Confessions of a crack kingpin
INSIDE BLOODY WORLD OF ’80s DRUG WARS —
president, said the development was so dangerous in the late 1980s, he and his wife would take the mattresses from their beds and have the family sleep on the floor for fear they would be killed by stray bullets coming through the windows at night.
“There was a time when (people living in) several buildings here weren’t even able to come outside and sit on a bench because of the crime that was taking place,” he said.
The NYPD recorded 1,896 murders in New York City in 1988, compared with 335 in 2016. The murder frenzy driven by the crack epidemic would peak in 1990 with 2,245 killings — or six a day. No one believed the cycle would ever end.
In East New York’s 75th Precinct alone, police investigated 105 murders in 1988. The number of murders in the precinct peaked at 126 in 1993. In 2016, there were 23 murders in the 75th Precinct that includes the Cypress Hills Houses.
The numbers underscore the relentless wave of violence that the city confronted in the crack years, and its subsequent transformation driven by police work, the economy, incarceration, death and communities fed up with the bloodshed.
“When people ask me about this transformation, I tell them they also wiped themselves out,” Ponzi said. “In addition to the policing element, an entire generation wiped themselves out, whether through overdoses, murders or prison.”
Retired Detective Michael Race, then with the 75th Precinct, recalls the day when then-mayoral candidate David Dinkins was at an event at the Cypress Hills Houses, and a gun battle erupted on the other side of the complex.
“Innocent people were being shot senselessly, caught in the middle of crossfires,” Race said. “It was a senseless way of life. Money meant more than life, and it didn’t matter who got in the way.”
Race, who grew up in East New York, said crack also drove other businesses.
“You had 19-year-olds driving brand new Mercedes,” he said. “The sneakers business, clothing, the jewelry business skyrocketed.” And that wasn’t all. “Funeral homes made a lot of money,” he said.
MAKING THE ‘A-TEAM’
For decades, the Cypress Hills Houses had been divided by gang territory. At the time, a group dubbed the “A-Team” controlled the Sutter Ave. side.
“They were the people who you didn’t want to f--- with, you wanted to stay away from those guys and those people,” Faison said. “They had this place locked down.”
Faison describes Gibbs as respectful and quiet.
“He was running with murderers, known gangsters, known drug dealers who were the worst of the worst but this guy was respectful,” he said. “These guys could have ran a corporation.”
Most of the A-Team were Five Percenters, members of a religious movement that believes the black man himself is God and the white man is the devil.
In the summer of 1985, after getting sprung from Fishkill, Gibbs approached Akbar, the leader of the fearsome crew.
“He told me, ‘You’ve got a lot of balls,’” Gibbs said. “He goes, ‘When you first came home we was going to kill you’ because I robbed an old-timer of his jewelry.”
The A-Team controlled a drug location on Fountain Ave. between Sutter and Belmont Aves. that they shared with a Dominican gang, he said. Akbar gave Gibbs the responsibility to watch over the spot from 11 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. He would sometimes carry two guns on the assignment.
“I was more comfortable with a revolver because it wouldn’t jam,” he said. “One guy was selling fake drugs. I shot him in the butt and he never came around again.”
THE DARK SIDE
In February 1986, three people waded into Gibbs’ Ralph Ave. drug spot and robbed it of hundreds of vials of heroin. A few days later, it happened again. Gibbs immediately suspected an inside job.
“Something didn’t fit right,” he said. “So I took each worker out and put them in the car. ‘I’m going to ask you the question again.’ I put a snub-nose .44 in their mouths. ‘I’m going to take it out and you better tell me the truth.’”
Gibbs got a name — Crazy Clyde, and immediately knew him as a fellow player in the Cypress Hill drug scene. “Out of a million and one drug spots in New York City, why would he pick mine?” Gibbs wondered.
In a meeting with Clyde, his girlfriend Sybil Mims and a third man named Bronco,
I was born in the back of a police car and I should have known my life was doomed
he offered $5,000 to them to find the robbers as a pretext. Clyde and Bronco left, leaving Mims with Gibbs and a friend named Amare in the car.
Gibbs was armed with his .44 and itching for revenge. They drove to a corner store on Pitkin Ave., where he bought Perrier and Juicy Fruit gum, and then parked. Gibbs pulled Mims out of the car and demanded to know why Clyde robbed the drug spot. She denied everything and Gibbs shot her in the stomach.
“I didn’t mean to shoot her the first time, but then I was so enraged that I bent down and put the gun to her head and fired, and blood and brain matter splashed my face,” he said. “That’s when I really went over to the dark side. I used my tongue to lick the blood from my face, and my hoodie sleeve to wipe off the rest.”
Hours later, Amare paged him. When Gibbs called back, the number went to Brooklyn Central Booking.
In the meantime, Clyde caught up to him and tried to kill him, but Gibbs got away.
On March 2, detectives caught him at MacDougal St. and Ralph Ave.
He wasn’t immediately charged with the Mims murder. Instead, cops suspected him in the late 1985 killing of Jonathan Penn-Maxwell. But he wasn’t identified in the lineup and he walked.
“I felt like John Gotti,” he said. About two months later, Mims’ brother claimed that Gibbs had admitted to the murder. Gibbs then learned that Amare had flipped.
“I had to turn myself in, and told my family,” he said. “I try to have as much sex as possible with my girlfriends because I knew it was going to be a long time.”
Gibbs was represented at trial by Murray Cutler, whose son Bruce famously represented Gotti. The case collapsed after the main witness Amare refused to testify, and Mims’ brother’s testimony was seen as too contradictory.
Gibbs claims that he paid Amare $25,000 not to testify. Ponzi confirmed that Amare refused to testify, but could not confirm that he was paid off. Gibbs was acquitted in June 1987. Only Amare went to prison. “I stole years from his life,” Gibbs said.
MOVING UP
Having beaten the Mims case, Gibbs now felt invincible. He took over an apartment on Sutter Ave. in the Cypress Hills Houses, where he says he plotted with his 10-man crew and stashed cash and guns in a large armoire with a hidden compartment.
Underworld types who visited him would have to strip to their underwear for the meetings, and a neighbor recalls shoes lined up at the door.
He claims to have been making $40,000 a day at the height of his drug-dealing career. Race, the former detective, said that sounded like an exaggeration. He had various stashes for the cash — wrapped in plastic and buried in the backyard or driven down south to a friend for safekeeping.
An old friend, who requested anonymity, said Gibbs was rarely flamboyant. He and his crew would move through the projects with a sense of purpose, she said, never loitering outside.
“When you see them coming, you mind your business,” she said.
Gibbs’ sister said he was kind of scary. “I was afraid of him at one point,” she said. “You could see something in his eyes.” Soon after his acquittal, Fat Cat Nichols came calling.
“I became like a free agent or a star and everybody wanted me on their team,” he said.
Gibbs chose Nichols, who operated out of South Jamaica and had a Chinese heroin connection they called ‘John’ because they couldn’t pronounce his name.
Gibbs became an enforcer, who also delivered cash and drugs wherever it needed to go — in addition to running his own
I really went over to the dark side. I used my tongue to lick the blood from my face.