GANG KINGPINS DISAPPEARING IN CHICAGO

Crackdown in Streets, Prisons Cuts Power, but Factions Fight On

In a city where legendary street gang leaders Jeff Fort and Larry
Hoover took their place beside Al Capone in the local criminal hall
of fame, the powerful Chicago gang kingpin is looking more and more
like an endangered species.

Major street gangs that once carved up the city into virtual fiefdoms
for drug trafficking are producing fewer of the "super" leaders who
dominated their organizations with charisma, ruthlessness and guile
in years past, law-enforcement officials and other experts say.
Hierarchies traditionally topped by a powerful few have decentralized.

The factors behind this dramatic change range from aggressive federal
prosecutions of leadership ranks to a crackdown on once-powerful gang
leaders inside prisons, preventing them from still holding sway on the outside.

The culture is also changing among younger gang members, who
increasingly put money before loyalty and are wary of taking on
leadership roles for fear of drawing heat, the officials and experts said.

Once caught, younger gang members are more likely to turn on their
cohorts and become informants, making it easier for authorities to
further infiltrate gangs.

"All they know is money," said Tio Hardiman, director of mediation
services for the prominent violence-prevention program CeaseFire.
"There's no real loyalty in the gangs anymore. The code of the
street, it doesn't count like it used to."

Still, fighting gangs remains a principal challenge for Jody Weis,
Chicago's next police superintendent. The changes in gang structure
have not weakened the gangs' ability to dispense drugs or violence,
and while there are fewer all-out gang wars directed by chieftains,
lower-level gang members still battle block by block over drug turf.

In recent years federal authorities have stung Chicago's gangs with a
series of investigations aimed at dethroning gang leaders, targeting
organizations from the Four Corner Hustlers to the Mickey Cobras,
from the New Breeds to the Satan Disciples.

Among the most recent to be hit hard was a Latin Kings faction headed
by Fernando "Ace" King, alleged to be one of the gang's most powerful
leaders in the Chicago area. King, who is scheduled to go on trial in
March, was indicted along with 38 others on drug and weapons charges
following a three-year investigation.

Many of the recent prosecutions resulted from a coordinated effort to
link the street knowledge of Chicago police tactical officers with
the deep resources of federal agencies. Each month, representatives
of the Chicago Police Department; the FBI; the federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement
Administration; the U.S. attorney's office; and the Cook County
state's attorney's office hold what is known as the "Top 20" gang
target meeting.

The group shares intelligence, reviews cases and discusses what steps
can be taken to bring down targeted gang leaders. Local police and
federal agents often team up on investigations too, using extensive
surveillance and undercover video and audio recordings of meetings
and phone calls to build conspiracy cases designed to dismantle a
gang's leadership structure.

"We want to take the organization out for a substantial period of
time," said Andy Traver, the ATF's special agent in charge in Chicago.

The result of the intensified law-enforcement efforts is that fewer
gang members are pushing to take on leadership positions that might
lead to them winding up on the Top 20 list.

"Nobody wants to step up," said a former Latino gang member who now
works as a mediator for CeaseFire and asked not to be identified
because he works closely with gang members. "Nobody wants to get a
federal indictment."

Investigators are finding the city divided into smaller factions, or
"sets," that operate under the same gang umbrella but are not
directed by leaders with the status of Hoover, who ruled the Gangster
Disciples for two decades even though he was in state prison, Traver said.

Other traditional allegiances, such as the division of Chicago's
gangs into broad alliances of "Peoples" and "Folks," have blurred,
while some traditionally Latino gangs have added Eastern European and
Asian members. On Thursday, a member of a Filipino faction of the
Latin Kings was charged as part of a conspiracy that distributed
Ecstasy and marijuana from Canada.

Brian Sexton, gang-unit supervisor in the state's attorney's office,
said prosecutors have taken advantage of those weakened loyalties to
turn gang members into informants.

"It's a matter of survival," Sexton said. "They are all in it for
themselves, and they are more willing to cooperate. The leadership is
so fractured that [gang members] are not as worried about
retaliation" if they do not follow orders.

Crackdown in Prisons

Law-enforcement officials and former gang members say the hard-line
policies enacted a decade ago by state prison officials also have
weakened Chicago's major street gangs.

In the 1990s, the Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and other gangs
essentially controlled Illinois' prison system, divvying up jobs
behind bars, controlling cell assignments, organizing training
classes where inmates learned gang rules and history, and running
drug operations in the prisons and on the streets.

Hoover; Gustavo "Gino" Colon, the leader of the Latin Kings; and
other chieftains used their power behind bars to strengthen their
organizations while also recruiting new members, according to
law-enforcement authorities and gang members.

But today Hoover and Colon are serving life sentences in Florence,
Colo., at the nation's most restrictive federal prison. Other gang
leaders are being held at Tamms Correctional Center, Illinois'
super-maximum-security prison.

"My husband is isolated," said Marisol Colon, 42, who recently served
81/2 years in prison on drug charges. "He doesn't want nothing to do
with [the Latin Kings]."

With older leaders cut off from their organizations and guards
punishing any inmate involved in gang activity, gang members who
ignore orders no longer face certain punishment by their own
organization -- something that has weakened overall gang discipline
and allowed younger members to operate more independently.

"Now, the administration runs the prisons," said Leon Miller, 26, a
Latin King who has spent time at three maximum-security facilities
and is currently at Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mt.
Sterling. "It ain't like it used to be. ... People was getting
stabbed and raped and all that crazy stuff. It ain't nowhere near
like that no more."

Perhaps no case illustrates the shrinking power of Chicago's gang
leaders more than the Latin Kings, whose North Side and South Side
factions were once united under Colon, Raul "Baby King" Gonzales,
Pedro "Forehead" Rey and other powerful leaders.

'Ceo' Of Gang Taken Down

But with Colon in federal custody and Gonzales and Rey apparently
lying low after lengthy prison sentences, federal authorities say the
relatively unknown King, a diminutive 37-year-old from Chicago's
Little Village neighborhood, emerged as one of the gang's top leaders.

At the time of King's arrest last year, law-enforcement officials
called him "the CEO of the Latin Kings Nation" on the South Side,
conjuring up images of a high-rolling gang kingpin dripping with cash
and running a vast territory.

Investigators used a high-ranking Latin King-turned-informant to set
up King, court records show. The informant recorded King's every word
as he allegedly passed him a kilogram of sham cocaine.

But some have questioned how much authority King actually wielded
over the street gang outside Little Village and the threadbare,
working-class towns of Summit and Stickney.

The former Latino gang member now working for CeaseFire on the North
Side said he had never heard of King. Lt. Scott Brosi, head of the
Aurora police's special operations group, said there was "no
connection to him out here at all."

"Our Kings act independently," Brosi said.