PUTTING TOGETHER A GANG ROUNDUP

“Bit by bit, putting it together

Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art

Every moment makes a contribution

Every little detail plays a part

Having just a vision’s no solution

Everything depends on execution

Putting it together, that’s what counts …”

— American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim

The pieces were in place several months ago for local law enforcement agencies to bring a large, collaborative hammer down on a Chattanooga street gang. They just needed to be put together.

By early this week, they were put together. What resulted was Wednesday’s Hamilton County Grand Jury indictment of 54 members of a Chattanooga street gang — potentially solving five murders — and the crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s that needed to occur to round up those individuals.

By late Wednesday, 42 of those 54, alphabetically from Arterrius Allen to Theonda Thorne, were in custody and 12 were on the loose. Nearly half of the 54 already were incarcerated on other charges.

Eight law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Chattanooga Housing Authority police department, Chattanooga Police Department, FBI, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service, were involved in the coordinated effort.

It was a monthslong endeavor and took the agencies talking to each other, Melydia Clewell, spokeswoman for Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston, said Friday.

Once intelligence among the agencies was shared, action came together “fairly quickly,” she said.

Clewell credited Ben Scott, the former residential special agent in charge of the DEA office who now works on a team in Pinkston’s office, for getting the various agencies to the table and working together.

She said other critical pieces were Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy lending homicide investigator Lucas Fuller to the collaborative unit and CPD Officer Jeremy Winbush sharing intelligence with the unit that he’d learned during assignment to the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Force. All parties also were able to draw on the expertise of the district attorney general’s cold case unit supervisor Mike Mathis, she said.

Fuller had been the original investigator in the 2016 murder of Bianca Horton, who was planning to testify at trial that she witnessed Cortez Sims murder another woman in 2015. Sims also was among the 54 members of the Athens Park Bloods who were indicted, as were three men who have been charged with Horton’s murder.

Clewell said Tennessee’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act also was instrumental in the coordinated effort.

The state’s RICO law provides for extended criminal penalties for individuals operating as part of an ongoing criminal organization. Essentially, it allows leaders or associates to be tried for crimes they ordered others to do or helped them commit.

Clewell told the Times Free Press two years ago, according to newspaper archives, that Pinkston “has always believed that other than arresting the actual killers/shooters the single most effective way to get gang members off the streets for extended periods of time at the state level is to be able to prove they committed crimes while in furtherance of the gang’s activity &/or business.”

Tennessee’s RICO law was passed it 1986. However, in 2012, then-state Rep. Vince Dean, R-East Ridge, and state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, sponsored a bill that added criminal street gangs to the law. Because of the law, if convicted, gang members can face longer sentences and higher fines. Previously, according to newspaper archives, the state RICO law included only child pornography and drug trafficking.

Dean, now Hamilton County’s criminal court clerk, said at the time it would give authorities better tools.

“It’s kind of like going from a screwdriver to an electric drill,” he said.

Although the city of Chattanooga’s Violence Reduction Initiative (VRI), launched in 2014, warns gang members during call-ins that by being the worst gang they could face the full weight of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, Pinkston felt a more collaborative effort was necessary.

“With or without VRI,” his office said in a 2016 statement, “there is a need for a multi-jurisdictional gang unit that operates in and beyond the Chattanooga city limits.”

Clearly, in this collaboration, not only were a number of law enforcement agencies involved in the tracking down and arrest of suspects, but the agencies had talked to each other for weeks, exchanged information and built better cases because they all had something to bring to the table.

Communication, it seems to us, was the key here and will be necessary for future collaborations. Perhaps, this effort can serve as a model.