By Adam Beam
The State
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A frustrated Reggie Lloyd — then the U.S. attorney for S.C. — watched in early 2004 as crack dealers came in and out of the court system without it making a dent in the area’s violent crime.
Lloyd called Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who told him the local police had the knowledge while the federal authorities had the money. They needed to work together.
Six months later, the creation of the Columbia Violent Gang Task Force was announced, but seemed to disappear as an afterthought.
But in the past week, after four years of wiretaps, undercover work and legal maneuvering, the last of 23 members of the Gangsta Killer Bloods were convicted in federal court, signaling the end of one of the largest — and most comprehensive — gang investigations in the state’s history.
And it all started with a phone call.
“We had the informants, the smaller cases that you take to put all that together to make a big case,” Lott said. “It just came through from a phone call that he (Lloyd) made and us sitting down in his office.”
On Tuesday, federal Judge Joseph Anderson sentenced six of the 23 defendants to an average of 10 years in prison on drug conspiracy charges.
The Gangsta Killer Bloods came to Columbia in 1999, an extension of the United Blood Nation, a gang that formed in New York’s Riker Island jail.
In Columbia, they ruled some inner-city neighborhoods on McDuffie Avenue. Their reach soon spread outward to Broad River Road in Richland County.
During the course of the case:
The FBI paid one informant at least $48,000 over two years for spying on alleged drug dealers.
A Dec. 20, 2006, shootout occurred at the Gable Oaks apartments off North Main Street, where up to 50 bullets ripped through walls to settle a grudge over a posting on the social Web site Myspace.com.
There was an Oct. 24, 2006, armed robbery on Sigmund Circle, off North Beltline Boulevard, in which four family members -- including a 10-year-old -- were dragged from their beds by masked men and the father was shot in the neck as he tried to escape.
Cell phones of two of the gang’s leaders, Travis Pinkston and Torrean Sims, were bugged from November 2006 to January 2007.
A January 2007 shootout in Swansea killed 2-year-old Jalah Peeples.
Nearly $250,000 in cash buried under the house of Javis McKenzie, one of the gang’s main suppliers, was recovered.
“The two common denominators on all gangs is drugs and violence. And this gang proved that to be so true,” Lott said. “They sold the crack, but they used the violence in the crack business.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald said that since 1999, all of the 23 defendants had been arrested or prosecuted on the state level for other crimes .
That’s why Lloyd and others were so frustrated. They were making the arrests, but couldn’t keep them in jail.
But the Columbia Violent Gang Task Force took a different approach. Federal agents worked the case full time. They wiretapped suspected gang members phones. They sent informants under cover to buy cocaine from the gang.
By the time authorities arrested the members, the evidence was so overwhelming that 21 of the 23 people arrested pleaded guilty. The other two were convicted this week by a jury. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stacey Haynes and Jane Taylor prosecuted the case.
“This was a group of individuals who wanted to emulate the gangs in New York and were constantly involved in putting drugs out on the streets of the Midlands and enforcing their drug business with the threat of gun violence,” McDonald said.
The task force won the national Project Safe Neighborhoods Achievement Award for outstanding gang investigations in 2007, along with investigations in Oklahoma, Maryland and New Jersey.
Sentenced Tuesday were:
Jenero Dean “Lil Nero” Williams, 19, to 10 years
Charles Eugene “One-eye Willie” Norris, 23, to five years
Jeffrey Allen “JJ” Griffin, 20, to 11 years
Bryan Darnell “Hawk” Riley, 22, to 10 years
Richard Edward “Brazo” Norris, 21, to 10 years
Broderick Zaccheus “Red” Hiller, 26, to 11 years
Reach Beam at (803) 771-8405.
Copyright 2008 The State