Two years after the original indictments the Baltimore City Prison Scandal case goes to trial.
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“This is my jail” Baltimore Corruption Case Goes To Trial
By Associated Press
Inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, gang members used smuggled cellphones, dealt drugs and had sex with corrupt guards — several of whom they impregnated — who helped them as they ran operations of the Black Guerilla Family, according to court papers in a case alleging widespread corruption at the state-run facility.
“This is my jail, you understand that,” Tavon “Bulldog” White told a friend in a January 2013 call, according to the documents. “I make every final call in this jail … everything come to me.” “Whatever I say is law,” White, a member of the gang that took root in Baltimore’s jails in the 1990s, proclaimed in a call a month later. “Like I am the law.”
Black Guerilla Family members worked with guards to smuggle drugs and cellphones — crucial for the gang to conduct business on the outside — into the jail and other correctional facilities, according to a 2013 federal indictment charging White, 16 other inmates and 27 correctional officers with conspiracy, drug distribution or money laundering charges. Prosecutors also say the ring involved sex between inmates and guards, which led to four officers becoming pregnant.
Nearly all of those charged, including White, accepted plea deals. Trial for two inmates, five correctional officers and another state employee began Wednesday.
In opening statements, prosecutor Robert Harding painted a portrait of a jail plagued with corruption at the hands of guards. Four of the five officers on trial, he said, engaged in sexual relationships with gang members and allowed the enterprise to operate inside the jail with impunity. “There was no raising of the BGF flag on the guard tower, but a gradual assumption of an incredible amount of power by the prison gang inside the prison,” Harding said. “They operated an underground economy in the prison for years. How is this possible? … People who were supposed to be protecting the public interest but instead opted to form an alliance with an exceedingly violent gang.”
Defense attorneys insisted that their clients’ actions did not further the interests of the enterprise. Some attorneys told jurors their clients were innocent of any wrongdoing. The case reveals details about how inmates controlled the very guards tasked with supervising them and provides a glimpse into the strategies of the Black Guerilla Family’s operations on the streets and behind bars. The case also sparked fierce backlash and harsh criticism, leading the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to resign.
Since the indictment, the Public Safety Department has increased personnel in its intelligence and investigations unit and is developing a polygraph unit that can test guard candidates, spokesman Mark Vernarelli said. The department invested $4 million in technology to block calls on unauthorized cellphones. The facility is searched at least once a week, he said.
Several laws were passed this year to try to strengthen security and ensure oversight. One enables the state to remove officers from an institution without pay for bringing a cellphone or charger into a facility, in addition to drugs and alcohol. Another raises fines for visitors who smuggle electronics to inmates and increases jail time for inmates caught with contraband.
While the most recent scandal made national headlines, it is not the first time authorities have tried to dismantle Black Guerilla Family’s stronghold in Baltimore’s jails. Founded in San Francisco in the 1960s, Black Guerilla Family began taking root in Maryland in the 1990s, investigators say. In 2008, BGF became the dominant gang at the jail, where members established a monopoly over the drug trade.
The next year, a federal investigation produced 24 indictments against BGF members and associates in Baltimore. Four were state corrections officers. One defendant in that case, inmate Eric Brown, complained in a phone call that he was unable to smuggle lobster into his maximum-security facility. Instead, he and other BGF members settled for “salmon with shrimp,” ”crab imperial,” champagne and Grey Goose vodka, according to court papers.
Even with improvements and upgrades and increased scrutiny, BGF maintains its stronghold in the jail, said detective Jonathan Hayden, who testified in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Tuesday at a hearing in a separate case against BGF members, associates and others accused of dealing drugs.
“They still have quite a bit of control, especially within the ‘working men,’” Hayden said, referring to inmates assigned janitorial, food service or laundry jobs. “They still have a very good highway of information flowing from the jail onto the street.”
Maryland State Del. Michael Smigiel, who shortly after the indictments toured the Baltimore City Detention Center and called it a “kennel for humans,” said more work is needed, particularly in raising the standards for hiring corrections officers.
“They took care of a specific situation but not the systemic problem,” Smigiel said Tuesday. Prosecutors allege that Joseph “Monster” Young, a Black Guerilla Family floor boss at the jail, administered punishments to two inmates suspected of stealing cellphones from another gang member. Russell Carrington, or “Rutt,” stands accused of trying to recruit correctional officers to help smuggle contraband.
Carrington’s attorney, Tony Martin, maintained his client’s innocence. “He’s not connected to these activities,” Martin said. “Don’t lump them together. Don’t allow the government to get away with a spillover effect.”
Some defense attorneys focused their opening statements on White, who is expected to testify during the trial. Attorneys said White has an incentive to implicate their clients in crimes for which he is wholly responsible and is therefore unreliable.