Neighbors Uneasy, but Glad to See Drug Raids

A woman trying to survive in gang territory leaned out from her porch Saturday and said she won’t break off her friendship, distasteful as it is, with the Five Deuce Hoover Gangster Crips. Not until law officers persuade her they’re here to stay.

“I don’t want to get my house blown up,” she said.

Like others whose houses sit in a sector claimed by a violent gang that federal agents and police moved against Friday morning, she has had to make an unholy alliance with gang members. She doesn’t like it. But she smiles, says hello, and welcomes them up on her tidy porch.

“You become friends with the gang bangers. It’s self-protection,” she said.

She would rather count on the friendship of the police, but in her mind, at least, the police don’t control this real estate. It belongs to an organization whose graffiti, “52 HGC,” can be seen up and down Hoover Street.

She and others who live along the street, where the windows and doors are barred and where graffiti covers walls and even the asphalt in the street, said they were delighted at the arrest of 16 reputed leaders of the alleged $1 million-a-month cocaine operation. But they aren’t celebrating yet.

Also applauding the raid was William Archie, a member of a competing gang, who was playing a video game at a neighborhood market. Told that the police considered the Five Deuce Crips one of the most vicious gangs around, he sniffed: “Ain’t nobody No. 1.”

The operation against the Five Deuce Hoover Gangster Crips, carried out by an army of 250 officers, was the most significant undercover operation yet mounted by a new state and federal drug task force. It focused on the Five Deuce Crips because it is regarded by authorities as one of the city’s most vicious and most heavily involved in drug trafficking. Police say it has 1,000 members and associates and is blamed for killings, rapes and robberies.

Ironically, the same gang called a press conference in August to improve its image in the community. Under the gaze of television cameras, a dozen members began removing graffiti around the neighborhood. Still, a man identified as “Bam” emphasized that he was not disavowing his membership.

“We’re still Crippin’ to the fullest,” he said. One of those arrested Friday was Kevin (Hoover Bam) Bishop, said by police to be responsible for several murders.

Shooting flares and brandishing guns, agents burst into 16 alleged rock houses before dawn Friday. Evidence of the assault could be seen Saturday in shattered door frames, iron bars lying on front lawns and plywood covering windows at several of the houses on 48th Street.

Others taken into custody were Johnny Bentley, 31, reported to be a major supplier, and Barbara Hammond, 50, who allegedly oversaw a family crack operation in her yellow-and-white house, surrounded by neatly tended rose bushes.

“She’s not affiliated with any gang members or selling any drugs,” said Terrence Truscott, 23, a computer programmer who described himself as a friend of Hammond. He denied the area was dangerous. “It’s not violent out here; there’s just a lot of drug dealing going on.”

But a man in his 20s stopped his car on 48th Street and pointed to his 13-year-old brother, who was in the back seat. He had been robbed of $5 in front of his house while leaving for school one morning. “What kind of times are we living in?” the driver asked.

Bentley’s 20-year-old girlfriend, who refused to give her name, said they were sleeping when the raid began. “All we heard was like, boom, people shouting. Me and Johnny hit the floor.”

She denied that Bentley is a major dealer. “A lot of people don’t like Johnny. But he’s a very nice person,” she said. Police said there was tension inside the gang. Bentley thought he was going to be killed because he had become too successful, police said.

Anthony Spears, Bentley’s neighbor in the dilapidated two-story wood-frame apartment building, said after Bentley moved in several months ago people were “running up and down the stairs” all night long.

“It’s great,” he said of Bentley’s arrest. “Don’t just stop with him.” Spears complained he was briefly arrested when agents burst into his apartment and fired a weapon, which left a hole in the linoleum floor in the kitchen.

While the neighbors and businessmen along Hoover Street admit they have had to learn to show respect for the Five Deuce Hoover Gangster Crips, they haven’t given up on their community. Mostly, they seem to be waiting for things to get better. The involvement of the federal government, with the possibility of stiffer federal sentences for those convicted, may indicate that day has come. Then again, it might not.

Until they see how long the ringleaders stay in jail, the neighbors are not going to snub the gang. “They come in here and buy whatever they buy and play games,” said T.J. Askew, who owns the Doris Annex Mini Market on Hoover Street. “I give them respect and I demand mine.”