Black Guerilla Family Making Inroads on Street, in Prisons BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) - In April, federal authorities in Maryland indicted 24 members and associates of a prison gang called the "Black Guerilla Family", or "BGF." A month later, the U.S. Attorney indicted 42 members and associates of the "Bloods" gang. And in June, an alleged member of the BGF gang was sentenced by a Baltimore City judge to life plus 20 years for the brutal murder of a fellow gang member. Recent stories have raised awareness of gang activity in the suburbs. WYPR's Art Buist has been looking into the State's efforts to fight gangs, and in particular, the activities of the Black Guerilla Family prison gang.

The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services houses about 22-thousand prisoners. You're listening to the sound of inmates at the Baltimore City Detention Center, in holding cells, waiting to be transported for court appearances. Depending on how those court appearances go, these inmates could wind-up going home or getting sent to any of the 24 facilities operated by the Division of Correction to serve their sentences. One way or another, chances are the inmates will have to deal with the Black Guerrilla Family gang, or "BGF" as it's known.

"It's no secret that the BGF runs the prison system and the Bloods run the streets; but the BGF is starting to have a big impact on the streets based on the information we've been receiving."

That's a ranking corrections official, whose name we can't reveal because of the sensitive nature of his work. He told WYPR that if a new inmate doesn't have a strong reputation on the street, or an existing gang affiliation, they are likely to join a prison gang. If they become a member of BGF, they will know where they stand in the organization.

"Depending on the location, inside of corrections, you have a leadership structure, or BGF structure, at each one of our maintaining institutions. So, any time a new BGF member comes in to that particular institution a hierarchy is already established there."

The corrections official told WYPR that the general public is unaware of the level of sophistication and organization present in modern gangs.

"When you're talking about the BGF, every department that our agency has, or the military may have, they have. They have their own intelligence department, Sergeant-at-arms, who is responsible for the weapons, a financial department."

This level of specialization leads to recruitment of members who have a wide range of skills.

"So, they look for a particular skill in a person, maybe you are good with computers or maybe you are good with money; they bring you in for that factor."

Another troubling trend in new-member recruiting for the BGF and other gangs is the participation of people who are attracted to a gang lifestyle, who have otherwise been law-abiding.

"They're recruiting individuals who don't have a criminal background because those are the ones who can get in and infiltrate law enforcement; they are able to clear a lot of the background investigations that are done on them."

When the U.S. Attorney for Maryland recently announced indictments of 24 BGF members and associates, the indictment included three corrections officers and one prison employee.

The Black Guerilla Family was first discovered in Maryland in 1997, when BGF documents were found at the Maryland House of Corrections Annex, in Jessup. The group has since spread throughout the state.

The president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, Jon Burroughs, told WYPR, the BGF actually started out as a political organization.


"They started back in really the late 60's early 70's as kind of a splinter group from the Black Panthers. Originally, they were known as the Black Vanguard."

Burroughs who has been in law enforcement for 14 years, and works as a gang investigator in southern Maryland, told WYPR that gangs are a complicated mix of subtitle elements.

"A lot of gangs, particularly ones formed during the Civil Rights movement, they started out with the right idea, particularly a lot of black gangs. A lot of the gangs start out with the right intention, and absolute power corrupts and they end up turning to crime as a means of financing their organization and gaining power."

Burroughs also said that it will take more than "law enforcement" to diminish the power of gangs.

"The police are not going to police themselves out of the gang problem. It is a social problem. And, society is going to have to take a stake in it, and stand up against it. And, as we are right now, that is not happening and in the foreseeable future I don't see it happening."

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network includes about 300 gang investigators from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Each jurisdiction has its own program for fighting gangs.

"In the state of Maryland, there are different [drug laws than say, or] gang laws [rather,] than say in the state of Virginia. Our gang laws here don't have a lot of teeth from the aspect of an individual being in a gang and incurring a great deal of extra penalties that gang membership."

In other words, Maryland law is set up for individual crimes committed by groups of people to be prosecuted; but makes it difficult to tie defendants together for greater penalties for engaging in a criminal enterprise.

Virginia, however, has 32 laws that are specifically aimed a gangs. Randy Crank is president of the Virginia Gang Investigators Association, and is a sergeant with a local gang unit in Virginia. He spoke to WYPR about some of the laws in his state.

"Probably the one we use the most is our Gang Participation, which is an enhanced code. In other words, if we have gang members and they are only committing misdemeanors -- as long as they are committing them on behalf of the gang, we can also charge them with Felony Gang Participation, which, you know, is up to 10 years."

For example, if gang members are committing assaults as part of gang initiations, the assaults, individually, might only carry a sentence of up to a year; but if the police can show that several members committed assaults on behalf of the gang, they can all be charged with a felonies, with a 10-year penalty.

There are other Virginia laws aimed at enhancing penalties for use of certain weapons favored by some gangs, and laws to discourage gang membership.

"We have recruitment laws, in other words if a juvenile tries to recruit more juveniles into a gang we can charge them. If an adult tries to recruit a juvenile into a gang it turns it into a felony."

Maryland doesn't have a state anti-racketeering law. For years, prosecutors have been unsuccessful in their attempts to get a Racketerring And Illegal Criminal Organizations or "RICO" statute through the Maryland legislature. There is, however, a well-established federal RICO statute. The United States Attorney for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein, explains how that statue has been used to prosecute gang crimes in Maryland

"In our Southern Division office in Greenbelt, we prosecuted a case against a group of alleged MS-13 gang members. There had been a number state prosecutions of individual gang members for individual discreet crimes; but by bringing this case in federal court, we were able to group all those crimes together. Crimes that were committed by various members of the gang at different time periods and in different counties could all be brought together in one federal case."

U.S. Attorney Rosenstein, emphasized that federal and local officials in Maryland have a good working relationship; and they work closely for investigations and to determine which cases should be brought in federal or state court. But even they admit that stepped up prosecution is only a partial solution to the growing problem of gangs.
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