Gang leader Tavon White’s trial testimony describes rise to power at Baltimore jail

By Justin Fenton December 1 at 10:38 PM

The former leader of the Black Guerrilla Family at the Baltimore City Detention Center spoke publicly for the first time Monday from the witness stand, describing his unlikely rise to power and the gang’s inner workings.

Tavon White, 37, has admitted heading a racketeering conspiracy as part of a plea deal in which he also agreed to testify against the eight remaining defendants — inmates and corrections staff members — charged in the case.

White told Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Harding that when he entered the city jail in 2009 on an attempted-murder charge, his chief goals were to “make money” and “run the jail, pretty much.”



“I wasn’t trying to be some flunky,” White testified.

Prosecutors allege that the defendants on trial — two inmates, five corrections officers and a kitchen worker — were part of a conspiracy that involved drug dealing, extortion and witness intimidation.

At the center of the allegations is White, who prosecutors have said made four corrections officers pregnant. The revelations have received national attention.

As part of the agreement, White will serve 12 years in prison, to run concurrently with a 20-year sentence for the unrelated attempted-murder conviction.

White walked into the courtroom at U.S. District Court in Baltimore with extra security around him. He leaned forward attentively in the witness box, answering Harding’s questions with little hesitation.

White said he joined the Black Guerrilla Family in 1997 while serving time for murder at a prison in Hagerstown, Md. That was more than a decade before the gang’s hold on the state’s correctional institutions would be thrust into the spotlight as part of a 2009 indictment about corruption.


As time passed, the gang’s influence spread from inside the state’s jails and prisons to the streets. But White said he was not an active member of the gang after his release.



After he was arrested on the attempted-murder charge in 2009, he rejoined the gang at the Baltimore jail. Even though he wasn’t among the highest-ranking BGF members, he was chosen to lead the BGF in the jail.

Being a leader enabled a member to “sit back and kick your feet up,” he said.

In one recorded phone conversation played for the jury, an adoring corrections officer, Adena Rice, can be heard asking White how he accumulated so much power.

“I stepped back for the first week, watched who was who, who was doing what, and I made myself into what I was,” White told her.

A key mechanism for the gang’s rise to power, prosecutors have said, was taking over the “working man” posts within the jail. Those slots are supposed to go to inmates displaying good conduct.

Instead, prosecutors say, the BGF persuaded staff members to put gang members into the positions, which facilitated the smuggling of drugs and cellphones.

I didn't know he turned snitch

Smuggling opportunities abounded for inmates at city jail, gang leader testifies

The way Tavon White describes it, being sent to the Baltimore City Detention Center was no reason for Black Guerrilla Family gang members to stop hustling.

Key to keeping the money flowing, however, was recruiting corrections officers to smuggle tobacco, marijuana, prescription pills and cell phones into the jail. The officers were also needed to transport the items from one section of the jail to the other, and to help tip inmates to looming "shakedowns."

White told jurors in U.S. District Court on Tuesday that one sergeant, Michelle Ricks, went so far as to join the gang by learning its pledge, reciting it for White in a recreation room after he instructed her to provide her "oatmeal" — code for oath.

During White's second day of testimony in the wide-ranging racketeering conspiracy trial, the 37-year-old convicted murderer gave jurors new insight into how he says he presided over the illicit marketplace inside the jail.

His testimony directly connected several of the eight defendants — including Ricks — to the enterprise.

Prosecutors say White was the leader of the BGF gang within the jail for years. But he was also one of the first to plead guilty last year, and said he is hoping his testimony will lead to a sentence that will run alongside a 20-year prison term already handed down in an unrelated case.


Defense attorneys have not yet had the opportunity to cross-examine White, but said in opening statements that his claims were merely innuendo from someone trying to impress the government to reduce his sentence.

White's testimony, along with wiretapped phone conversations with corrections officers who have already pleaded guilty, painted a picture of a facility so rich with opportunity that inmates were able to be selective over the business relationships into which they entered.

For example, White testified that Ricks set up a phone conversation between White and one of her sons, who offered to sell him 100 extra-strength Percocet pain pills for $2,200. White passed. He could get them for $1,600 or less, he testified.

Ricks' attorney, Edward Sussman, said in opening arguments that the Navy veteran and mother of three was not caught doing anything illegal on any wiretapped calls or law enforcement surveillance.

If Baltimore inmates were sent to Garrett County and Garrett County inmates were sent to Baltimore City, wouldn't be a lot of knowin' anyone from the hood. Great way to keep the distance, wonder why the wonders in the correction business didn't think of it?

If she used "Green Dots" — the prepaid debit cards cited by prosecutors as the currency in the jail — "it was her own money," Sussman said.

White said Ricks aided the inmates, but she refused to smuggle contraband into the facility.

He said another corrections officer on trial, Travis Paylor, "always had pills." White said Paylor offered package deals that became more attractive as inmates increased the amount they were purchasing. Again, White said, he passed when the price went out of his range.

"I already had a lot of other avenues of getting it myself," White said. By that time, he estimated he had already paid Paylor $10,000 for his services.

White testified that he could make $10,000 to $20,000 monthly.


Paylor's attorney, Michael Montemarano, said earlier in the trial that authorities found no drugs in a raid of his home.

"Doesn't any business have inventory?" he asked jurors. "Not this one, apparently."

The number of inmates and corrections officers named by White, sometimes only by nickname, has grown with each day of testimony.

"The unindicted co-conspirators are outnumbering the indicted co-conspirators," defense attorney Carmen Hernandez complained to U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz.

White said the business relationships with female officers often veered into the romantic. His testimony and the recorded phone calls were full of high school-esque drama and gossip surrounding inmate-officer relationships.

In one recorded call with officer Tiffany Linder, who has pleaded guilty, White tells how he could have had sex with another corrections officer but passed. The claim ignited jealousy in Linder's voice.

"I respect you for telling me that," she said. "I'm not trying to let that stuff get to me …The past be the past. I just be worried about the future, for real."

The revelation that White impregnated four corrections officers while incarcerated has garnered headlines around the world.

Asked Tuesday to name those officers, White stumbled while ticking off their names, and chuckled.

White testified that he had personal knowledge of sexual relationships between inmates and corrections officer Clarissa Clayton, a defendant at the trial, and had to broker a peace agreement between two inmates fighting over Michelle McNair, a food service worker at the jail who is on trial and who White said helped facilitate smuggling.

When White and his cell mate Kenneth Parham cooked up a scheme to use Parham's lead paint settlement checks to invest in contraband, he said, corrections officer Riccole Hall helped bring them the legal paperwork that Parham needed to sign.

According to White, Hall was having sex "all day long" with an inmate who was also an ally of the BGF. Prosecutors have said that Hall had a relationship with an inmate who described her as his wife, and resigned after pictures of her — including one showing his name tattooed on her wrist — were found on the inmate's phone.

"She complained about him always wanting to go into the [staff dining room] to have sex," White testified.

@ Scorsese,

You think Tavon is going to be whacked or demoted?

Never trust a mulignan.

Old articles

5-21-1985

LOS ANGELES -- A series of violent crimes, including two murders at the Nickerson Gardens housing project, has aroused fears that the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang is moving into the city's urban drug trade.

"They are apparently learning that controlling cell blocks is not nearly as much fun as controlling blocks in the city," said Bob Carter, a former police lieutenant who now serves as a member of the Board of Prison Terms. "They are doing everything they can to lay low in the prison and get involved in the action back on the outside."

Carter helped organize a recent meeting with the prison board and detectives specializing in prison gang activities after a Black Guerrilla Family member and two associates were charged with the killings in March of two Nickerson Gardens residents.

Police arrested Michael Dorrough, 31, a gang member, and Andre Mathews, 30, and Herman Coleman, 29, on April 4. The three recent parolees, who lived at Nickerson Gardens, all are awaiting trial in Compton Superior Court.

Although their arrest prompted the meeting between prison board members and police, detectives also have become alarmed by violence and widespread rumors that gang members are stockpiling weapons.

Despite the arrests, Nickerson Gardens residents believe that the Black Guerilla Family still is behind much of the drug trafficking in the sprawling housing complex, according to an account published in today's Los Angeles Times.

The Times quoted one unidentified resident of the project, who said she was paid $300 a week to allow the prison gang 's members to sell rock cocaine from her apartment.

"They pay very well, as long as they're making money themselves," the woman said. "They were bringing in three grand ($3,000) a night at my place."

The woman said Black Guerrilla Family members do not hesitate to use violence against individuals they suspect of crossing them in drug deals or cooperating with the police.

"They'll smile in your face and kill you with a grin," she said. "They'll kill you like nothing."

The Black Guerrilla Family was organized in California prisons during the 1960s and early '70s at a time when white and Hispanic prisoners also were forming gangs . Officials estimate that the Black Guerrilla Family numbers about 400 in California prisons and about 200 on the streets of Los Angeles.


GANG MAY PUNISH SUSPECTED SLAYER
San Jose Mercury News (CA) - Sunday, August 27, 1989
Readability: >12 grade level (Lexile: 1360L)
Author: MICHAEL DORGAN, Mercury News Oakland Bureau

Tyrone Robinson, the 25-year-old ex-convict accused of killing former Black Panther leader Huey Newton, may have more to worry about than a murder charge. Robinson, who allegedly has told police he is a soldier in the notorious Black Guerrilla Family prison gang , could suffer swifter and harsher punishment from gang members than from the law, according to informed sources.

If Robinson is a member of the BGF, then he apparently has violated one of the organization's most sacred rules: that members remain "invisible," telling no one -- especially not police -- of their affiliation. And if he is not a member of the BGF, he could face equally dire consequences for posing as one. In either case, his penalty could be death. Law enforcement officials and others say the BGF's leadership routinely hands out death sentences that are swiftly executed by loyal soldiers within the state's prison system and on the streets.

''When he gets to the joint, he could be in deep" trouble, said a source in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office who asked not to be identified because of previous death threats from BGF members. "Unless, that is, the BGF is so happy he took out Newton that they forgive him."

Newton's former Black Panther Party and the Black Guerrilla Family at one time were almost indistinguishable. Founded by prison revolutionary George Jackson, who also was a member of the Panthers, the BGF surrounded itself with much of the same Maoist political theory adopted by the Panthers and, like the Panthers, advocated armed revolution by America's blacks .

The main difference between the groups was that most Panthers were outside prison -- and most BGF members were not.

BGF has grown

Now the Panther Party has dissolved, while the BGF apparently has grown. In 1981, the state Department of Justice estimated that the BGF had 200 members statewide. The source in the district attorney's office, who has prosecuted many BGF cases, estimates that membership now may be as high as 450.

According to a secret BGF manual, the organization has a military structure, with ranks ranging from "soldier" to "supreme commander." Members, who are given Swahili names to replace their "slave names," may move up or down in rank, but the only way out is death.

In a 1987 court hearing in Oakland, a member who "rolled over" and testified for the prosecution in an alleged BGF murder case was asked, "How do dropouts get out of the BGF?"

''As long as you can stay away from the BGF, then assumingly you are OK," said the lapsed member, according to a transcript of the hearing. "But the thing is, the first chance any BGF member have at getting to a dropout, he is supposed to kill him."

The BGF still has a rigid code of conduct and retains its program of preparation for armed revolution. The secret manual includes a list of offenses, including heroin use and "cowardice in battle," that are punishable by death. And a set of "standards and procedures" urges members to cultivate selfless devotion and to "submit totally to the guidance, rules and policies of the organization."

''These Standards and Procedures on recruitment are to ensure that we meet with maximum success in our endeavors to construct an effective and highly sophisticated organizing and fighting force capable of sustaining the forward motion of our War effort," the manual says.

But the effort has not stayed intact.

The BGF suffered a deep division about seven years ago over whether members should be involved in drug trafficking, sources said. They said there were a lot of shootouts among BGF members on the streets of Oakland, and that the drug-dealing faction apparently won.

Hostile takeover

Court records indicated that several BGF members worked as enforcers for local drug rings, including Harvey Whisenton's "Funktown" outfit, which controlled a sizable turf in East Oakland. The source in the district attorney's office said court testimony from several criminal cases indicated that the BGF tried to take control of drug dealing in Oakland several years ago by infiltrating Whisenton's gang .

''They wanted to find out who his source was, and then they planned to kill him," he said, adding that the alleged plot collapsed when Whisenton was arrested on drug charges and sent to prison .

The source said the local BGF lacked the strength to take on such major dealers as Darryl Reed, who was arrested earlier this year while allegedly cooking up a 44-pound batch of "crack" cocaine -- the largest ever confiscated in the United States.

''Reed had 40 to 50 guys; they'd shoot back," he said.

Retreat to West Oakland

Abandoning the attempt to take over the city's entire drug market, the BGF retreated to West Oakland, where its members controlled a modest turf and made forays into to East Oakland to rob and extort other dealers, the source said. Robinson allegedly complained that Newton had robbed and stolen drugs and money from various BGF dealers, leading police to speculate that Robinson considered the slaying a way of advancing in the drug-dealing organization run by the BGF.

It apparently was within BGF turf that Newton was killed with three bullets to the head from a 9mm semiautomatic an hour before dawn last week.

Police said the shooting followed a demand by Newton, who apparently had been smoking crack through the night, that Robinson give him some drugs. Robinson, who apparently refused, told police that Newton had robbed him of 14 "rocks" of crack and $160 a few months ago, and also had robbed or stolen drugs from other BGF dealers.

Sgt. Robert Chenault said Friday that Robinson has admitted shooting Newton, but claims to have done so in self-defense after the former Panther leader pulled a gun. Chenault said, however, there is no evidence to support that claim.

Police said that rather than defend himself, Robinson shot Newton to advance himself within the ranks of the BGF. As Robinson pulled the trigger, they said, he reportedly boasted, "I'll make rank, man; I'll make rank."
Black Guerrilla Family history

(box)1971: BGF Founder George Jackson is killed, along with three guards and two prison trusties, in what authorities say was a escape attempt from San Quentin and Jackson admirers say was an assassination.

(box)1980: A state attorney general's report links the 1979 shooting of Jackson lawyer Faye Stender to a BGF prisonbreak plot that allegedly involved plans to kidnap foreign consulate officials in San Francisco. Stender was shot six times after being forced to write a note saying she had "betrayed" Jackson. She survived but later committed suicide.

(box)1981: Arrests in San Jose and Berkeley allegedly break up a BGF plot to kill three prison officials. Two BGF members were taken into custody at the home of Harold Lloyd Brice, an alleged BGF "general" living in San Jose.

(box)1986: The President's Commission on Organized Crime ties the BGF to organized crime.

(box)1988: Six inmates of Alameda County's Santa Rita Jail are injured in a brawl after several BGF members invade barracks occupied by white inmates. Jail officials say the fight resulted from a bungled drug delivery.

(box)1989: Johnny Spain, a Black Panther who was convicted of two counts of murder in connection with Jackson's attempted San Quentin breakout, is granted a new trial because a federal appeals court rules the shackles he was forced to wear in court hurt his defense. The ruling is announced Tuesday, the day Huey Newton is gunned down in Oakland.

2-9-15

BALTIMORE (AP) — The same prosecutors who painted a gang member as the architect of a widespread drug and cellphone smuggling conspiracy said Monday during his sentencing that he actually made the prison safer despite impregnating four guards and directing crime on the streets while behind bars.

Tavon White was sentenced to 12 years in prison — significantly less than the maximum 20 years he faced — after prosecutors told the judge he quelled violence by instituting a no-stabbing policy among gang members and then took a substantial risk by testifying against others in the ring.

White, a commander of the Black Guerilla Family, oversaw a contraband smuggling operation inside the Baltimore City Detention Center that grabbed headlines and resulted in a sweeping indictment of 44 people, including 27 corrections officers. Thirty-five of those charged pleaded guilty, including White; eight maintained their innocence and went to trial. A federal jury last week convicted five people, including two corrections officers, two inmates and a kitchen worker of racketeering.

Once the federal government's primary target, and the poster child for the deep-seated and rampant corruption within Baltimore's jails, White's testimony became prosecutors' most valuable asset. He spent five days on the stand.

During opening statements in the two-month trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Harding told jurors, "we're about to go into a strange place. An upside-down world where inmates ran the prison and correctional officers took directions from the gang leader, all of them participating in an ongoing contraband and narcotics trafficking organization inside the prison."

Prosecutors relied on White, who once declared in a jailhouse phone call, "This is my jail," and "I am the law," to prove it.

At the sentencing Monday, Harding told U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander that White deserved a sizeable reduction from the maximum sentence because of his cooperation. Harding said that although White played a significant role in the conspiracy, he helped make the jail safer, and noted that White took a substantial risk testifying against other members of the notoriously violent gang.

"He has assumed a risk he will have to live with for the rest of his life," Harding said. "It took great courage to do what he did. This is a man in danger.

"He became a favorite of prison officials because he quelled violence," Harding continued. "He generally made conditions less violent than it would have been otherwise. The government thinks that in a way, he was a positive influence at BCDC."

During the trial, White testified that prison guards often engaged in sexual relationships with inmates, and were willing participants in the contraband smuggling conspiracy that involved sneaking drugs, tobacco and cellphones into the prison.

White, who impregnated four of the guards while in the jail while awaiting trial on an attempted murder charge, said he never forced a guard to participate.

"I didn't have to," White testified. "I had my children's mothers, and plenty of other guards willing to do it for money."

White's attorney, Gary Proctor, told Hollander on Monday that White is making an effort to turn his life around and has earned his high school equivalency while behind bars. Proctor added that even if White wanted to return to gang activity, his reputation as a cooperating witness in such a high-profile case would make that impossible.

"The agents, the marshals_they all like Mr. White," Proctor said. "And who would take him back? No one will sell drugs with him. It's not like the BGF would throw open their doors and say, 'Welcome back.'"

Before handing up White's sentence, Hollander told White that his role in the systematic corruption at the jail "eroded public confidence in the system," but added that he "made attempts to make amends" by coming forward and cooperating with prosecutors just days after he was charged.

"It took a lot of courage with a gang as violent as BGF to come forward and testify," Hollander said. "You deserve credit."

White is already serving a 20-year state sentence on an attempted murder charge. The federal sentence will be served concurrently. Proctor said Monday that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has not yet determined where White will serve his sentence.

what a revolting story.

it's all a fix.

I clicked this to see how they corrupted the prison. Like mobsters did in the 70's and like when Persico banged a female attorney.

Some gang leader impregnated 4 guards.... . Jesus Christ. I guess I'm satisfied.

From California prison system to Baltimore?

I always thought Baltimore,DC,Philly,Detroit were just not ever gonna have outside gangs or organizations swoop in and take over. I thought the same thing about Newark,NJ but I was proven wrong about that.


There's a film with a cult following called Bound By Honor ,sometimes called Blood In Blood Out which covers roughly the same story as American Me...about origins of the Eme.(mexican mafia)...well it's a LONG.....and unintentionally funny film and in the prison scenes they cover the BGF also.

Delroy Lindo aka West Indian Archie from Malcolm X plays the leader of the "BGA" the Black Guerilla Army

[img]http://www.trbimg.com/img-542be29d/turbine/bcp-ghosts-of-bgf-scandals-past-20141001-001/377/300x377[/img]

D.C is still full of Crews but do have MS-13.
Philly also have crews but with LK, BPS, and a few UBN & Crips.
Detroit have a mix of DTOs and Chicago mobs / L.A gangs.

Thanks for the info on Bound By Honor.

BGF is supposedly in other states as well.

Blood in blood out is classic thought it was kinda main stream. John Amos right? Haven't seen it in years HBO always kept in rotation back in the day. Prison rape scare the kids.

@BF

thanks..the flick is on youtube..everybody is in it...danny trejo,ving rhames, billy bob thornton...very long film...


@pmac, I think you're thinking about American Me..with Edward JAMES OLMOS and not JOHN AMOS (the father from Good Times)..same story basically but american me has a more serious tone

marlo stanfield above you are correct and marlo is probably the worst/baddest tv villain ever hands down or uncle jack/todd from breaking bad.

one of these guys got 4 female c.o.s preg same time. just started watching black is the new orange with the girl and she asked me would a girl really get pregnant by a guard yes honey more often then you think specially back in the day.

former corrections officer releases book about the Baltimore City Jail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJioGEST4MA



A man who spent more than 18 years working as a correctional officer inside the notorious Baltimore City Detention Center has written a book about his experiences.

It's called "CO -- the True Story of the Baltimore City Jail.”

The city detention center made national headlines about two years ago, when dozens of detainees and correctional officers were indicted. Author Ralph Johnson says the environment that led to that scandal had been developing for many years before that.

“You basically try to do your job,” he said. “But to be honest it's all about survival. Every day you go in there it's about different adversities.”

Adversities including fights: “We would go in sections where it looked like an all out Neanderthal battle,” he said.

And pressure on correctional officers to commit crimes themselves: “You have to have a serious sense of dignity and pride in what you do because the temptation is there,” he said.

Johnson's book details gang wars in the early 2000s, between the Bloods gang, and a gang that was new to Baltimore -- the Black Guerilla Family, or BGF.

“So much blood, so much gore came out of this back gate that it was just incredible,” he said.

Eventually, the BGF took control of the jail itself, with gang leader Tavon White in charge of an operation that involved tens of thousands of dollars in smuggled drugs, tobacco and other goods.

The state prison system called in federal authorities to investigate. That investigation led to and convictions of more than 40 inmates and correctional officers.

Ralph Johnson knows many of them.

State officials say they have added more cameras to BCDC, and hardened searches of employees as they enter and leave the facility.

Johnson says there are many brave men and women working here. “I'd just like to put on the record that there's a lot of brave men and women who go in there and put their lives on the line every single day,” he said.

But the state should focus more on who gets to work at the jail, so they don't need to do so much monitoring after they're hired.

“I think it's about changing a culture and recruiting people because if you look at a lot of the officers, the CO's that were indicted in the corruption scandal, a lot of them had prior records,” Johnson said. “A lot of them had a lot of issues that didn't make them suitable for this type of environment.”

Everything in the book, he says, is true.

“When I went home crying that was true,” Johnson said. “When I saw CO's carried out in an ambulance that was true. When I saw inmates hanging, on the floor with knives in their neck all that was true.”

He says he wanted to let the public know what correctional officers go through on a daily basis -- putting their lives on the line, under constant stress.

“It's very brutal,” he said. “Very brutal, very graphic because I wanted the people to feel the pain, the anxiety. I did not want to sugar-coat it. I wanted people to know what this animal is over there that's called the Baltimore City Detention Center. You're coexisting with human beings that do not want to be locked in. They do not want to be confined, it's against their nature.”

Johnson is also calling for more rehabilitation programs for inmates. And he wants kids to know there is nothing glamorous about being locked up inside BCDC.

The book is available online.