A Safe Streets site used as ‘clubhouse’ for BGF gang activities, plea agreement reveals.
BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A federal plea agreement from January 2024 outlines how gang members used a Safe Streets location as a “clubhouse,” storing guns and drugs at the site and plotting hits on rival gang members.
Tyrell Jeffries pleaded guilty to federal racketeering conspiracy in January 2024 stemming from a years-long investigation involving several Black Guerilla Family gang members. According to the plea agreement, Jeffries was a BGF member, knowingly and willfully conspired with other people to participate in racketeering – including a conspiracy to commit premeditated murder – as well as possession with the intent to distribute drugs.
According to court documents, Jeffries admitted to attending BGF meetings at the Safe Streets location on E. Monument Street; the location used to be called Safe Streets East but now the catchment zone is known as McElderry Park, though the actual Safe Streets site is no longer located at the site described in the court records.
Safe Streets is Baltimore City’s flagship gun violence prevention program. The program, which has 10 locations across Baltimore, utilizes credible messengers in the various communities to work as violence interrupters. The goal is to prevent gun violence, but studies have indicated inconclusive sustained reductions. At the time of this federal investigation, which dates back to at least 2015, the Safe Streets location in question was managed by Living Classrooms.
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In the fall of 2022, Mayor Brandon Scott announced the city would be restructuring management of the 10 Safe Streets sites. Instead of a patchwork of non-profits managing the day-to-day operations, Baltimore City contracted with LifeBridge Health Center for Hope and Catholic Charities to manage the 10 sites; both LifeBridge and Catholic Charities previously managed some Safe Streets sites.
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Two BGF members who attended gang-related meetings at the Safe Streets location on E. Monument Street were Safe Streets employees, Jeffries outlined in his plea agreement.
“[Jeffries] admits that during the late spring and summer of 2015, he and other BGF members utilized the Safe Streets office as a de facto clubhouse, where they stored drugs and firearms and plotted acts of violence on behalf of the gang,” according to the court records.
The court records also explain how a retaliatory hit was plotted – while the gang members were at the Safe Streets site – against a rival gang member in May 2015. That shooting was executed during a vigil for a homicide victim just down the block from the Safe Streets site; the target of the hit, Steven Robinson, was shot but survived.
In July 2015, three of Jeffries co-conspirators – who were also later charged – stole approximately 300 grams of heroin from a West Baltimore drug dealer, according to the court records. On July 6, 2015, Jeffries and other BGF members “ambushed” the drug dealer while he was sitting in his vehicle and shot into the car. The drug dealer was injured but survived.
FOX45 News questioned Mayor Brandon Scott Wednesday about the possibility of Safe Streets sites being used for other gang-related activity.
“What I can say is that any time we find anybody to be involved in criminal activity Mikenzie, we remove those people and turn them over to the justice system,” he said. “I’ve said to you a thousand times, I don’t care if those things are being had at the DPW office, if they are being plotted out in the basement of FOX45 TV, wherever they are being plotted out, our folks will find the people and remove them as we are working with our law enforcement partners, as was the case in this situation.”