GANG'S HIGH 'WIRE' ACT

January 15, 2005 -- Commish Ray Kelly and DA Richard Brown with seized
guns. Police say a coke-dealing Queens crew threw off investigators
with tactics they learned from the TV show "The Wire" -- but justice
caught up to them yesterday when cops busted 13 ringleaders.

Authorities said the gang loved the HBO show about the cat-and-mouse
game between cops and drug dealers, and picked up an important tip to
thwart the law -- regularly dumping their cellphones to gum up
surveillance.

" 'The Wire' made it so much harder," said one detective. "If they got
hinked up [nervous], they just dropped [the cellphone] in a second."
The crew moved up to 40 kilos of coke at a time and made millions a
year, under the leadership of two half-brothers, Rodney "Shorty"
Johnson, 31, and Timothy "Little One" Stackhouse, 30, authorities
said. The brothers operated so far behind the scenes they appeared
never to touch the drugs themselves.

Another dealer, Greg Ferguson, laundered some of the cash by creating
his own line of street clothes, D Visions, which was sold in local
stores, prosecutors said. With no known source of income, Ferguson
drives a brand-new Hummer, cops said.

The crooks operated in St. Albans and in other neighborhoods in
southeast Queens, police said. Detectives Carlyle Preudhomme and Sgt.
Felipe Rodriguez gained Ferguson's trust by posing as clothing buyers
at a Las Vegas apparel convention, where he was peddling his duds.

While Ferguson was being booked, Preudhomme said, "I went up to him
and said I was in Vegas with you, and he laughed and said, 'Good work!' "

Another alleged crew member, Melissa Wakefield, was also a fashion
buff. Although she's on welfare, cops found hundreds of pairs of
pricey Gucci and Prada shoes in her Astoria home, worth about $25,000.

Cops confiscated 43 kilos of coke, $500,000 in cash, 17 handguns and
five luxury automobiles. Two Lincolns and a Lexus were seized from
Castell "Cash" Brown, of Roosevelt, L.I.

Two of the arrested men were city workers -- Randy Monroe, a Rikers
Island officer already on suspension for an earlier drug bust, and
sanitation worker Fred Fulton Jr., 44, a convicted murderer.

The bust, dubbed "Operation Sequel," stemmed from a 2002 bust of actor
Jonathan "Jiggy" Kidane, who played a cop in the latest movie version
of "Shaft" -- but played a drug pusher in real life, according to cops.

Three alleged ring members were busted Thursday, and cops are looking
for two more.