ENTREPRENEURS OF CRACK

By JORDAN BONFANTE LOS ANGELES

Quintin Stephen was often in Denver to do business. Back in Los Angeles, he ran Nu U Productions, a recording studio whose stable included several rap acts. But the 6-ft.-tall, conservatively dressed Angeleno was not in Colorado to sell music. He was there as ``Q,'' the name he went by on the streets of Los Angeles, where police and the FBI say he belonged to the Eight Trey Gangster Crips. Q was out to expand his criminal franchise. And he found the perfect recruit.

Though he operated in Colorado, Adrian Williams dressed like the stereotypical Los Angeles gang member--baggy clothes, gold chains, a blue head rag. He went by the name ``A-Bone'' and allegedly led a local group called 187 Anybody Killer Crips, modeled after a Los Angeles original (187 is the State of California code for homicide). He had even tried to emulate Los Angeles-style interstate drug dealing, but he had been robbed of $35,000 while trying to purchase cocaine in Los Angeles. Now, however, Q guaranteed to ship him a regular supply of dope in return for half of A-Bone's sales profit. A partnership was born.

For Q, the A-Bone deal, which peaked in 1992, was only the beginning. Before long he had expanded to five other cities, as far east as Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta. It was a cross-country advance that was halted only by an intense investigation coordinated by the FBI over five states, which included the arrest this month of a fugitive who had been on the run since September 1993. The so-called Eight Trey Gangster Crips network is estimated to have distributed hundreds of kilos of crack and cocaine powder worth well in excess of $10 million on the street. And Q's network, according to the FBI, is only one of perhaps a hundred more in operation. They emanate from Los Angeles' increasingly expansionist gangland. Says FBI special agent-in- charge Charley Parsons in Los Angeles: ``The gangs are literally franchising themselves.''

The story of businessman Q, as reconstructed from police and court records, traces a prodigious feat of colonization and franchising. In Los Angeles, Q and his cohorts made their basic profits from cocaine bought at cross-border prices--typically about $15,000 a kilo. They cut the coke and ratcheted up the price as they resold supplies in outlying markets. Then with expansion came branches and outposts beyond the bounds of Los Angeles, as well as franchise-like agreements with local, allegedly gang-connected distributors. Says Sergeant Steve Spanard of the Denver Police antigang unit: ``We never had Eight Treys in Denver before Q showed up. We do now.''

Denver was, in effect, a licensed franchise. Cleveland, Ohio, on the other hand, was a branch operation. In June 1992, Q allegedly entrusted the city to another suspected Crip from Los Angeles, Carl Lavar Lee, 27--called ``M.J.'' for his resemblance to Michael Jackson. For about the next 112 years, the FBI believes, Lee's Cleveland operation--and a direct subsidiary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin--handled as much as 10 kilos of Los Angeles cocaine a month. And then around February 1993, investigators believe Q sent representatives--Terry (``Kit'') Cooper and Derrick (``Book'') Slaughter--into the Pacific Northwest to set up a cocaine distributorship in Seattle. The local competition was fierce, so Kit and Book handled less volume: an estimated 4 kilos, or nearly 9 lbs., a month on average for about a year.

Finally, around April 1993, Q extended his network all the way to Birmingham. That city was to afford investigators the clearest glimpse into one of Q's distant branches. Following a number of scouting trips to test the local market, an enterprising threesome flew into the city to stay. Two were among Q's suspected Crip affiliates, Horace (``Dink'') Slaughter, 29, brother of Book, and Larry (``Drak'') Neal, 29, both of whom weighed more than 260 lbs. The third was a petite, reddish-haired woman from Long Beach, California, named Renee Stephens. For the team's headquarters, Stephens rented a three-room, $250-a-month apartment in a white-frame triplex on Fulton Avenue in Birmingham's working-class, largely African-American West End. The trio soon blended in as law-abiding citizens.

``They figured the least amount of attention they'd attract, the longer they'd be able to stay in business,'' says Jeff Burgess, one of the FBI agents who was to conduct regular undercover surveillance of Fulton Avenue. In fact, behind the low-key demeanor, Dink and Drak were suspected of being in the early stages of setting up a ``primary distributorship.'' It would involve cocaine ``muled''--or smuggled--into Birmingham in regular shipments from Los Angeles. There it would be ``cooked'' into crack and finally distributed to local dealers in 1-oz. packets, or possibly even ``eight- balls'' of 18 oz. The wholesale asking price was typically $950 an ounce, though on a number of occasions--in wire-tapped conversations recorded in court documents--Q back in Los Angeles demanded that they hike prices.

In fact, Q and his Los Angeles-headquarters second-in-command, Donald (``Doc'') Dennis, a suspected East Coast Crip, often displayed considerable long-distance ``savviness,'' according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Johnson. ``They called to question the amount of receipts coming in. They discussed how much crack was in the city. They discussed cooking agents. And they didn't keep books.''

However, in April 1993, just as Q was getting started in Birmingham, the FBI launched the probe that led to the network's systematic dismantlement--its ``takedown,'' in the parlance of narcotics cops. First Denver was shut down, then Cleveland and last, in a surprise raid that had the suspects fleeing just minutes before the police arrived, Birmingham. The technique of ``letting it walk''--allowing drug shipments and couriers to proceed unhindered in order to keep suspected criminals ignorant of a wiretap--was used at every location. ``That strategy was the key,'' says lead investigator Steven Gomez. ``To the very end, they never knew.''

Birmingham's Renee Stephens remains at large. But Dink Slaughter and Drak Neal were followed home and arrested in Los Angeles. The Seattle team was jailed. Second-in-command Doc Dennis surrendered to a swat team in Burbank, California, without incident. And when Q himself was summoned to visit his parole officer--he once served time on a previous drug offense--he found FBI agents waiting for him. Finally, after 15 months on the run, Cleveland's M.J. Lee was also captured early this month in Chino Hills, California.

So far, none has turned evidence against the others, though all except the newly apprehended Lee have pleaded guilty. Defense attorneys are arguing that Q's was ``a loose confederation of friends who lived in gang neighborhoods who got to know each other,'' a claim they hope will help their planned appeal. As it is, at their sentencing next month, the defendants could each receive 20 to 33 years in federal prison. Law enforcers are proud of having bagged one set of drug entrepreneurs. Now, there are only about 100 more to go.

--Reported by James Willwerth/Los Angeles

With reporting by James Willwerth/Los Angeles