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.