- April 30, 2024
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According to expert Sgt. Steve Cole, Flagler Bloods are history.
Before he was jailed in 2008, Bloods gang leader Brandon Washington, 24, was the effectual CEO of what might be considered a twisted small business with about two-dozen employees in Flagler County.
Washington had gang officers who reported to him. He conducted a meeting with members of the gang every Sunday evening, called the Skyline meeting. The agenda was consistent: Review crimes committed during the previous week. Identify targets for the upcoming week. Pay dues. Provide training for gang members. Vote on any violations and mete out punishments.
Washington’s conviction on charges of organized crime, second-degree murder and home invasion means the “business” has been dissolved, according to area gang expert Steve Cole, a sergeant with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office and a past vice president of the Florida Gang Investigators Association.
Future of Flagler gangs
What remains in Flagler County are less organized and less dangerous gangs, said Cole.
“What we have going on right now are hybrid gangs — a group of kids who dabble with committing crimes together,” Cole said in an interview last week, after the Washington trial. “It’s very juvenile, nothing really organized with hierarchy.”
Based on population, Flagler has gang-related activity that is similar to surrounding communities, Cole added. But one thing Flagler County has done since he became the designated gang officer for the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office in 1995 is face the facts.
“In the mid-’90s, it was taboo to use the word ‘gangs,’” Cole said. Other communities continue to refer to gangs as “rival groups” or “troubled teens,” euphemizing the problem and therefore living in a state of denial, Cole explained.
“We’ve always been open about it,” he said. “We’ve educated parents and teachers about it. Sometimes there has been a perception that we have more than we do.”
The Washington conviction, which took six years and unprecedented collaboration between local and state agencies, is the most significant and most involved case in at least 25 years, according to Maj. David O’Brien.
But Cole said residents shouldn’t take the high-profile Washington case as a sign that Flagler County has high crime.
“A lot of our crimes are the victims failing to protect themselves,” Cole said. One example is car break-ins. In those incidents, Cole said, “The cars are always unlocked … I’m not trying to blame victims, but if they would take (their valuables) in the house and lock their doors, (many crimes could be avoided).”
Gang activity is cyclical, Cole added. And now that Washington is securely in jail and the rest of the Bloods hierarchy has been dismantled (see the box, “Busted Bloods”), gang activity is decimated.
Inside the Bloods
According to charging affidavits, Bloods gang members were initiated in one of three ways: “beat in” (recruits who could withstand a 21-second beating in silence were approved); “sexed in” (female recruits could join by having sex with a high-ranking member of the gang); or “blessed in” (recruits could commit a series of crimes to join).
Most Bloods gang members were initiated in their late teens, according to Cole, who testified for 2.5 hours in the Washington case. But Washington had had run-ins with the Sheriff’s Office since he was in middle school.
“Brandon got beat in, in the seventh or eighth grade,” Cole said. “He’s been in and out of being incarcerated for most of his life.”
Once in, gang members lived by a 15-page rule booklet called the Blood Bible. Status was enhanced by committing crimes and, if caught, not snitching.
The gang had its own “language,” similar to Pig Latin. A treasurer kept track of a collective money pool called the Blood Bank, which was used in part to bail members out of jail. A rule forbade members to eat at Burger King because BK means, “Blood killer.”
Members wore red bandanas and red-and-black bead necklaces to show public allegiance to the gang. The sequence of beads showed rank in the gang.
“A lot of times, what they’re looking for and what they’re mindset is, is no different from Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or a baseball team,” Cole said. “They wear uniforms; they have codes … Gangs prey on people who want to belong to something, but they haven’t found it. Brandon would find those people who were lost souls.”
The Bloods, like other gangs, valued nicknames. “When you join the gang, you’re not who you used to be,” Cole said. “You adopt a new name ... It’s like a rebirth.”
Washington was known to other gang members as O.G., or Original Gangster. Cole compared him to the CEO of a business: “If you look at the last year or so of the gang, he wasn’t the one committing all the crimes; it was the ones underneath him. He was the boss, the manager.”
Broken code
Despite the beatings he had ordered in the past to intimidate and punish snitches, and despite writing on the jail-cell wall a list of snitches to be punished later, Washington was ultimately betrayed.
Other members of the Bloods decided to salvage what they could of their lives, and they cooperated with law enforcement officers. They pled guilty for sentences of a three to 20 years, rather than serve for life.
In the end, Washington’s claim that he “owned this town” proved to be an illusion.
“When it came down to it,” Cole said, “he is the only one who truly lived by the code, who was really willing to take it as far as he did.”
BUSTED BLOODS
GANG—MEMBER—YEARS IN PRISON
Brandon Washington—4 life terms
Gerrell Smith—20
Tommy Banks—15
Michael Gilbert—15
Christopher Kee—10
Bianca Dorismond—5
Parakevas Hantzos—5
Andre McCarthy—5
Ancil Oliver—5
Joel Ortiz—5
Alex Decosta—3
Terrance Leeks—3
Source: Flagler County Sheriff’s Office
WASHINGTON CONVICTED
Brandon Washington, 24, was sentenced to life in prison on organized crime charges and murder. He has been in state, St. Johns and Flagler county jails since 2008 and was the leader of the Bloods gang, in Flagler County.
Judge Raul Zambrano issued the sentence Nov. 2.
Maj. David O’Brien said the conviction was the most involved and the most significant in Flagler County since he joined the agency in 1984.
