ILA Local 333. On March 17, a federal indictment charging Tillman Jr. and his son, Milton “Moe” Tillman III, with tax fraud, wire fraud, and unlawful bailbonds practices, was unsealed (“Milton Tillman and Son Indicted in Bailbonds Conspiracy,” The News Hole, March 17). It includes charges that Tillman Jr. was paid for unloading ships at Baltimore’s docks on shifts when he was in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Las Vegas, among other places.

The Tillman investigation, court records show, also helped prosecutors nab three other ILA members in Baltimore–William Zichos Jr., Dale Kowalewski, and Joseph Bell–who were indicted on wire-fraud conspiracy charges last November. The three men are union timekeepers who record the hours clocked by dockworkers for payroll purposes. They are members of ILA Local 953, which represents clerical workers in Baltimore’s maritime industry. The case against them alleges they also got paid for no-show work by the stevedoring company Ports America, including at times when they were in France, Costa Rica, Iceland, Las Vegas, and Florida.

The trial in the timekeepers’ case, which had been scheduled to begin in April, was recently postponed until September. The Tillmans’ trial is expected to take four to five weeks, and is currently scheduled to start on May 24, though at a March 26 arraignment hearing in the case, Tillman III’s attorney, Steven Allen, questioned whether that’s a “realistic date.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland declines to confirm a connection between the Tillman investigation and the timekeepers’ indictment. “We can’t go beyond what’s in the public record,” spokeswoman Marcia Murphy says in an e-mail. “And there is nothing in the public record connecting those cases.”

But records in both cases show a nexus: an Aug. 18, 2008, raid on Building 1200A at Dundalk Marine Terminal.

Building 1200A, known as the “timekeepers shack,” was one of seven locations raided as part of a multi-agency probe into the Tillmans (“Tillman Properties Raided by Feds,” The News Hole, Aug. 20, 2008). The other locations–residences, a vehicle, and business offices associated with the Tillmans–were searched because agents expected to turn up proof of tax fraud and unlawful bailbonds practices. The timekeepers shack was targeted, according to the 65-page search warrant affidavit, because investigators expected to find evidence of Tillman Jr.’s suspected “‘no-show’ or ‘ghost worker’ scam.” Investigators on Tillman Jr.’s trail seized payroll documents and computer records from Building 1200A, including from the desks of Zichos, Kowalewski, and Bell.

Tillman Jr. was convicted of a similar scam in the 1990s, when he used a straw employee to work hours in his stead, so he could get paid without actually working.

After the raid, court records show, Zichos was called to testify before a federal grand jury. He met with prosecutors Martin Clarke and Stephen Schenning leading up to that grand-jury testimony, and his answers to their questions raised suspicions.

According to a Feb. 17, 2010, government filing in the timekeepers’ case, the prosecutors asked Zichos if he had ever received “no-show” pay. The filing says that initially, Zichos said “he had received pay for a no-show shift only once in his career . . . and that was when he attended his father’s funeral. In giving his answer, he appeared to be very nervous and overly emotional.”

Then Zichos owned up to “other times when people covered for him, such as when he had a doctor’s appointment or important personal business.”

“There were other times when he was paid for work he did not do, including when he went on vacation,” the filing states. “He was reluctant to give details or say who covered for him and he appeared nervous and upset while giving his answers.” The prosecution’s filing says that Zichos admitted to more occasions when he received no-show pay, though he is “still not clear on some of the details, especially who had covered for him.

“The government later learned that Zichos’ grand-jury testimony was inconsistent with evidence . . . from other sources regarding the scope of his involvement in a no-show scheme involving the timekeepers,” the filing says, “especially the extent to which he covered for others so they could receive no-show wages.”

The ILA’s problems in Baltimore got worse in January when Local 333’s members sued its leadership. Among those leaders are ILA vice president Alston and former general vice president Shade, who gained control of Local 333 in 2005 when the national union placed it in trusteeship due to alleged improprieties. The suit, filed in federal court, alleges that since Local 333 entered trusteeship, unlawful conduct has pervaded its leadership. It cites missing money, unapproved salary increases, shifting Local 333’s jurisdiction over port jobs to another newly formed local, and negotiating with employers behind the membership’s back. The lawsuit also claims that Local 333 is close to bankruptcy.

Shade has other problems, as well. Last year, he lost his position as ILA general vice president after the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, which polices the New York/New Jersey docks for organized-crime ties, concluded that he was prohibited from holding the position due to his criminal history. According to a New York Supreme Court ruling from Oct. 2009, which upheld the commission’s decision, Shade has “convictions for felonies, all dating between 1970 and 1990 and relating to illegal gambling.”

Since 2005, the union’s bosses in New York have been fighting prosecutors who, in a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) case, say the union is captive to organized crime. Hughes and Alston are named as defendants in the case, which includes allegations of no-show jobs. “We’re still waiting for a decision on our motion to dismiss,” says Don Buchwald, Alston’s New York lawyer.

Attempts to reach Shade, Alston, and Hughes to comment for this article were unsuccessful. McHale, who is busy tending to legislative business during the ongoing General Assembly session, also could not be reached for comment. Lawyers for the Tillmans, Zichos, Kowalewski, and Bell either declined to comment or did not return phone calls.

Ronald Barkhorn, one of Local 333’s members and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the local’s leadership, offered his perspective on the ILA’s problems in Baltimore in a recent interview.

“The Tillman thing was just something the feds could use to get the door open,” he says. “To get that warrant to get the payroll records and prove the ‘ghosting,’ when they pad the payroll with fictitious people, just like in the RICO case in New York.” As further evidence of dockside intrigue, he points to another federal criminal case involving embezzlement of pension funds from the Waterfront Guard Association Local 1852, in which two union officers pleaded guilty last year.

“It’s all ongoing,” he says of the government’s waterfront probe, “so you’re not going to find the real deal because it’s all secret.”

Barkhorn’s contention appears to be confirmed in the court record of the timekeepers’ case. The Feb. 17 filing by prosecutors says that the “underlying investigation” is “still ongoing,” though it’s not clear if it refers to just the Tillman case or something more far-reaching.

Ganging Up: Inmate’s lawsuit shows prison officials knew for years of guards’ suspected gang ties

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Oct. 21, 2009

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In 2008, 31-year-old prison inmate Tashma McFadden filed suit against 23-year-old correctional officer Antonia Allison. On Oct. 9, that suit survived Allison’s attempt to have it dismissed. McFadden, who is seeking $800,000 in damages, claims Allison is a member of the Bloods gang and arranged for his stabbing and beating while in pre-trial detention in 2006 at the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC).

Court documents in the case reveal that since at least 2006, prison authorities have been aware that correctional officers in Baltimore’s prison facilities were suspected of being gang members or having gang ties. The issue first emerged publicly in April, when 24 alleged members of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang, including three correctional officers, were indicted in federal court (“Black-Booked,” Feature, Aug. 5 ). U.S. District Court Judge William Quarles is presiding over both the BGF criminal case and McFadden’s civil case.

In his lawsuit, McFadden, who was convicted of drug-dealing after the attack and is serving a seven-year sentence, contends that after he had an argument with Allison, she unlocked his cell door to allow inmates who were Bloods members into his cell, resulting in an attack that inflicted 32 stab wounds on his upper body. He also claims that Allison withheld medical attention from him after the attack and that prison officials failed to investigate the incident properly. McFadden, who is represented by pro bono attorney Aaron Casagrande, said in a deposition that since the attack, he has become a Bloods member in an effort to enhance his safety as an inmate.

Allison, who is represented by Assistant Attorney General Beverly Hughes, denies McFadden’s claims, including the contention that she’s a Bloods member. She acknowledges, though, that if an inmate’s cell door was unlocked at the time of the attack, either she or a trainee who was with her, Tynisha Crew, must have unlocked it. Hughes declined to comment on the case.

Quarles’ ruling says that McFadden’s claims merit a jury trial. But what happened to McFadden is just the tip of the iceberg. Though this year’s BGF indictments drew public attention to the issue of prison guards suspected of aiding gangs, McFadden’s case reveals that the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) has been aware of it for years–and that in 2007, the warden at BCDC, William Filbert, ordered that investigative reports of the problem cease. Evidence in the case–in particular, motions filed over the summer by both McFadden and Allison–also shows that the problem is believed to involve many more correctional officers than the three accused of working with the BGF, none of whose names appear in the McFadden case documents.

McFadden’s lawsuit has revealed that in late 2006 and early 2007, 16 correctional officers, including Allison, were identified as being gang members or having gang ties in two confidential DPSCS investigative reports. According to DPSCS spokesman Rick Binetti, six of the 16 COs named in the two reports no longer work for the department, though he adds that state personnel policy dictates that he can’t say why they left their jobs. The remaining 10, including Allison, still work for the department, he says.

“The brutal attack suffered by my client, while abhorrent in its own right,” Casagrande says in an e-mail, “is only a symptom of a much larger problem at the Baltimore City Detention Center–that gangs have been able to infiltrate the ranks of BCDC correctional officers. I would hope that the case leads to more stringent screening of correctional officers and a more thorough review of policies and procedures so that a similar attack does not occur again in the future, and if one does occur, that it is properly and timely investigated.”

While Binetti could not comment specifically about McFadden’s case, he says that generally the department’s “efforts to root out and stem corrupt behavior among staff actually begins before they are hired. We are committed to investigating and hiring the best, most qualified candidates. Over the last three years, 68 percent of correctional officer applicants were rejected because they didn’t pass through the DPSCS background checks and investigation process.” He adds that, in April of this year, “the Correctional Training Division voted to adopt new, more stringent regulations requiring agencies to include verifying gang membership into the applicant background check.”

As for the department’s record of firing bad actors, Binetti says that from 2007 through March 2009, 71 members of correctional staff “have been terminated because of criminal arrests, contraband, or fraternization with inmates.” Unless corrections employees break the law or are found to have violated the department’s code of conduct, however, he says, they “like normal U.S. citizens are free to associate with whomever they choose,” including gang members.

The department’s code of conduct does not specifically mention gang members, but it does include stringent requirements prohibiting correctional officers from all but officially sanctioned interaction with inmates or their family and friends, whether on or off duty.

The confidential investigative reports naming suspect correctional officers that came to light in McFadden’s lawsuit were written by Lt. Santiago Morales, who at the time they were written worked in the Criminal Intelligence Unit of the state Department of Pretrial and Detention Services. The reports do not specify evidence implicating the officers, but state that the “information was provided by several confidential informants whose information proved to be reliable in the past.” In some cases, Morales misspelled the correctional officers names, but City Paper confirmed their identities with Binetti and through court records.

Morales’ Nov. 22, 2006, report was addressed to Filbert, BCDC’s warden. It named 12 COs as “alleged to be gang members or affiliated with” either the Bloods or the BGF. Those suspected of Bloods ties were: Allison, Duwuane Crew (husband of Tynisha Crew, Allison’s trainee), April Rheubottom, Jamal Hinton, Dareus Burrell, Angie Bouyer, and Tracy Wallace. The remaining five–Laporcha Ezekiel, Tiara Adams, Tamela Barnes, Cheryl White, and Tiffani Curbeam–were suspected of BGF ties. Morales’ Jan. 26, 2007, report, also addressed to Filbert, named three officers as being allegedly involved with the Bloods: Tia Giles, Denise Williams, and Semelda Haynes.

Binetti says that of these 16 COs, six–Crew, Rheubottom, Barnes, Haynes, Burrell, and Hinton–are no longer employed by the department. He assured City Paper that he would contact the supervisors of those still employed to let them know that City Paperwould be reporting their names, based on the investigative documents that emerged in McFadden’s case. Binetti declined City Paper‘s request to interview Filbert and Morales.

In his Feb. 2009 deposition in McFadden’s case, Morales stated that Duwuane Crew was “terminated” because “he passed handcuff keys on to inmates to assist them stab BGF gang members.” He also stated that Jamal Hinton was “terminated for his activity in gangs” after law enforcement “found gang paraphernalia, gang garb, and pictures of him holding weapons, making gang signs in his home during a raid.” Tiffani Curbeam, Morales said, “is currently still under investigation, but there was numerous statements of her bringing contraband in the institution for the BGF.” He added that “the other members, from what I understand, because I’m not in the intelligence unit anymore, might still be under investigation.”

Court documents in the McFadden case state that the practice of making reports such as those prepared by Morales ceased in early 2007, “pursuant to Warden Filbert’s instructions.” In an attempt to contact Morales for this article, City Paper called the intelligence unit where Morales used to work, and confirmed that he no longer works there. The woman who answered the phone said, “He’s actually on the BCDC night shift now,” though Binetti could confirm only that Morales still works for the Department of Pretrial and Detention Services.

The three prison guards indicted in the BGF conspiracy case–Asia Burrus, Musheerah Habeebullah, and Takevia Smith–have entered guilty pleas before Quarles, and are due to be sentenced in the coming weeks and months. All three have admitted to contraband smuggling, which helped the BGF’s alleged narcotics-distribution conspiracy in the Maryland prison system.

Corrupt to the Core: The Black Guerrilla Family Scandal Shines Spotlight on the Prison System’s Culture of Corruption

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, May 1, 2013

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The litany of evidence the feds have on Baltimore inmate Tavon White and his Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang describes a conspiracy of sex, drugs, money, and fancy cars involving a harem of correctional officers (COs) at a jail that White, dubbed a “Bushman” in the BGF hierarchy, believed he ruled. On April 29, White and CO Tiffany Linder pleaded not guilty, with arraignments of the 23 other co-defendants expected in the days and weeks to come.

Not surprisingly, with so many buttons pushed, the media firestorm over subsequent days tossed this narrative into national discussion, where it joined one that was already there: Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s potential presidential ambitions.

Prison-corruption stories have been a pretty regular feature of Maryland’s media mill, yet bureaucratic reaction to this one was swift. The national spotlight will do that.

By Friday, three days after allegations of White’s fabulous inmate lifestyle were exposed by the April 23 unsealing of the indictment and search-warrant affidavit in the BGF case, Gary Maynard, secretary of Maryland’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS), moved his office to the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC). He started a top-to-bottom integrity review of his staff, including lie-detector tests, as the Maryland General Assembly pounced, announcing a May 8 hearing and promising to set up a commission on correctional issues.

As the story settled in, with flames being fanned under the O’Malley angle, coverage shifted as the media spotlight panned for context. It was quickly found: White’s story is a virtual repeat of another series of BGF indictments, in 2009 and 2010, involving corruption among COs. What’s more, stories about gang-tied COs facilitating inmate crimes had been a consistent part of the Baltimore media landscape since then, including coverage that unearthed prison-agency documentation of gang-tied COs dating back to 2006. This background only made White’s story more embarrassing for those in charge, since it suggested the long-festering, well-documented problem of CO corruption wasn’t being solved by Maynard and O’Malley.

“I can’t believe that Maynard ignored this,” says a law-enforcement source familiar with the prior federal BGF investigation that ensnared COs. “The people in charge did nothing to change it,” says the veteran agent, who agreed to discuss the case in exchange for anonymity.

Maynard, however, claims some credit for White’s indictment. Though he admitted the situation was “on me” and said he didn’t “make any excuses” at the press conference when the indictment was announced, a few days later Maynard tweaked his tune, saying to the Daily Beast that “we asked for this investigation because we knew this was an issue” and that the feds “bring some power to the investigation, but once that investigation becomes public, people are going to look at it and say, ‘What is going on here?'”

So Maynard had every expectation that DPSCS would look bad, and that’s just part of fixing the problem – a new dynamic for Maynard, who’s accustomed to getting credit and praise as federal prosecutors continued to target CO corruption in recent years.

“I want to commend” Maynard “for his commitment to rooting out crime in his facilities,” Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said at the April 2009 press conference announcing the first round of BGF indictments. A month later, Rosenstein, reporting progress in the case of a CO who helped run an extortion scheme involving contraband cellphones, was again lavish in his praise. “I am grateful to [DPSCS] for combatting contraband cellphones that allow jailed gang members to endanger public safety,” Rosenstein said in a statement, adding that “our ability to prosecute important cases has been enhanced” thanks to “Maynard making it a priority to increase the department’s intelligence capabilities.”

In July 2010, when another CO was indicted in the mushrooming BGF prosecution, bringing to light more details of the depth and breadth of corruption, Maynard promoted the idea that it was evidence of the department’s years-long track record of tackling the problem.

“Today’s indictment shows that developing our intelligence capabilities has become a top priority in the last three years,” he said in the 2010 statement, adding that while “our unprecedented cooperation and intelligence sharing with our local and federal partners has enabled us to root out illegal activities of a few bad apples, 99 percent of our correctional officers and custody staff continue to work hard, maintaining the high levels of integrity and honor standard among our employees.” Maynard also used the occasion to stress that it serves “notice to those employees who would break the law that you will be caught.”

Now it’s nearly three years later, with plenty of intervening news about COs getting caught for corruption, and 13 more are charged for conspiring with the BGF. So does Maynard deserve credit or scorn for the proliferation of corruption cases involving his department? Answers will emerge supporting each contention as this story continues to unfold, pulling public perception this way and that while Maynard’s overseers – O’Malley and the Maryland legislature – try to assess and shape repercussions as facts both newly alleged and already proven continue to inform the debate.

Many proven facts emerged in the 2009/2010 federal cases, showing how DPSCS personnel helped the BGF deal drugs, launder money, engage in extortion, and smuggle contraband into prisons – virtually the same conduct as this month’s indictment. Others come from court records showing that DPSCS, back in 2006 and 2007, had the names of 16 BCDC COs believed to be tied to gangs, and that some helped facilitate prison violence, yet the lieutenant who’d developed the intelligence was ordered to stop writing such reports. These facts emerged in a settled lawsuit brought against one of White’s co-defendants, Antonia Allison, and the fact that she stayed on as CO for seven more years is a measure of the problem’s stubborn fortitude.

More cases emerged – including the one involving Lynae Chapman, a CO who smuggled phones into prison to a BGF member accused of murder who was the father of her unborn child. Yet, despite the mounting evidence that DPSCS had an integrity problem, in 2010 the Maryland General Assembly passed a law giving COs a “Correctional Officer Bill of Rights” (COBR) to invoke when they are accused of wrongdoing. The FBI, in the affidavit against White, invokes the COBR as a factor that worked in favor of White’s “takeover” of BCDC.

The latest BGF charges add 13 more COs to the 15 already charged in another Maryland case being investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. While corruption in the White case surrounds the prison system’s black-market economy, the civil rights case has targeted a “culture” of illegal beatings and subsequent cover-ups in Maryland corrections, in which COs and their supervisors allegedly conspired to undermine efforts to prosecute the assaults. This adds to what the law-enforcement source familiar with the 2009-2010 BGF investigation calls a “culture of corruption” among COs that has been obvious in jails and prisons for years. The DPSCS became “so immune to it that they didn’t do anything about it” until now, when it’s suddenly become an urgent public-corruption emergency.

With court documents citing “the power that White and the BGF are granted by staff at all levels” as an “important cause” of the conspiracy and revealing details about a lieutenant who promised White’s heir-apparent as BGF’s ruler at BCDC that he would have the same arrangement that White had-free-flowing contraband in exchange for BGF’s efforts to keep prison violence down-Maynard’s top-down review seems likely to explode the careers of more than the 13 defendants charged.

“The investigation is ugly,” Maynard told the Daily Beast, adding, “it is not the end though-it is the beginning. It is where I start to take action.”

If so, then Tavon White’s emergence as a notorious public figure may have prompted what all that came before it couldn’t: a demonstrable, from-the-top effort to address the widely known and long-documented problem of corruption at Maryland’s prisons.