Federal court sentencings will continue into late August for members of Project Crud, also dubbed the Westside Crew, a Charlottesville gang that spread drug violence for more than 10 years. Ringleader Louis Antonio Bryant (a.k.a. Tinio or B-Stacks) will face the harshest penalties at a hearing in U.S. District court August 18.
A longtime gang leader and crack dealer who was arrest-ed for kidnapping and attempt-ed murder in 2004, Bryant faces mandatory life in federal prison
for running a con-tinuing criminal enterprise.
The law that helped bring him down, RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) was originally used in the 1970s to prosecute mafia leaders who ordered violent activity; lately it’s been applied to put street gang leaders behind bars.
More than a dozen other men were brought up on charges related to Project Crud. Claiborne Lemar Maupin pleaded guilty in the racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 20 years on June 29. Richard Knajib Johns (a.k.a. Main) was sentenced June 29 to time served for possessing with the intent to distribute 50 pounds of marijuana.
Many Project Crud members turned them-selves in and several testified against Bryant.
Sentencings will continue through August for more than a dozen gang members on charges ranging from murder, attempted murder, malicious wounding, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, possession of firearms while drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.
The Project Crud arrests mark the largest drug distribution bust in the area. Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force Detective Brian O’Donnell, a Charlottesville police officer, says that big arrests have destabilized the drug market, but that gang activity is still evolving in the city. Homegrown, geographically based gangs are becoming organizationally based, O’Donnell says, meaning that “there are people moving freely throughout the city doing what they did before in the neighborhoods.”
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