***Jeffrey Stoleson, an Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq, is seen in front of a barricade tagged with gang graffiti in March in Iraq. Stoleson, who has been in Iraq for almost a year, says he has taken hundreds of photos of gang graffiti there.
***
The graffiti on this armored vehicle is from a Los Angeles gang. 323 is an area code in Los Angeles.
***“Amor de Rey” (“King Love” in Spanish) is the motto of the Chicago-based Latin Kings. This picture was taken at Camp Scania, about 108 miles southeast of Baghdad outside the city of Nippur.
***
***This picture was taken inside a guard shack at a base near Nasiriyah. The star and “GDN” represent the Gangster Disciple Nation; “Chitown” is for Chicago.
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***This picture was taken at Camp Anaconda, a large U.S. base north of Baghdad. The graffiti represents the Chicago-based Black Gangster Disciples. To the left is a message from a soldier shipping out telling comrades to “Be safe.”
As the lyrics of the famous DJ Quik song go:
*
Bang bang boogie da bang da bang boogie to da
boogie bang boogie da bang fcuk what you sayin’ nigga
You’s a gangsta!
No I’m not!
Nigga you’s a gangsta!
No I’m not!
Nigga you’s a gangsta!*
Troops do double duty in gangs](http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-army15.html#)May 15, 2006
BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter
]Army soldiers who belong to the Gangster Disciples have robbed people to raise money for the gang, orchestrated drug and gun deals, and even killed two people after gang members were kicked out of a bar.
About a dozen soldiers at bases in Texas and Colorado have been sentenced to prison over the last decade as a result of federal investigations into criminal activity they carried out for the Chicago-based gang.
They highlight the danger of soldiers maintaining gang affiliations.
“It is a continuing problem, sure. It’s ongoing,” said Scot Thomasson , a supervisor with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who investigated dope dealing and gun trafficking involving Fort Carson, Colo., soldiers.
Earlier this month, a Wisconsin National Guard sergeant serving in Iraq provided the Chicago Sun-Times with photos he recently took of gang graffiti on military equipment and buildings throughout Iraq
Assault rifles seized
Other civilian and military investigators warned that gang membership in the Army appears to be rising as more recruiters ignore applicants’ criminal backgrounds and gang tattoos. One investigator at Fort Lewis, Wash., said he has identified about 320 soldiers as gang members in interviews with them since 2002.
The Army Criminal Investigation Command has downplayed the problem, saying gang activity in the Army is insignificant. Whatever the scope of the problem – both overseas and on the home front – the cases in Texas and Colorado show it’s not new and it’s not harmless.
The Colorado investigation focused on a retired Army sergeant, Arnie Porter, a Chicago native who moved to Colorado Springs and ran a faction of the Gangster Disciples, Thomasson said. Porter maintained his gang contacts in the Chicago area and his ties to noncommissioned officers at Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs.
In 1996, the feds targeted a gun-and-drug operation involving Porter and 25 other Gangster Disciples, including Gerald Ivey – an active-duty sergeant at Fort Carson – as well as other soldiers and civilians, officials said. Ivey was a medic who served in Operation Desert Storm, said Thomasson, who is now assistant special agent in charge of ATF’s Seattle field division. “By all accounts, these guys grew up in bad neighborhoods,” Thomasson said. “They got into the military and overcame their situations. They were successful, yet they maintained their ties and gang activity. I cannot understand why Ivey did what he did. He was a decorated soldier. He was not financially strapped. He did not have a drug habit. He just wanted to get back into the [gang] lifestyle.”
The crew bought cocaine and marijuana in El Paso, Texas, exploiting Ivey’s past contacts at nearby Fort Bliss, Thomasson said. They’d purchase marijuana for about $300 a pound in Texas and sell it for $1,200 a pound in Gary, Ind., which was Ivey’s hometown.
Ivey also shipped guns back to Gary. He acted as an illegal “straw purchaser,” using his military ID to buy weapons at a Colorado gun store called Dragon Arms, prosecutors said.
ATF agents seized five sawed-off shotguns, three assault rifles and other guns from the gang. Ivey bought other guns that were later used in crimes in Chicago and Gary and were found in crack houses, Thomasson said. Ivey was sentenced to 15 years of military confinement. ATF foiled a plan by Ivey to send fully automatic machine guns back to the Chicago area, Thomasson said.
‘Like a social club’
Sgt. Jim Rodgers of the Colorado Springs Police Department said officers continue to arrest Fort Carson soldiers affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. “We bust them for slinging dope or for having a pistol off base,” he said.
No major gang conspiracy cases involving Fort Carson soldiers have been launched since Ivey was busted, Rodgers said. Still, he said his department is preparing for the Army to relocate members of the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood to Fort Carson, and he has been told that Gangster Disciples are prevalent among soldiers in that unit.
An FBI agent in El Paso has told the Sun-Times that law enforcement agencies there are preparing for a rise in soldiers affiliated with the Gangster Disciples and other “Folk Nation” gangs when they are relocated from Fort Hood to Fort Bliss. The FBI is concerned that Folk Nation-affiliated soldiers and their dependents could conflict with a Latino gang entrenched in El Paso.
It’s not a new problem for Fort Hood. In 1999, a Fort Hood soldier, Spec. Jacqueline Billings of Milwaukee, was identified by military prosecutors as the “governor” of a 40-member faction of the Gangster Disciples – many of whom were soldiers.
Chicago Police Lt. Robert Stasch was invited to Fort Hood to testify as an expert witness in the trial against Billings. She was sentenced to 27 years of confinement. Hired through his private consulting firm, Law Enforcement Training Consultants, Stasch identified Billings’ tattoos of a pitchfork and a six-pointed star as GD symbols. He led Army investigators to GD graffiti in a culvert near the entrance to the base. And he explained gang literature found in Billings’ home.
“She claimed it was like a social club, like the Elks or Moose Lodge, and she called it ‘Growth & Development,’” Stasch said. “I told them they were Gangster Disciples.”
Convicted of battery
In July 1997, Billings allegedly ordered a hit on a club owner after she and other gang members were thrown out. She felt the club was the gang’s “turf,” prosecutors said. Two Fort Hood soldiers in the Gangster Disciples bungled the job, killing two of the club’s employees but not the owner. Those soldiers admitted to being the gunmen and testified against Billings. But Billings claimed she simply ordered the men to rough up the owner. She was acquitted of murder but found guilty of battery.
She also was convicted for her role in the robbery of a $15,000 Cartier watch and $2,500 in cash in August 1997.
“No member was to act on behalf of the gang without her approval,” according to one government filing. Billings “led and recruited active-duty soldiers and local civilians, including teenagers, into an organization that settled disputes through murder and assault and raised money through robbery.”
Stasch, now a lieutenant in the Chicago Police tactical unit in the Town Hall District, said the Billings case raises serious questions about gang involvement in the military.
“Large gangs like the GDs have the ability to negotiate with Mexican cartels to bring drugs over the border,” he said. “What’s to say GD members in Iraq aren’t over there for the sole purpose of making friendships with large drug organizations?”
