How the Black Guerrilla Family gang took root in Maryland’s prisons July 15, 2013
Five years ago, next to the chapel in a Maryland prison, the Black Guerrilla Family kept its own office with desks, chairs — even computers. The group’s ranking members met there with community leaders, including a former Maryland state trooper, to talk about reducing gang activity in prison and beyond. They wrote a manual filled with self-help rhetoric that they distributed to hundreds of inmates.
All the while, according to court documents and interviews, BGF, a prison gang from California, was methodically taking root in Maryland, plotting an audacious criminal enterprise controlled largely behind bars. Under the noses of Maryland correctional officials, the enterprise grew and flourished into a vast and violent smuggling operation that has spilled onto the streets of Baltimore.
Five years later, there is growing concern that Maryland’s gang problem is as intractable as ever. Arrests of more than a dozen correctional officers and alleged BGF leaders this spring at a state-run detention center in Baltimore revealed what federal prosecutors said was a brazen operation to smuggle in prescription pills, tobacco and cellphones. The alleged ringleader also impregnated four prison guards, investigators said.
Some officials say those arrests did little to slow BGF’s rise. The arrests shook the gang’s leadership at the city jail. But the violence has continued on Baltimore’s streets, and police say cracking down has helped increase the gang’s ranks by delivering new recruits behind bars.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-the-black-guerrilla-family-gang-took-root-in-marylands-prisons/2013/07/15/cc4a9d92-cee7-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html
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