Pubdate: Wed, 18 Jul 2001
Source: Tennessean, The (TN)
Copyright: 2001 The Tennessean
Contact:  http://www.tennessean.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/447
Author: Sheila Burke

POLICE ON ALERT AFTER DEATH THREATS

Metro police are on alert following intelligence reports that a 
Chicago-based gang has threatened to kill officers as it seeks to 
control the drug trade at the John Henry Hale Homes public housing 
complex.

Lt. Michael VonDohlen, a supervisor in the department's West 
Precinct, whose officers patrol the complex, said officers have been 
warned about members of the Gangster Disciples.

However, VonDohlen said, no officers have been harmed and the reports 
of specific threats have yet to be confirmed.

Police officials also said gang activity in general is not increasing 
in Nashville.

John Henry Hale Homes off Charlotte Pike at 16th Avenue North long 
has had problems with drugs and crime, VonDohlen said.

''John Henry Hale has been a drug problem my whole 25 years on the 
job,'' he said.

Attempts to reach a spokesman for the Metro Development and Housing 
Agency, which oversees the housing complex, were unsuccessful 
yesterday.

Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said police have learned that the 
Gangster Disciples are becoming more involved in the Nashville drug 
trade.

''This group has the serious potential for shooting or harming police 
officers,'' Aaron said.

Two men with ties to the Gangster Disciples, Christopher A. Davis and 
Gdongalay Berry, were convicted in June 1999 for the murder of 
12-year-old Adriane Dickerson in a supermarket parking lot in 1995.

Witnesses testified Davis had vowed to put a local branch of the 
Chicago-based Gangster Disciples, ''on the map'' by going to the 
Hickory Hollow area on Oct. 17, 1995, to kill ''some white folks.''

Kirby said Davis' apartment on Herman Street in north Nashville was a 
headquarters for gang activity. Prosecutors theorized that Berry was 
aiming at a middle-aged white woman in the Megamarket parking lot 
when he shot and killed Dickerson, who had gone to her mother's car 
to get change to buy bubble gum.

Newsweek magazine reported in 1999 that nationally, the Gangster 
Disciples generated more than a $100 million a year from drug 
profits. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, gang 
leader Larry Hoover, serving a 200-year prison sentence for a 1973 
murder, ran the 30,000-member organization from Joliet State Prison 
in Illinois.

The number of local members of the gang was unavailable.

Aaron said intelligence officers shared intelligence reports on 
threats by the gang with the entire department, and officers are 
being told to be on heightened alert as they patrol the complex.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Keith Bryars, who heads the local FBI 
Violent Crimes Task Force, works with Metro police to target local 
gang activity.

He said he was not aware of any specific threats from the gang at the 
complex. However, ''They are violent, violent offenders.'' He also 
stated gang activity is not on the rise here.

Another source of gang intelligence is the Tennessee Department of 
Correction, which shares information gleaned from imprisoned gang 
members with local law enforcement agencies.

TDOC spokesman Steve Hayes said the department has no specific 
information about Gangster Disciple threats against Metro police or 
the gang's involvement with the John Henry Hale Homes drug trade.

TDOC has a 100-bed prison for gang members in Bledsoe County. The 
facility offers a 90- to 120-day program and is designed to get gang 
members to denounce their group affiliation and to teach them how to 
interact with the rest of the inmate population, he said.
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