By David Heinzmann and Todd Lighty, The Chicago Tribune
With their leader in prison, top members of the Black Disciples were called to a South Side Chicago apartment building--"The Castle,” the gang called it--to hear from their newly annointed “king.”
He told the assembled drug dealers that if they played by the “BD law,” they would prosper. Violators would be beaten or killed by the Vanguard, the enforcers of the gang.
Since that day in 1991, Marvel Thompson, 35, ran the Black Disciples gang as if it were a diversified corporation, hauling in drug profits--as much as $300,000 per day--which the gang laundered with investments, including apartment buildings, a rap record label called M.O.B., and a carwash and nightclub in Atlanta, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Using a pirate transmitter to barge in on the FM frequency operated by a Christian radio station, the gang even broadcast “public service announcements” to their dealers, warning them when police were near, according to a 185-page indictment released Thursday by U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald.
The gang effectively took over a 16-story Chicago Housing Authority building, posting snipers on the roof to protect dealers making as much as $45,000 per day selling crack, cocaine and heroin inside, the prosecutors said. Lookouts were equipped with night-vision goggles, according to the complaint.
Thompson, a rap record producer, and 46 others were indicted this week on drug conspiracy charges after a six-year investigation led by Chicago police and the FBI.
Wearing helmets and wielding shotguns, police Wednesday stormed down the corridors of the red-brick Randolph Towers housing complex, where the gang was based, sometimes kicking in doors as they searched for suspects and scooped up $300,000 in cash.
More than 400 law enforcement officers were involved in the arrests of 32 suspects, including one in Phoenix, Ariz. Two others turned themselves in Thursday, and 13 of those indicted--including two top deputies to Thompson--remained at large Thursday, police said.
Law enforcement officials say the operation topples the hierarchy of one of Chicago’s best organized street gangs, one that terrorized neighborhoods where they plied their trade.
“It was a very structured organization that tried to follow its own law and act as if it was its own nation right here in Chicago,” Fitzgerald said. “The sales volume was frightening. . . . On one occasion, one of the outstanding members had $3 million in profits counted in a single night.”
Prosecutors likened the investigation to the federal prosecution of the Gangster Disciples, whose drug dealing operations on the South Side reached an unparalleled level of organization, extending into political activity, before the leadership was convicted in the 1990s.
Originally part of the same organization, the Black Disciples split from the Black Gangster Disciple Nation after the 1974 death of founder David Barksdale opened a rift in the gang.
“This potentially can be completely devastating for the BDs, even more so than it was for the GDs,” said Andrew Papachristos, a gang researcher who works for the University of Chicago and the National Gang Crime Research Center. However, jailing the leadership is unlikely to kill the whole organization, he said.
“That’s the top down method, but what about from the bottom up? Now what happens in the neighborhoods? Are the BDs going to disappear? No. Are they going to stop dealing drugs? No. But you won’t see as much of this corporate-style stuff,” Papachristos said.
Thompson is registered with the state as president of M.O.B. Records Inc., which is based on the South Side and produces several rap music acts, including an Englewood artist, DJ Casper. Casper’s “Cha-Cha Slide” became an international hit after its release in 2000.
Thompson also has a steady history of criminal cases in Cook County. He has a pending felony case for unlawful use of a firearm, stemming from a 2002 arrest when police approached him in Englewood and said he dropped a handgun and ran.
He also was convicted of murder in 1993, but acquitted two months later after a witness in the case recanted, saying that only Thompson’s co-defendant, Alonzo Brooks, was involved in the 1990 shooting. Brooks is serving a 45-year sentence.
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Thompson appeared in federal court with 33 other defendants in the case, then spoke clearly and directly when asked by the judge if he understood the charges.
While the gang allegedly sold drugs from numerous locations across the South Side, the headquarters and most lucrative operations were at the Randolph Towers, 6217 S. Calumet Ave.
According to the indictment, members of the gang exercised such tight control over the building that they searched anyone who entered, including residents. Gang members once searched an undercover police officer who was wearing a bulletproof vest. When gang members felt the vest, one pulled out a gun and shot the officer in the back as he turned and ran. The officer survived the shooting, prosecutors said.
On Thursday, amid an increased police presence in the neighborhood, residents said that witnessing drug deals was a part of daily life. But many said gang members did not bother them as long as they didn’t interfere.
“I don’t mind their business,” said a 30-year-old mother who asked that her name not be used. “That’ll get you hurt.”
Fitzgerald said the gang placed huge demands on membership for loyalty. Still, the case was built in part on the testimony of 26 informants, most of them Black Disciples insiders. In one case, one of the witnesses and his 6-year-old son were shot after gang members suspected that the man had testified before a grand jury.
Several of the informants are now in the federal witness protection program, according to a spokesman for Fitzgerald.
Although numerous members of the gang were arrested and charged with serious crimes over the last several years, prosecutors said, the organization continued to operate with a shocking level of audacity, including stealing the 104.7 FM frequency from a Christian radio station.
The frequency belongs to WCFL, a Christian oriented radio station with a studio in Morris that serves the southwest suburbs.
Station manager Chuck Pryor said station officials had been told several months ago that its frequency was being pirated on the South Side to play rap music that contained profane language.
The station filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission several months ago then filed a second one recently. Pryor said that he had no inkling that the pirate station was run by one of Chicago’s most notorious street gangs but that he heard the broadcast recently while driving to Midway Airport.
As he drove north on South Cicero Avenue, near West 63rd Street, the gang’s pirated radio signal had simply overpowered WCFL’s. “At that point,” Pryor said, “they had pretty much taken over our frequency. I heard a guy on the air using pretty foul language.
“The F-words we use are faith, family and fun,” Pryor said. “That is not the F-word they were using.”
Tribune staff reporter Glenn Jeffers contributed to this report