Gang Sets Up Office In Prison To Conquer The Baltimore Drug Market
Five years ago imprisoned members of the group even ran their own office containing desks, chairs, and computers next to the chapel in a Maryland penitentiary, according to a new report by Ann E. Marimow and Peter Hermann of The Washington Post.
The office served as a place where ranking members met there with community leaders to talk about reducing gang activity in prison and on the streets while the California gang entrenched itself in the area.
Now BFG seems to have successfully embedded into the system as strong after a campaign to target insecure female prison guards to facilitate its criminal enterprise from behind bars.
“This is not a regular group of street thugs,” Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, who likened the gang to the Mafia, told the Post. “They have built a sophisticated infrastructure. We have to destroy that infrastructure.”
In April 13 guards were indicted for racketeering along with seven inmates, including the gang's alleged ring leader, Tavon White, who reportedly impregnated four guards. The guards are accused of helping one BGF leader run a drug-trafficking and money-laundering operation inside Baltimore City Detention Center.
The Post reports that gang's presence on Baltimore's streets has created a vicious circle in which police crackdowns bolsters the gang’s ranks behind bars.
“We’re arresting people and sending them right into the den of that gang haven,” Batts told the Post. “We’re basically helping them recruit by arresting people.”
Officials note that BFG now claims nearly one-third of more than 3,000 identified gang members within the 22,000-inmate system, making it the state’s largest prison gang.
From The Post:
BGF has grown adept, investigators say, at remaking itself even after major law-enforcement crackdowns. It has survived investigations that cut off an arm — because the arm quickly regenerated.
Authorities told The Post that one of the gang's recent leaders simultaneously worked as a youth counselor for a nonprofit, ostensibly committed to reducing violence, while also working as a high-level heroin dealer.