Current Situation:
DETROIT:
In the heart of the Motor City, gangs are committing the kinds of crimes that strike fear into the community. Brutal carjackings, shootings and other violence crimes. They open fire on their rivals, along with innocent people.
"Most of us have been outraged by how many young people have been caught in the crossfire of gang violence," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said. "So many kids, so many young people."
McQuade knows what it takes to stop violent gangs. She recently charged two members of the 6 Mile Chedda Grove Gang in a shooting that killed a 13-year-old girl near a market in the middle of the afternoon. Edwin Mills who is 26, and Caro Wilson who is 22 years old and both from Detroit, are now in custody for the December 1st shooting that also killed a 21 year old driver.
7 Action News reporter Simon Shaykhet even found gangs still marking their territory near Denby High School. The 6 Mile Chedda Grove gang is one of a few top gangs on the radar of the FBI Violent Task Force. Others include the 6 Mile Bloods and Knock Out Boys on the east side, the Latin Counts and Surrenos in southwest Detroit, and the Rollin 60s Crips and 7 Mile Bloods.
Now, gangs like the 60s crips are recruiting in places like West Bloomfield and the 7 Mile Bloods found young soldiers in Eastpointe.
"They're mostly neighborhood based gangs, so they'll have a certain territory or blocks marked out in the neighborhood. That becomes in heart their turf," Retired FBI Gang & Drug Unit Supervisor Andy Bartnowak said.
Prosecutors are using new ideas and ways to help get the gang members off the streets.
DETROIT:
In the heart of the Motor City, gangs are committing the kinds of crimes that strike fear into the community. Brutal carjackings, shootings and other violence crimes. They open fire on their rivals, along with innocent people.
"Most of us have been outraged by how many young people have been caught in the crossfire of gang violence," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said. "So many kids, so many young people."
McQuade knows what it takes to stop violent gangs. She recently charged two members of the 6 Mile Chedda Grove Gang in a shooting that killed a 13-year-old girl near a market in the middle of the afternoon. Edwin Mills who is 26, and Caro Wilson who is 22 years old and both from Detroit, are now in custody for the December 1st shooting that also killed a 21 year old driver.
7 Action News reporter Simon Shaykhet even found gangs still marking their territory near Denby High School. The 6 Mile Chedda Grove gang is one of a few top gangs on the radar of the FBI Violent Task Force. Others include the 6 Mile Bloods and Knock Out Boys on the east side, the Latin Counts and Surrenos in southwest Detroit, and the Rollin 60s Crips and 7 Mile Bloods.
Now, gangs like the 60s crips are recruiting in places like West Bloomfield and the 7 Mile Bloods found young soldiers in Eastpointe.
"They're mostly neighborhood based gangs, so they'll have a certain territory or blocks marked out in the neighborhood. That becomes in heart their turf," Retired FBI Gang & Drug Unit Supervisor Andy Bartnowak said.
Prosecutors are using new ideas and ways to help get the gang members off the streets.
Rise of Gangs and Increase of Violence
Errol Flynns
The Errol Flynns were a criminal organization established on the lower east side of Detroit, Michigan during the 1970s. Apparently the gang took their name from the Hollywood film star Errol Flynn because they fashioned themselves as flamboyant gangsters in dress. Also they used “gangsta jits”, which are hand signs to identify themselves in public. The use of hand gestures to display gang membership, common to modern American street gangs as well as hip hop culture, evolved from dances like the Errol Flynn, which were territorial gang symbols. In the 1970s, house parties in Detroit could be identified by gang affiliation through the type of dance performed, whether or not they were actually in the gang. Like other Detroit street gangs, such as their Westside Detroit counterparts in the late 1970s; the Nasty Flynns, and 7 Mile Killers or 7 Mile Dogs or the drug groups of the 1980s such as Young Boys Inc., Pony Down, Best Friends, Black Mafia Family and the Chambers Brothers, the Errol Flynns grew out of the racial and economic unrest that changed Detroit in the late 1960s and 1970s. As people left Detroit for suburban communities, the cities social and economic structure buckled, leaving the community broken and poor. As the murder rate soared to the highest in the United States, and the city became increasingly viewed as dangerous and in perpetual decline gangs began to seize territories. The Errol Flynns were regarded as perhaps the most notorious group for many reasons. First they took great pride in their appearance and style, something that attracted a lot of young people to their parties. The poverty and urban decay through Detroit made the gang lifestyle attractive to many. Secondly, Detroit underwent a demographic shift with the white flight that began in the 1950s. Many of the public housing projects such as Herman Gardens went from racially diverse communities to homogeneous black residences in a matter of years. The Errol Flynns became a wealthy organization that dominated. They did extortion, robbery, and drug trafficking. The gang was also connected to many notorious mass robberies, including a hijacking and robbery of concert goers at a rock concert in Cobo Hall in 1977 that drew the Detroit riot police to the venue. Eventually, the gang grew to have 400 members. The fame had a backside though, as it brought police, public, and political attention and eventually landed many gang members in jail. The Errol Flynn gang eventually fell in the 1980s, somewhat because of the rise of crack cocaine, which undermined the profit of the heroin trade dominated by the Flynns. The prosecution of many gang leaders, ravaged the gang. One member, who made a successful transition from criminal to lawful citizen was Greg Mathis, a lawyer and retired Michigan judge who has his own television show; Judge Mathis. The Errol Flynns are known as the starters to most Detroit gangs that followed. |
Young Boys Inc.
Coming up in the late 1970s on the West Side around the areas surrounding Dexter, Monterey and Linwood Avenues. Young Boys Inc. started out as a small group of connected drug dealers sharing a supply source and soon was on its way to becoming a big narcotics empire that operated with assembly line efficiency and expert criminal intelligence. YBI completely changed the drug game in Detroit. The organization was a pioneer in underworld marketing and sales strategy, and in just five years it would go off as a notorious part of the city’s historical fabric while becoming its most financial successful narcotics ganger ever. Authorities estimated that the gang cleared close to half a billion dollars in 1982 alone. They crafted the mold for all who came after them in the game. They were the model of how a well-run, large-scale narcotics gang worked. The emergence of YBI changed everything and really opened up a Pandora’s Box of activity that hasn’t stopped to this day. The first traces of the gang emerged around 1976 when aspiring kingpins Raymond “Baby Ray” Peoples, Dwayne “Wonderful Wayne” Davis and Mark “Block” Marshall brought their individual crews together and started selling heroin out of a bar on the corner of Prairie and Puritan. When Milton “Butch” Jones, a close friend of both Block and Baby Ray was released from prison, after serving a 4 year sentence for manslaughter. He joined up with the fast-growing operation. YBI was officially off and running. The four YBI founders were a good mix. They complemented each other well. While Peoples and Davis were more of the hustler type, master movers and shakers, Jones and Marshall were straight thugs, heartless street soldiers with itchy trigger fingers Collecting the money was no easy task, since Marshall himself was conspicuously charged with a heinous crime. It was the mass murder of three people and a dog whose bodies were all ejaculated on. He wound up being tried 2 times for the triple homicide. Block was never convicted and then was able to collect the insurance payout. Although he was the last man on the scene, Butch Jones quickly ascended to the top of the gangs leadership and immediately forced his will on the direction the group would take. He was a natural bully and not a person who liked to share power. Butch Jones was pretty frightening guy. He bullied his way to the top of the gang and once he was there he ruled with overwhelming force. He and his crew were just coldhearted, ruthless people. I know one of his favorite enforcement tactics was to beat his enemies with a baseball bat. Intent on building YBI in the mold of a Fortune 500 corporation, Jones refined an organization that was highly organized from top to bottom. Trying to diversify the gangs doings as much as he could, he split the operation into several distinct street groups, each responsible for a different aspect of the group’s overall bottom line. At the top of the food chain were Butch and Block, who ran their own individual army called The Wrecking Crew and oversaw the day to day dealings of the entire gang. Baby Ray and Wonderful Wayne gave responsibility over individual crews and operated with independence. Beneath the founders was an enforcement crew known as The A Team and led by teenage hit man Curtis “Kurt McGurk” Napier as well as a finance and supply crew led by Sylvester “Seal” Murray. Butch was never one to accept by the status quo. He also made sure that YBI was the first gang of its era not to have to rely on the Mafia for its drugs. When the gang reached its peak of power in 1981, it controlled a 90 percent of the drug trafficking taking place within the city limits. The epidemic of young children dealing for YBI became so rooted in neighborhood culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s that little girls jumping rope would sing out rhythmic cadences like Starlight, Hoochie Con, Rolls Royce round and round among other rhymes that meant the narcotics selling at the time. YBI gang members tended to travel in bulk. When members showed up at a nightclub or concert, they were often 50 deep. Usually dressing same, they sported the trendiest clothes and styles. Cars were the most important to them. Two dozen or more Mercedes and Corvettes were bought at the same time and then promptly shown off. Unhappy with living in the city where they grew up and worked their trade to great riches, Butch and Baby Ray moved it to the suburbs as soon as they could. Both moved in Oakland County, with Butch moving to Oak Park to a house he built with an indoor pool and Baby Ray moving further north to Troy where he purchased a three story residence in a leafy and secluded, newly developed subdivision. |
The Crack Commandments
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Chambers Brothers
The Chambers Brothers were a criminal organization heavily involved in the distribution of crack cocaine in the city of Detroit, Michigan during the 1980s. The Chambers Brothers, B.J., Larry, Willie and Otis Chambers, became notorious nationally when the Detroit Police Department confiscated video tapes of the brothers counting their laundry baskets full of money, and flaunting their excessive wealth. The rags-to-riches tale of the Chambers brothers, seven siblings who migrated to the Motor City from less than miserable beginnings in the Deep South, plays out like a Hollywood movie script. The first member of the Chambers family set foot in Detroit in the early 1970s, and they would keep coming until the middle of the next decade. They were motivated souls in search of success in any form, ready to take it by any means necessary. It took a little while, but by 1985 the Chambers family had gone from growing up dirt poor, without indoor plumping in rural Arkansas, to becoming multi-millionaires living a life of luxury and excess while ruling the Detroit underworld’s narcotics industry with almost corporate insight and efficiency. Sent to prison in 1988, the Chambers brothers and their gang of Southern recruits, credited by some with being the first group in the city to start selling crack cocaine, left a rich and amazing legacy. All bearing an creepy resemblance to one another with their wide foreheads, very dark skin, and short, stout frames, the Chambers boys exceeded the drug game to become cultural influences and pseudo-pop culture icons. Anybody who is a fan of the movie New Jack City or the New Jack Swing music genre of the early 1990s pays homage to the Chambers crew, primary inspirations for the term “New Jack” itself and everything it represented. It all started in 1987 when Barry Michael Cooper, at that time an investigative reporter for The Village Voice, came to Detroit to do a story on the citys drug trade. He contacted well known sociologist Carl Taylor, a native Detroiter who taught at Michigan State University and lived in East Lansing, and Taylor pointed him toward the Chambers gang, which he spent several weeks in the Motor City observing first hand. What Cooper ended up witnessing was documented in an award-winning feature for The Village Voice titled, “New Jack City Eats Its Young.” Inspired by Cooper’s words, Harlem-based recording artist and producer Teddy Riley created the “New Jack Swing” sound, a late-80s and early-90s music genre fusing rap, jazz, traditional R&B and hip-hop. Within months, The Village Voice piece was optioned for a movie and became the 1991 gangster classic, New Jack City, starring Wesley Snipes as flamboyant and diabolical drug kingpin Nino Brown, a character partially based on one of the Chambers brothers and his methods of operation. Although the new sound and the popular film–scripted by Cooper himself-were based in New York, the roots of both were unquestionably seeded in Detroit with the Chambers gang and everything it stood for. A career-making, nationally televised speech by a then unknown Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton, delivered at the 1988 Democratic Convention, further ingrained the Chambers family into the fabric of that time by citing their rise and fall as an example of the criminal ingenuity being displayed by the nation’s youth and the severity of the country’s crack epidemic. “I don’t believe that family, the Chambers brothers, came up North to become criminals, but that’s what they became,” said Carl Taylor. “They came to Detroit to better themselves, get jobs in the plants, find a better life. When they realized that they couldn’t sustain that dream or that certain variables prevented them from attaining it, things got twisted real fast and they turned to making a living on the street. Obviously, they were pretty good at it.” The gang’s ability to find success in spite of the fact that the Chambers Brothers and their crew were viewed by most as outsiders, intruders from the South with a country mentality. What they did was rare in the sense that these young men were outsiders and they were able to come in without any real help from the Detroit homeboys and basically take over a huge part of the city just for themselves. These were country boys and guys around here kind of dismissed them as hayseeds and didn’t really give them the time of day at first. But it wasn’t long before that all changed and the locals were forced to give them their respect because the Chambers brothers were a force of nature in that once they got going, their operation was rolling and constantly growing. When the final curtain closed on the gang and its antics, the Chambers rothers organization was the most profitable street level drug dealing operation in U.S. history up until that time. The Chambers family took the whole city by storm. Detroit had never seen anything like this batch of southern-raised sin-spinners. These young men might not have come to the city thinking they would turn it on its head. But they did. |
Demetrius Flenory
Terry Flenory
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Black Mafia Family (BMF)
The Black Mafia Family (BMF) was a drug trafficking organization originally based in River Rouge, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. It was founded in the late 1980s by brothers Demetrius and Terry Flenory. By the year 2003, they had established the cocaine distribution cells throughout the United States. Through their Los Angeles based drug source, they had direct links to Mexican based drug cartels. They established two main centers for their operation. Its the Atlanta, Georgia hub, for distribution operated by older brother Demetrius. While the Los Angeles, California hub was operated by Terry to handle incoming shipments from Mexico. The network eventually crossed as far as Los Angeles, California to Atlanta, Georgia. Around 2000, the organization tried to legitimize itself by entering the hip-hop industry. Starting a company called BMF Entertainment. Through BMF Entertainment, it helped promote a number of artists including Young Jeezy, as well as BMF Entertainment sole artist, Bleu DaVinci. Before entering the music business, the Flenory Brothers were known to associate with a number of high profile hiphop artists like Jay-Z and Fabolous! In 2005, the Drug Enforcement Administration, or short DEA, indicted members of the Black Mafia Family, ultimately securing convictions by targeting the Flenory brothers under the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute. Both were sentenced to 30 years in prison. Subsequent indictments eventually targeted over 150 members of the gang. Prosecutors assumed the organization made over $270 million over the course of their time. Demetrius Edward Flenory better known as “Big Meech, and his brother Terry Lee Flenory better known as “Southwest T" began selling $50 bags of cocaine on the streets of Southwest Detroit, during their high school years. By 2000, they had established multi-kilogram cocaine distribution cells in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee. A two-year federal investigation of the organization estimated its nationwide membership as over 500. Around 2001, there was a split between the brothers, with Terry moving to Los Angeles with his girlfriend to head his own organization and Demetrius staying in Atlanta. By 2003 the two rarely spoke to one another. In a talk with his sister Bernatta, caught by the DEA on wiretap, Terry discussed his worries that his brothers excessive partying would bring the wrong type of attention to their business. By the time charges were filed the government had 900 pages of typed transcripts of wiretapped conversations from Terry's phone in a five month period. In November 2007 the brothers pleaded guilty to running a continuing criminal enterprise. In September 2008 both brothers were sentenced to 30 years in prison for running a nationwide cocaine trafficking ring which lasted from 2000 to 2005. Demetrius Flenory is serving out his sentence at FCI Pollack in Pollock, Louisiana and is scheduled for release on December 16, 2031, around his 61st birthday. While incarcerated at United States Penitentiary, Lompoc, a medium-security federal prison in California, he adopted the name Big Herm. His brother is serving his sentence at FCI Coleman Low in Summerville, Florida and is scheduled to be released on December 14, 2031. |
Demetrius Holloway
Richard "Maserati Rick" Carter
Terrance "Boogaloo" Brown located left side end
Reginald "Rocking Reggie" Brown Right side end Detroit Notorious "The Best Friends"
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The Best Friends
If Butch Jones was the ideal Motor City drug kingpin of the early 1980s, Demetrius Holloway held that title for the final half of the decade. Holloway was a business mans gangster with a lethal reputation on the streets. He dressed like a corporate CEO, yet wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty when the situation called for it. Smart, magnetic, feared and respected. Holloway personified every quality of the perfect crime lord. It was a powerful mix that took him to astronomic heights. “It sounds clichéd, but in this case it couldn’t be truer, if Demetrius had been brought up under different socioeconomic conditions, he could have been a business entrepreneur or a CEO of a major corporation,” said Steve Fishman, his attorney at the time of his death. That obviously didn’t happen and he became the Demetrius Holloway that Detroit knows today. But he had a lot of natural qualities that would have translated to the legitimate world. He was razor sharp and an entrepreneur in the most basic sense. People gravitated to him. Starting out as a dispute of Frank Usher and his Murder Row gang back in the 1970s. Holloway took a bust for moving stolen goods across state lines in 1980 and did five years in federal prison. Released in 1985 he hit the streets and began to start his legacy. Using an inheritance from his grandfather and some money he had stashed away before being imprisoned, he bought his first major cocaine shipment from Art Derrick and Doc Curry. Parlaying the money he made from his early drug sales. Holloway put together a successful legitimate business portfolio. Within two years he was supplying over three quarters of the Detroits crack houses. Quickly becoming Detroits top wholesaler. Holloway sold most of his drugs to the Chambers Brothers, a drug empire headed by four siblings from Arkansas who operated over 100 crack houses throughout southeast Michigan. He became close with the gangs two leaders, B.J. and Larry, and they became his workhorses. B.J. ran all the street activities and Larry bought the Broadmore apartment complex on West Grand Boulevard and turned it into a vice emporium which is a one stop shop offering drugs, sex and gambling all day everyday. By maintaining ownership of a popular chain of athletic shoe stores called The Sports Jam and hulking quantities of real estate both locally and across the country, Holloway was able to wash his money just as fast as he was making it. He was a heavy gambler, he often went to Las Vegas and Atlantic City for card and dice binges that could either win or lose him hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. Born on the East Side of the city Demetrius Holloway grew up in the same neighborhood and the same social circles as future world champion prizefighter Tommy Hearns. Before he got into a life of crime, he tried to live on the straight and narrow, taking a job as a postman. But it was a half hearted risk. Holloway was drawn to the streets like a moth to a light. And he was a natural. Headquartering his operations in the Chalk and Cue thats a pool hall he ran on West Seven Mile. Holloway recruited his childhood friend Richard “Maserati Rick” Carter to be his right hand man and fastly started a rapid rise up the gangland ranks. Quickly he went from buying a dozen kilos at a time from Art Derrick and Doc Curry to accomplishing a wholesale deal with Colombians in the Bahamas, cutting out the middle men and smuggling the bricks through U.S. Customs himself. Demetrius was a true Don, him and Maserati Rick were holding it down for real. Rick was more flamboyant, but Demetrius was calling all the major shots. They both used to hit the clubs all iced up and sporting full length mink coats. We all knew from the day Demetrius got out of prison from doing his five piece in 1985, it was only a matter of time before he became The Man. That’s just how he was. A Couple of old G’s hooked him up to start and he got his feet wet, learned the new game on the street, which was crack, and blew up quick. While Holloway was dangerous but deliberate, those he surrounded himself with were brash and ruthless with absolutely no method to their madness, and they would turn out to be his downfall. Quick to remove himself from the day to day street actions of his organization, Holloway outsourced much of his strong arm work. Maserati Rick, was a self-enforcer, he was a Golden Gloves boxing champ as a teenager and Holloway’s eyes and ears on the street, was only one man. He needed help and a crew of heavily strapped foot soldiers watching his back. That help would come in the form of the Brown brothers, four siblings, each a year a part in age that were raised on the East Side. Who headed a crew of like-minded goons called The Best Friends. Terrance “Boogaloo” Brown, Reginald “Rocking Reggie” Brown, Gregory “Ghost” Brown, and Ezra “Wizard” Brown were hungry for a piece of the pie in the local underworld and made sure everyone knew it with their quick-trigger antics. Dark and cruel, they each cut impressive figures, all standing, six-fee-two and weighing over 234 pounds. Ghost and Wizard, the two eldest brothers, had t-shirts, jackets and hats made up with the words “Best Friends” across the front in big and bold letters. They were all known to drive the same cars, different color BMWs or custom Suzuki Samurais and kill anyone who dared get in the way of their climb to the top. Not to mention countless others. While its ancestors like YBI and Pony Down murdered in the name of profit and greed, the Best Friends did it for pure fun. Upon meeting the Browns and their crew at a downtown nightclub, Holloway tabbed them his official enforcement unit and began posting them. They were strong and intimidating and took pleasure in hurting people. “There was a no-tolerance policy with Demetrius,” said Boyd. “If you crossed him once, you were done.” Maserati, on the other hand, who was Demetrius guy on the street, was more laid back and some people probably thought they could take advantage of it. That was why they brought in the Best Friends to use as muscle. They were straight thugs, coldhearted killers that hired themselves out for different enforcement jobs. Eventually things got out of hand with them and Demetrius and Rick couldn’t control their activities anymore. The Brown Brothers took over became to become the most ruthless and notorious gang in Detroit history. |