Local News in Brief : Man Pleads Guilty to Cocaine Charge

A Los Angeles man who police say was a longtime supplier of rock cocaine to several Crips street gang factions has pleaded guilty to possession of 132 pounds of cocaine for sale.

Michael Ray Ector, 25, arrested when police served a search warrant on a West 76th Street house last May, faces a term of 10 years to life in prison when sentenced Dec. 15 by U.S. District Judge Laughlin E. Waters.

Police say Ector, whose gang moniker was “Money Mike,” was an associate of the West Los Angeles Playboy Gangster Crips. Ector’s fingerprints were discovered on 10 of 60 kilogram bags of cocaine found in the Southwest Los Angeles residence.

Ector’s lawyer, Roger J. Rosen, who has denied that his client is a gang member, said that Ector was a low-level seller whose “role was primarily as a person who put the drugs into suitcases and prepared them for pickup by others.” Rosen declined to say who Ector worked for.

Trial on drug-trafficking conspiracy charges for two co-defendants in the case, Ector’s half-brother, Alonzo Troy Andrus, 19, and Andre Jackson, 21, began this week.