Pubdate: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA) Copyright: 1999 San Francisco Examiner Contact: http://www.examiner.com/ Forum: http://examiner.com/cgi-bin/WebX Author: Lance Williams OF THE EXAMINER STAFF BIG OAKLAND DEALER HEADED FOR PRISON OAKLAND - For a decade, Anthony "Ant" Flowers was one of Oakland's most violent and successful drug gangsters. He may also have been the luckiest. Marked for death in a three-year drug gang war that claimed 16 lives, he survived without a scratch. Implicated in one of the war's most horrific events - the automatic-weapons strafing of a funeral home in 1990 during services for two murdered drug rivals - he was convicted only of a misdemeanor charge. Facing life in prison for possession of 20 kilos of cocaine, he beat the rap because of a blunder by an overzealous young police officer. But now the diminutive, 31-year-old Flowers stands convicted of new cocaine conspiracy charges that could put him in federal prison for 30 years. And on Tuesday, a deputation of Oakland community leaders - led by the city's new mayor, former Gov. Jerry Brown - is set to attend Flowers' sentencing in U.S. District Court here to assure themselves that the kingpin is really going to prison this time. "I'm going with the DA," Brown said. "It's important to make plain that Oakland is going to take every action it can to make this city safe. "There are some people out there who are not only dealing drugs, but using assault weapons and basically making life dangerous for the people of Oakland. "And we're going to take every action we can to make sure that these kinds of people go away for a long, long time." As California governor from 1974 to 1982, Brown was regularly flailed by law-and-order Republicans, who complained he made crime worse by appointing lenient judges with little regard for public safety. But Russ Giuntini, the Oakland prosecutor who urged Brown to attend Flowers' sentencing, said he believes the new mayor's interest in cracking down on crime is sincere. Brown's appearance at Flowers' sentencing, he said, will underscore the city's commitment to rooting out drug-gang violence - Oakland's bane for a generation - once and for all. Brown and City Manager Robert Bobb have "urged the community to get involved and testify against the guys who are raising hell in the streets," Giuntini said. "People are serious about making it tough for dope dealers to do business in Oakland." Schoolboy dealer According to court records and interviews with former gang members, Flowers began his career as a schoolboy cocaine dealer in East Oakland's Elmhurst District. In the late 1980s, after federal agents broke up the cocaine gang commanded by drug kingpin Darrell "Little D" Reed, Flowers emerged as the head of his own crack gang. But by 1989, Flowers was butting heads with rival gangster Timothy "Black" Bluitt, who had taken command of the Reed organization. In the end, federal wiretap transcripts showed that the gangs clashed because Flowers, in an effort to grab market share, offered deep discounts on cocaine, selling the drug at $700 per ounce when Bluitt's gang was charging $1,000. But the flash-point of their conflict came at a drug dealers' barbecue at Oakland's Dimond Park in 1989, when a reputed Bluitt dealer named Eric "Squeeze" Smith attacked the 5-foot-5 Flowers and beat him up. After that, as Bluitt's brother Norbert later told police, "War was on." Blazing battles The conflict pitted Bluitt's gang against Flowers and an allied gang, the Lacy Family, and over the next three years there were repeated firefights on the streets of East Oakland. Sometimes the clashes were marked by high-speed auto chases and wild shootouts in which gunmen used military-style automatic rifles - and, at one point, even a World War II-era machine gun - to blaze away at one another. One of the wildest occurred on Thanksgiving Day, 1991, when two carloads of gunmen exchanged broadsides while racing each other along 71st Avenue in Oakland. On other occasions, there were daylight assassinations in front of innocent bystanders. On March 7, 1990, armed men chased two of Bluitt's dealers into a grocery on Seminary Avenue and opened fire, killing one and wounding another as children who were in the store to buy snacks after school ducked for cover. Bluitt's brother later told police that Flowers' gang had killed the men to avenge the murder of a Flowers dealer who had been gunned down after an auto chase three days before. Casualties of war The war between the gangs finally ended in December 1991, when federal agents rounded up Bluitt and 11 confederates on drug conspiracy charges. The toll, according to a review of federal and state court records, was 16 dead. Among them: Beverly Bell, girlfriend of one of Bluitt's dealers, killed by gunmen with Uzis in what investigators assumed was a mistaken-identity shooting; Theodore Collins, a former Lacy gang member who was cooperating with police, assassinated in front of his house; Patricia Welch, a motorist who died in an auto wreck as police trailed a getaway car after Bluitt's gang ambushed two of Flowers' dealers. Few of the homicides were prosecuted. Difficult to convict Flowers was arrested repeatedly, but he proved difficult to convict. In a series of raids in 1988, Oakland police seized 20 kilograms of cocaine, more than $250,000 in cash and a small arsenal of assault rifles from houses linked to Flowers' drug dealing. The suspected dealer and a partner were indicted on cocaine conspiracy charges. But as the case went to trial, prosecutor Giuntini learned that a police officer had inserted false information in a search warrant affidavit prepared before the raids. The district attorney dropped the charges. In August 1990, Flowers was arrested on a weapons charge after gunmen wearing ski masks shot up the C.P. Bannon Mortuary on East 14th Street during a funeral for two of Bluitt's dealers. He was later convicted of a misdemeanor firearms charge. In December, Flowers and two other men were arrested at Hayward's Southland Mall with a carload of automatic weapons and bulletproof vests. Court records show investigators presumed they were looking for Bluitt; the same evening, Bluitt and two of his gang members, also heavily armed, were arrested in West Oakland. No charges resulted. Court records show Flowers attracted the attention of federal drug agents in 1993, after he was stopped for a traffic ticket in San Leandro and found to have $14,155 cash in a paper bag in his car. Prosecutor says too much The agents obtained wiretap warrants. In June 1994, they taped phone calls indicating that Flowers had obtained six shipments of cocaine - each of at least eight kilos. Flowers and five others were indicted and went to trial. Flowers came close to beating that case, too. In 1997, after Flowers and the others were convicted of drug conspiracy charges, then-U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi said Oakland's murder rate had dropped because Flowers and his gang were in custody. But Flowers was before the court on separate charges under the federal "drug kingpin" law - and Justin Quackenbush, a visiting federal judge from Washington state, angrily charged that Yamaguchi's published remarks had prejudiced the jury. He dismissed the kingpin charges. Later, the judge also granted Flowers a new trial on the drug conspiracy charges, ruling that a juror who had personal knowledge of an Oakland drug murder had committed misconduct by mentioning it to other panelists during deliberations. But last year an appeals court reinstated the conviction. Thirty-year term urged In legal papers, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kennedy asked the judge to sentence Flowers to 30 years in prison because of the devastation the gang assertedly wreaked on East Oakland neighborhoods. "Narcotics trafficking and its associated violence devastates communities as well as individuals," Kennedy wrote. "Residents of some neighborhoods cannot allow their children to play in their front yards for fear of random bullets from drive-by shootings. . . . "Parents suffer years of anxiety worrying over their children becoming addicted to narcotics, being swept up in the flashy allure of narcotics trafficking, or becoming an innocent victim of the violence that permeates the drug world." Flowers' attorney, Mauren Kallins, couldn't be reached for comment. Jacquee Castain of the Webster Tract Neighborhood Association in East Oakland's Elmhurst District said 50 neighborhood people are planning to go to court for Flowers' sentencing. They want to show "that we don't want that type of criminal activity in our neighborhood, because its not safe for us," she said. "We're trying to keep our community safe." - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry