More info: Local authorities, armed with a powerful new state RICO law, said they charged dozens of leaders and senior members of a notorious West Side street gang with operating a violent, $11 million-a-year heroin and cocaine operation responsible for seven murders and untold violence since the 1990s.
In unsealing the charges Thursday, authorities said the probe began after a victim of violence at the hands of the Black Souls gang was shot to death in a daylight street attack in October after he had refused a bribe of $3,000 to drop charges against several gang leaders for his earlier beating and robbery.
Before sunrise Thursday, Chicago police gang specialists and FBI agents armed with "no knock" search warrants fanned out across the Chicago area to arrest suspects accused of being high-ranking leaders of the gang as well as "top runners" and supervisors who authorities said control its street operations. In all, 23 people were charged with racketeering conspiracy and criminal drug conspiracy in the first use of the tough new state RICO law, while 18 others face more traditional drug or weapons charges, authorities said.
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said the investigation marks a game-changing approach to unraveling Chicago's seemingly intractable gang problem that is responsible for the bulk of the persistent gun violence that has brought Chicago unwanted national attention despite a drop in shootings and homicides so far this year.
"We're not just charging individual people. We're charging the entire enterprise," Alvarez said at a news conference at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
Reaction to the crackdown, though, was mixed. While victims applauded the effort, some residents in the violence-torn West Garfield Park neighborhood considered the Black Souls' stronghold were uncertain that much would change in the wake of the arrests.
"Shootings here, shootings there," said Tyrone Browder, who has lost family members to the seemingly never-ending violence. "I'm not gonna be convinced it's ever gonna stop."
Modeled after the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act famous for taking down mob syndicates, the state law was enacted last June and carries stiff penalties for those convicted of participating in a criminal enterprise — from a mandatory seven- to 30-year prison term for racketeering conspiracy up to life in prison without parole for those found guilty of murder as part of the scheme. Unlike traditional charges that often go after a suspect for a single act, a racketeering case makes the heads of an enterprise responsible for its pattern of misconduct.
Over recent decades, the federal RICO law has been used against Chicago-area gangs, most recently the Latin Kings in Chicago and the Insane Deuces in Aurora. Prosecutors say the approach allows gang leaders to be held accountable for violence they order underlings to carry out.
"You can get at the person who is at the top of the food chain," said former federal prosecutor Christina Egan.
The Black Souls operation is centered near West Madison Street and Pulaski Road and is thought to have a half-dozen factions with about 750 members, a fraction of the size of gangs like the Latin Kings or Gangster Disciples, according to law enforcement.
"They're small, violent and hard to infiltrate," said Chicago police Sgt. Charles Daly, who helped run the investigation. "Tightknit. We never had any luck infiltrating this group."
On the 4000 block of West Monroe Street, the street where the investigation started, the gang's presence is entrenched.
There is a hollowed-out building with gaping holes for windows where residents say the gang sold drugs and a large scrawl of graffiti on a boarded up house that reads in large black letters: "New Life," a nod to a Black Soul faction.
"They think they can control this block, that block, Wilcox, Adams," said Browder, 58. "They buried a guy in the backyard."
The gang was briefly targeted by then-Chicago police Superintendent Jody Weis in 2010 after the murder of high school senior Anthony Carter, resulting in more than 60 arrests on a variety of charges, many of them minor. One Black Souls member, Sharod Pierce, was charged with Carter's slaying and recently was sentenced to 60 years in prison, court records show
According to a 78-page affidavit unsealed in Cook County court Thursday, the RICO investigation began with the October 2012 murder of Claude Snulligan, 36, a cooperating informant who was shot once in the back of the head after paying a cellphone bill at a store on South Pulaski Road. The undercover probe was code-named Operation 40 Cal after the caliber of the gun used to kill Snulligan.
A few months earlier, Snulligan had allegedly been confronted by Teron Odum, identified by authorities as the Black Souls' second-in-command, and two other high-ranking gang members about calling police on the gang's open-air drug activities. The three beat and pistol-whipped Snulligan, robbed him and tried to stuff him in the trunk of a car before leaving him unconscious in the street, according to the affidavit.
The three suspects were arrested by police after Snulligan had identified them as his attackers, authorities said. Days later, Cornel Dawson, the gang's alleged chief, reached out to Snulligan and offered him $3,000 to drop the case, according to the affidavit. Instead, Snulligan agreed to work undercover as police investigated the alleged witness tampering, secretly recording his conversations with gang leaders offering cash if he would sign a sworn statement that Odum was not the man who beat him, according to the charges.
Snulligan, who was terrified that he would be killed, moved out of the neighborhood and rarely returned "because he feared that the Black Souls would retaliate," one cooperating witness told police, according to the charges.
On the day he was killed, the father of five went to the neighborhood to borrow money from a friend so he could pay his cellphone bill and buy a Sweetest Day gift for his girlfriend, his mother told the Tribune on Thursday. "We warned him about going up there," Sarie Campbell said.
Shortly after noon, Black Souls crew supervisor Duavon Spears was seen with three other gang members in a parking lot of a chicken restaurant across the street, according to the charges. A witness said he saw Spears walk up with a gray hoodie pulled over his head, raise a pistol and fire once into the back of Snulligan's head. A single .40-caliber shell casing was found at the scene.
Later that day, another cooperating witness told police, he called Dawson and asked him about Snulligan's murder, according to the affidavit.
"It's a good day in the hood," Dawson allegedly replied.
The same witness, later shown video surveillance by police, identified Spears as the male seen in a gray hooded sweatshirt in the parking lot moments before the shooting, authorities said.
