Baltimore City State’s Attorney Greg Bernstein announced Thursday the indictments of 48 members and associates of a subset of the Black Guerilla Family gang on murder and gang related charges.
The indictments are related to crimes committed between 2005 and this year and are unrelated to the scandal that rocked the city detention center over the summer.
The subset, known as the Greenmount Regime, is accused of terrorizing neighborhoods around Greenmount Cemetery in East Baltimore.
Thirty-eight of the 48 defendants are charged with taking part in a gang conspiracy. Seven have been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing eight victims. Five are facing charges for six alleged non-fatal shootings. Some also are facing drug charges.
Bernstein was joined by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts and Special Agent Steven Gerido of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) at an afternoon news conference at Mund Park in the East Baltimore Midway neighborhood.
According to Bernstein, the park is where BGF members led their meetings. He said the indictments represent a historical case.
“We’re looking back five or six years at a number of these individuals who committed these violent acts,” said Bernstein who said he hopes successful prosecutions will keep repeat offenders off the streets.
The Greenmount Regime started as the Young Guerilla Family in 2005. Bernstein said early on the gang used violence to establish their turf. Targets of the gang included rival drug dealers, rival gangs, witnesses to their crimes and their own members who either violated their code or were accused of helping police. The regime officially became a subset of the BGF after a 2007 meeting with Naim King, a high ranking member of the Baltimore BGF, Bernstein said.
King is characterized as a king-maker for the regime. He was killed in October 2007 on Brentwood Avenue by Henry Mills. Bernstein said Mills was killed in June 2011 in the 2400 block of Greenmount Avenue allegedly by David Hunter out of loyalty to King for sponsoring his inclusion into the BGF. Hunter is one of the 48 named in the indictment. He is facing two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Mills and another man from 2005 in addition to a gang conspiracy charge.
Police said they already have 33 suspects in custody and expect to round up the remaining 15 by the end of the week.
Batts said police are working to destabilize gangs, but that requires building strong cases, which takes time. He credited Bernstein’s office for helping to build those cases.