Buried at the bottom of today's CityPaper article about the Black Guerrilla Family gang is an eye-opening interview with an anonymous member, spelling out the gang's goal of infiltrating city government by masquerading as an anti-drug, black empowerment movement.
For anyone following the case, the statements aren't surprising - federal agents had said as much in the original court papers, and The Sun in 2009 obtained a copy of the gang's "Black Book", which was endorsed by a former FBI agent and a two-time mayoral candidate and city schools administrator, among others, and was nudged under the nose of then-Mayor Sheila Dixon's education liaison.
But Van Smith's interview with "Sam" lays bare the gang's intentions, in to-the-point terms:
Later in the conversation, though, Sam says DEA-SIGās investigation put a stop to something that could have become truly insidiousāa gang masquerading as a do-gooding organization supported by the cityās political class.
āWe were getting ready to take it to a whole different level,ā he recalls.
āThe streets would have provided the money. We would have got the city to provide grant money. If it had worked,ā Sam speculates, āthat s--t would have gone in the f---ing history books, and Baltimore would have been a city where every f---ing mayor and every f---ing councilman is corrupt. Thatās what that s--t would have been. Thatās the direction it was going."