Indicted Bloods Member Ignored Federal Prosecutor's Warnings BALTIMORE. MD (wypr) - Last March, more than 20 of Baltimore's most violent career criminals showed up at a call-in by police, prosecutors and parole officials in the squad room of Baltimore's Eastern District. Yet one of them, a member of the violent Tree Top Piru Bloods, immediately drew the attention of almost everyone in the room.

Twenty-five year-old Kevin Gary strolled in casually, wearing a red tank top, red sneakers, a red baseball cap with a large white B on the front and, to cap it off, red contact lenses. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Weinstein spoke directly to Gary, who smiled as he sat at a table.

TAPE: (22 SECONDS)
IC: Kevin, my friend with the Bloods contact lenses, did you have to go to Bloods eye doctor to get the Bloods contact lenses? You're an ACC and a violent career criminal based on just your work in the year 2000. You have two convictions with possession with intent in the year 2000 and armed robbery all in the year 2000. You managed to do in a year, you became an armed career criminal in one year. And you did that despite beating a murder and a robbery.

Gary and the rest of those in attendance were warned that they were being targeted for Project Exile, a federal initiative, which prosecutes the most violent career criminals for mandatory sentences. Those convicted spend their time behind bars at federal facilities, most often thousands of miles from home.

Weinstein told the gathering that

TAPE: (22 SECONDS)
IC: you're going to stop the violence yourselves, or we're going to stop it for you. And if we have to stop it for you, we're gonna put you away for what will seem like the rest of your life. And for some of you, it's going to be the rest of your life. It's that simple. In fact, any one of you who picks up a gun, or goes near a gun after you leave this room tonight, gives a whole new meaning to the word, stupid,' because we just told you what's going to happen to you, if you do that.

Weinstein issued a personal warning to Gary.

TAPE: (5 SECONDS)
IC: You're looking at 17-and-a-half to 22 for drugs, 15-to-life, with a mandatory minimum of 15 for a gun, and 30-to-life for both

According to Monday's indictment, Gary ignored the warning. A few days after the call-in, Gary, known as The Human Torch, allegedly assaulted fellow TTP Bloods member Orlando Gilyard. Two months later, the indictment states that Gary and fellow TTP Bloods member Jerrod Fenwick, choked Jewels Cook to death, stole his cash, a gun and a kilogram of heroin.

Over the next several months, according to intelligence gleaned from letters and telephone wiretaps, Gary bought and sold thousands of dollars in cocaine and heroin; intimidated jurors in a case involving a Bloods member; ordered robberies and at least one murder. He also enforced the TTP Bloods brutal code of discipline on fellow gang members, including members of the female auxiliary, the Pirettes.

Gary was arrested in East Baltimore on Monday and arraigned the same day.

U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein Monday's indictment is a reminder to remind gang members, like Gary, that they would face the serious consequences for their crimes

TAPE: (XX SECONDS)
IC: One of the challenges we face when you're dealing with people, who are part of organizations like this is, you need to send them a pretty powerful message to stop. Because they're part of an organization that has a code, that has rules, and part of those rules, according to this indictment are that they have to continue to engage in crime. And so our goal is to raise the price high enough to let them know the penalty is going to be high enough that we deter them from engaging in continued criminal conduct.

The promise of long prisons sentences may have seemed abstract to Kevin Gary and others like him. The U.S. Attorney's office believes the reality of this week's indictments may paint a more convincing picture.

I'm Sunni Khalid, reporting in Baltimore, for 88-1, WYPR.

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