A youth counselor for a city-funded organization that worked to reduce crime in West Baltimore was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison for leading a gang and organizing drug dealing, money laundering and robberies, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office.
Federal prosecutors described Todd Duncan, 36, as the "citywide commander" of the Black Guerrilla Family, a gang founded in California in the 1960s that authorities say is responsible for selling heroin in Baltimore.
Federal authorities accused Duncan of using his outreach work as a cover for drug dealing and promoting violence even as he was being paid to help stop the bloodshed. His attorney has said previously that his client is not a violent person.
U.S. District Judge James D. Quarles Jr. sentenced Duncan in accordance with a plea agreement reached with prosecutors in September, when he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering and admitted his involvement in one of the most powerful and violent gangs in the state.
In a statement, prosecutors said Duncan ran the gang from 2006 through the summer of 2010 and helped supply heroin to various street-corner drug shops around Baltimore. They also said he arranged bulk sales of the drug to wholesale customers.
The prosecutors said Duncan attended meetings of high-level gang commanders in which they discussed "drug trafficking, money laundering, commercial robberies and retaliation against rival gangs and BGF members who broke protocol."
"As the citywide commander, Duncan had ultimate authority to authorize those actions," the U.S. attorney's office said in the statement.
Duncan was one of 15 people indicted on charges related to the gang in July 2009. He started working as a youth counselor in 2007 as part of a "Safe Streets" program operated by Communities Organized to Improve Life Inc., or COIL, at a West Baltimore community center.
Another counselor there, Ronald "Piper" Scott, has also pleaded guilty to drug distribution as part of the same case and could receive 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 20.
Safe Streets is a nationally acclaimed model that started in Chicago and uses ex-offenders to mediate disputes on the street before they turn violent. Authorities have credited the program on the city's east side, run by the Living Classrooms Foundation, with preventing many shootings and slayings.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake cut off $1 million in funding to Safe Streets in East Baltimore and in South Baltimore's Cherry Hill community after the allegations first surfaced about the program on the west side. By that time, the city had already cut off payments to COIL for deficiencies in standards.
The mayor restored the money to the two programs in May, saying a task force could not substantiate allegations that the mediation groups in those locations were controlled by gangs. The task force recommended that the city sever its ties and let nonprofits take over the groups.