[Chicago Trib] The reputed leader of the Black Disciples street gang was among 23 people arrested in a federal gang takedown involving drug and weapons trafficking in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, federal authorities announced Wednesday.Darnell McMiller, 34, who goes by the street name "Murder," was charged with distribution of fentanyl-laced heroin to a cooperating individual last September in the 7000 block of South Lowe Avenue, according to court records.
McMiller, of Chicago, is described in the charges as the current leader of the Black Disciples, a national street gang founded in the city in the 1960s. Also charged was Clarence January, who allegedly leads the gang's "Dog Pound" faction, and Charles Knight, an alleged high-ranking member of the Gangster Disciples accused of supplying narcotics to McMiller's crew.
McMiller's arrest came a little more than a year after his release from federal prison on a separate narcotics conspiracy conviction. Records show he was sentenced to eight years behind bars in 2014 and released in mid-2019. Within weeks, he was captured on undercover FBI wiretaps attempting to arrange new drug pipelines for the gang, according to the charges.
In one recorded conversation from September 2019, McMiller told an undercover FBI informant that he was thinking of making the birthday of former Black Disciples leader Jerome "Shorty" Freeman a holiday for the gang "everywhere," according to the criminal complaint unsealed after McMiller's arrest.
| So romantic... |
"(Expletive) we know Shorty personally," McMiller allegedly said.
Prosecutors alleged McMiller also talked about his role as a leader of the gang when it came to settling scores. At one point on the recordings, when the informant asked McMiller about a shooting the night before, McMiller replied, "Ah, they straightened that out," the complaint alleged.
"Bro and 'nem from the 100s came and did that," McMiller said, referencing the block in Black Disciples territory where his enforcers live. "They from the 100s."
During a news conference outside Chicago police's Englewood District station, law enforcement officials discussed the roundup, which including the seizure of heroin laced with the powerful painkiller fentanyl, as well as cocaine, ecstasy pills, two dozen guns and about $50,000.
U.S. Attorney John Lausch told reporters the multiyear probe was clearly active prior to the start of Operation Legend, an effort announced by the Trump administration last week calling for a surge in federal agents to Chicago to assist Chicago police and other law enforcement in tamping down violence.
But Lausch said the investigation represents the kind of work that law enforcement plans to emulate in Chicago during the new operation.
"The influx of federal resources under Operation Legend announced last week fits squarely within this same strategy and uses the same enforcement structure, including the agencies and the leaders that are up here today to help us rid our neighborhoods of gun-toters and drug traffickers in order (to) restore the rule of law and to help keep people safe," said Lausch.
Emmerson Buie Jr., head of the Chicago FBI, said "today is an important day for me" since he grew up in the Englewood area where much of the investigation was centered. But he also pointed to other federal gang investigations that needed the FBI's help.