By JOE SNAPPER
THE SAGINAW (MI) NEWS
A crackdown on Saginaw’s most prolific street gang that plunged investigators into an underworld of drug dealing and violence is yielding convictions and changing the way gangsters do business.
The combination of uniformed and undercover work since 2005 has quelled shootings, driven dealers off the streets and forced gangsters into new tactics to insulate them from arrest and prosecution, city and state police said.
The probe involving state police and federal agents targeted 19 members of the Sunny Side gang who were fueling city violence and spreading drugs throughout northern Michigan.
Since July, federal prosecutors have won decade-long prison sentences for two members of the Sunny Side clan operating on Saginaw’s Southeast Side, where police say much dope selling has gone underground since last summer’s arrests.
“The south end there where they were doing their business -- it’s been relatively quiet since those arrests were made,” said Saginaw Police Sgt. Kevin Revard, an expert in the city’s gangs. “I’m not seeing the street dealers out like I had been prior to that.”
He said street sales have slowed in the area because formerly brazen corner dope-slingers now do business behind closed doors.
In the open, dealers are careful merely to pass a piece of paper to a potential customer who pulls up in a car, supplying a phone number and nothing more.
“We noticed just before (the crackdown) happened,” Revard said. “Dealers go meet them somewhere rather than in the neighborhood.”
He added that gang violence has slowed dramatically in the notoriously bullet-ridden Sunny Side territory since last summer.
“Most violent gangs, including the Sunny Side, know that we are out there and trying to catch them,” said State Police 1st Lt. Melvin Mathews, commander of the Bay Area Narcotics Task Force, or BAYANET, which oversees the probe.
“Has it had an impact on the community?” he added of the ongoing investigation that involves the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “I believe so.”
On Valentine’s Day, U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Ludington in Bay City sentenced Matthew D. Ford, 25, of Saginaw to federal prison for 10 years on drug charges, adding to the 20 years Ford already is serving in state prison on drug and weapons charges.
Using unmarked cars, members of Saginaw’s Safe Streets Task Force arrested Ford, who was out of prison on parole, on July 13 on Grant Street, Revard said.
“He was one of our street dealers,” said Revard, who leads the task force. “He didn’t recognize my vehicle. When we pulled up on him, I could tell he had stuffed something down his pants.
“We walked one of the (K-9) dogs around him, and the dog barked. He admitted he was stuffing crack cocaine down his pants.”
Ford, nicknamed “Dee,” pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute 5 grams or more of cocaine base. He remains in the Saginaw Correctional Facility in Freeland, state Department of Corrections records show.
Federal prosecutors also have won convictions against three others, including a 10-year stint for John H. McCoy, 28, of Saginaw, who pleaded guilty to drug and conspiracy charges. Mathews declined to release the other names because he said it could hamper the investigation.
Authorities said last summer they arrested several “enforcers” and “lieutenants” -- Sunny Siders that Mathews described as “midlevel people.”
Police say the gang wears yellow, uses the “OK” finger symbol as its sign and joins with East Side gangs in wars with North Side rivals.
A separate BAYANET unit known as the Violent Crimes Task Force, made up of four ATF agents and two state troopers, is playing a key intelligence role in the probe, said State Police Detective Sgt. Scott Woodard.
He described the Sunny Side effort as “digging deeper into the pie,” part of a broader form of “intelligence-led policing” in which the unit identifies “hot-spot gang areas” and relays the information to troopers on the road.
Woodard, based at the state police Lansing headquarters before working with BAYANET, said the unit fills a “communication gap” and allows investigators to “connect the dots in long-term conspiracy-type cases.”
He said that state police leaders are emphasizing such longer-view cases. In the Sunny Side case, he said “a lot of the big-time players are locked up, but not all of them.”
© 2007 Saginaw News