Calvin Renard Robinson: City Wastewater Worker Accused of Selling BGF Drugs

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, June 10, 2009

The phone rang at 6:59 a.m. on a Friday morning, just as 53-year-old Baltimore City wastewater plant technician Calvin Renard Robinson was heading for the shower, court records show. The March 20 call was from 46-year-old Kevin Glasscho, an ex-con now accused in Maryland as the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) prison gang’s heroin broker.

“You wanted a whole dollar or the half?” Glasscho asked. “Uh, it don’t matter,” Robinson answered, adding, “You can bring me the, um—bring it to me in two halves.” When Glasscho explained that it would be less work if he gave Robinson the “whole dollar.” Robinson agreed, and the two planned to meet after Robinson got out of the shower.

At the time, neither man knew that this exchange, and similarly cryptic phone calls this past spring between Robinson and Glasscho, was being recorded by law enforcers, who believed the men were using code to arrange drug deals. But in mid-April, the conversations wound up as part the evidence for two federal criminal conspiracy cases against 25 alleged members of the BGF. The gang is accused of a variety of crimes, including violence, drug-dealing, smuggling contraband, and extortion. Robinson, thanks to the intercepted phone conversations with Glasscho and the resulting surveillance, is charged with buying drugs wholesale from Glasscho.

At his first court appearances in April, Robinson had the unassuming look of the workaday bureaucrat he is, with his clean-shaven head, trimmed mustache, and glasses. Robinson’s defense attorney, Steven Wrobel, had on hand Robinson’s city Department of Public Works (DPW) supervisor, Dorothy Harris, ready to testify in support of letting Robinson go free pending trial. But the judge decided that Robinson, who has drug convictions dating from the early 1990s and was found with two handguns and ammunition when he was arrested April 15 in the BGF take-down (“Guerrilla Warfare,” Mobtown Beat, April 22, 2009), poses too much of a risk to public safety should he leave jail.

In addition to the guns—a Smith & Wesson .357 with six cartridges and a North American Arms .22 with four cartridges—court records show agents took from Robinson’s home three cell phones, a Blackberry mobile device, three sets of keys, and numerous photographs.

Robinson has owned his North Mount Street home—1102, right across Riggs Avenue from the Baltimore Police Department’s Western District station house—since 2000. Land records show his principal residence is not there, but south by about a dozen or so blocks, at 1223 Hollins St., a half-block west of Hollins Market. Robinson purchased the Hollins Street property in 2008; open for business there is the In and Out Boutique, the trade name for a clothing shore owned by Robinson’s company, Jo-Cal LLC.

Robinson’s In and Out Boutique opened on a block of Hollins Street that has long been known for drug-dealing activity (“Best Open-Air Drug Market,” Mobtown Beat, Sept. 16, 2003). In 2007 it was targeted in a major federal enforcement effort called Operation Smackdown, which closed down a $20,000 per day heroin operation there.

Deitra Davenport: Hardworking mom accused of being BGF “conduit”

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, May 27, 2009

Among the 25 inmates, ex-offenders, prison employees, and others indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland in April as part of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) prison-gang conspiracies (“Guerrilla Warfare,” Mobtown Beat, April 22, 2009), Deitra Davenport stands out.

She has no criminal history. She has worked at the same association-management firm for the past 20 years. She is a homeowner and the single mother of two children. The 37-year-old Davenport is the picture of an upstanding citizen. The accusations against the BGF of violence, drug-dealing, and prison smuggling clash with her squeaky-clean profile–a point that Davenport’s lawyer, Thomas Saunders, has emphasized in court repeatedly while seeking her conditional release pending trial.

Saunders says that Davenport is a “naïve, innocent party” in the BGF scheme. He says she was ensnared in a web of evidence devoid of signs that his client knew of illegal activities (except, perhaps, some smuggling of items, possibly tobacco, to BGF leader Eric Brown, though he’s quick to tell the judge during a hearing that “I’m not saying it’s true” that she even knew of this illicit activity). What began eight years ago as a pen-pal relationship between Davenport and Brown later blossomed into a Muslim form of marriage, Saunders says. He adds that Brown–if he is the criminal the government contends he is–duped Davenport, making her an unwitting player in the BGF’s allegedly criminal enterprise.

The government sees Davenport, whose nickname is “Sister D,” as a smuggler, the operator of a BGF front business that helped underwrite the gang’s operations, and an intermediary between Brown and other BGF members. Last year she and Brown published The Black Book, a handbook of BGF philosophy as part of a social movement called Jamaa (“jamaa” is a Swahili word for “family”). The book promotes economic and political self-empowerment for black communities and discusses how to confront the reality and legacy of widespread incarceration among black Americans. But law enforcers characterize it as a guidebook for gang behavior and say its sales–and therefore Davenport, as the book’s publisher–helped underwrite the violent, drug-dealing, prison-smuggling ways of the BGF in Maryland (see “The Black Book,” Mobtown Beat, May 27, 2009).

When Davenport first appeared in court on Apr. 16, she looked as out of her element as Saunders claims she is. Short and petite, with straight black hair and wearing a tidy black jacket, she did not fit in with the two other defendants next to her: 30-year-old convicted murderer Rainbow Lee Williams and 52-year-old Zachary Lee Norman, whose criminal record includes convictions for a murder conspiracy and armed robbery. But if court documents reflect the truth of the matter, Davenport knows Williams well enough to conspire with him to get contraband to Brown in prison.

At 6:15 in the morning on Apr. 16, as Davenport was being arrested, law enforcers who raided her Baltimore County home seized a .357 caliber handgun and a box of .38 caliber ammunition, according to court documents. Also seized were documents related to two companies started by Davenport and Brown: Dee Dat Publishing, which published The Black Book, and Harambee Jamaa Inc., a nonprofit that, according to its incorporation papers, was formed to “liberate our people from poverty, crime, and prison.”

During an intercepted phone conversation between Brown and Davenport, which court records say took place late at night on Feb. 26, Brown urged Davenport to “go to the firing range.” When Davenport asked “Why?” Brown told her, “bust that gun for a minute. You ain’t been out there in a while.” During court hearings, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Wallner brought this conversation up, while pointing out that The Black Book instructs women “to be proficient in the use of firearms.”

In other intercepted phone conversations, which took place in April, Brown and Davenport discussed smuggled champagne, vodka, and cigars. According to court documents, law enforcers also believe Davenport “is smuggling drugs” to Brown in prison.

After the indictments came down, Wallner announced in open court that the BGF had offered $10,000 for “hits” on correctional officers, investigators, and cooperators who helped make the case (“BGF Offers $10,000 for Hits, Prosecutor Says,” Mobtown Beat, April 23). In light of the offer, Wallner stressed Davenport’s role as a vector of BGF intelligence, suggesting that she may help get the word out that BGF money is on the table. “Davenport, because of her status as the conduit for all of the BGF,” Wallner said to the judge, “is the central location of communication among members and Eric Brown.”

The government’s take on Davenport came as a complete surprise to Davenport’s long-time employer, Thomas Shaner of the Baltimore-based association management firm, Joseph E. Shaner Company.

“To say that we are shocked, that’s just an understatement,” Shaner said in a May interview. “‘Sister D?’ Who the hell is this ‘Sister D?’

“She’s been a solid employee for 20 years,” Shaner said. “All I can guess is that she was naïve as hell and was manipulated by Eric [Brown]. I’ve never met Eric, and I was surprised to learn that Eric is in jail, and has always been in jail, even before she married him. Despite these charges, I still want to believe she’s the same person I’ve known for so long, who I considered a friend and sort of family. But people do crazy things for love.”

After debating for weeks in motions and hearings over Davenport’s detention, on May 12, Wallner and Saunders reached an agreement, and U.S. District Court magistrate judge Beth Gesner accepted it. Davenport is released to her home, where she will remain locked down pending trial, on electronic monitoring and with strict controls over her communications and conduct. In addition, Davenport’s sales of The Black Book will end and she is to have “no contact whatsoever with any inmates or codefendants,” Gesner says. The trial, which has yet to be scheduled, is estimated to last a month.

Eric Marcell Brown: Veteran Inmate Dubbed Drug-Dealing, Shot-Calling BGF Propagandist

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, May 7, 2009

Like other Maryland prison inmates indicted in the Black Guerilla Family prison-gang conspiracy, Eric Marcell Brown hasn’t yet had his first court appearance on the charges, so he remains an unseen player in the case. But the wire-tap investigation of his activities from prison, which resulted in the Apr. 8 grand jury indictment in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, shows how the government views Brown: as the BGF’s top leader in Maryland, orchestrating its violent, corrupting operations with funds from selling drugs and The Black Book, his instructional tome about the BGF movement.

Brown doesn’t consider the BGF a “gang” at all, but an “organization”–a distinction to which The Black Book devotes a full chapter. The book’s 2008 publication put Brown’s abilities on display, revealing a knack for marketing and leadership. The law enforcers who came after Brown say his publishing venture has been successful, noting in court documents that upwards of 900 copies were sold, with proceeds going back to the organization. If so, The Black Book, which prescribes self-generated economic empowerment for blacks, especially ex-offenders, is a good example of what the book seeks to advance.

Yet the book also condemns drug dealing as a form of “genocide” and “chemical warfare,” so if the government is right about Brown, then he’s in direct conflict with his own tenets. The Black Book asserts that Brown, who at 40 years old is 15 years into a 25-year sentence on drug-dealing charges, has undergone a “transition” from his old ways, and encourages others to follow. Court documents filed in the BGF case make a farce of this assertion, but, as the government’s case against Brown is tested in court, a clearer picture may emerge of how he measures up to The Black Book‘s ideals.

According to court documents, one of the government’s informants in the BGF investigation said “The Black Book is a ploy by Brown to make BGF in Maryland appear to be a legitimate organization and not involved in criminal activity.” In fact, the informant explained, “Brown is a drug trafficker” and “BGF funds its operations primarily by selling drugs”-though The Black Book, too, is “making money.”

Brown’s cell-phone conversations were intercepted by investigators for months, and in the process, chatter was picked up that seemed to confirm that Brown was involved in drug dealing, along with violence, armed robbery, smuggling, and extortion. Some of the intercepted discussions, as recounted in the court records, were clear and easily interpreted. Others were vague, relying on investigators’ training and experience to conclude that nefarious doings were afoot.

One of the recorded conversations showcases Brown’s grasp of the rhetoric of radical change. “Listen, man, we are on the verge of very big things, man,” Brown said during a three-way call last November with two other BGF members, who were inmates in different Maryland prisons. “This positive movement that we are embarking upon now, right, is moving at a rapid pace, right. It’s happening on almost every location” in the prison system. “Revolution is the only solution, brother,” he exhorted.

Investigators contend that Brown’s hold on the reins of the BGF took it further, so that it now stands accused of “operating in every, single prison facility in the entire state,” as assistant U.S. attorney James Wallner put it in court in April. What’s more, the movement Brown leads has populist appeal outside of prisons, as suggested by an Apr. 13 meeting in Druid Hill Park, where, according to court documents, about 100 BGF members and supporters gathered as The Black Book and BGF t-shirts were distributed.

Thanks for Sharing

By Van Smith

Published in City Paper, Nov. 14, 2007

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

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

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

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.