Oregon’s first federal racketeering trial against street-level gang members got underway Tuesday with jurors hearing starkly different accounts of the Hoover gang.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leah Bolstad described members as ruthless killers, armed robbers and money-flashing drug dealers who are enemies “with just about everyone else” and have worked to make their gang the most violent and powerful in Portland.
Defense lawyers for the two men standing trial countered that while their clients both identify as Hoovers, the gang is a loose-knit group largely made up of young Black men from poor, broken families striving for support and camaraderie.
They carry guns for protection in dangerous neighborhoods and any crimes they may have committed stem from personal vendettas or impulsive acts in their own interests, not for the benefit of the gang, the defense lawyers argued.
“Many young Black men have identified as members of a gang, but mere membership does not establish they entered a racketeering conspiracy,” said Bert Dupre III, one of two lawyers representing Ronald Clayton Rhodes.
Rhodes, 37, known as “Big Fly,” and Lorenzo Laron Jones, 49, known as “Low Down,” each face charges of participating in a racketeering conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering and using a firearm in a violent crime.
Between the two men, they’re accused of committing three murders with the goal of gaining increased standing in the gang.
Bolstad described Jones as an “O.G.” — or original gangster — of the Hoover 74 set and Rhodes as a senior leader of the Hoover 107 set.
Prosecutors said a cooperating witness will testify that after Jones was released from prison in 2016 on a federal conviction for being a felon with a gun, he shared with another man that he was the “king of Portland” and was focused on re-establishing his credibility on the street.
Rhodes is accused of ordering the killing of Kyle Polk, 21, of Portland, in December 2015.
Polk was on his way home from his first job when he was gunned down outside a Plaid Pantry at Southeast Division and 112th Avenue. He died at the front door of the store.
Polk’s parents, Reuben and Kathryn Polk, watched the opening of what’s expected to be a seven-week trial from the front row of the courtroom’s public gallery in U.S. District Court in downtown Portland.
A co-defendant, Javier Hernandez, was the man who pulled the trigger, prosecutors said, and has pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy.
Hernandez will testify that Rhodes handed him the gun and told him to shoot, Bolstad said.
Jones is accused of killing two gang rivals in Southeast Portland almost 20 years apart.
He’s charged with fatally shooting Wilbert “Billy” Butler, 27, of Eugene on Sept. 17, 2017, within two blocks of Portland’s Cleveland High School. Another man, Joel J. McCool Jr., is facing charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in state court in the killing. He’s pleaded not guilty and a trial is set for January.
Jones is also accused of killing Ascensio Genchi Garcia, 27, on July 19, 1998, at the El Moro apartments on Southeast 122nd Ave.
In the hours before the shooting, a fight brewed at the apartment complex between a large group of Latino men and several Black men over drug dealing, according to prosecutors. Another man, Karl Armstrong, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the Garcia killing and is awaiting sentencing in state court.
Four co-defendants, all Hoover gang members, have pleaded guilty to the federal racketeering conspiracy and are expected to testify against Rhodes and Jones, according to prosecutors.
Depree Sims, 33, of Portland became the first of the four to take the witness stand for the government.
Sims, wearing a green jail shirt, testified that he joined the Hoovers at age 14 and went by the street name “Big Freak.” His mother was a drug user and he never met his father, he said.
His older brother, Sims said, introduced him to the Hoovers.
“You got a gun, you’re supposed to use it,” Sims said of the gang code, adding that Hoover members were expected to initiate shootings of rivals, whether or not they were in danger.
The more violence members committed, the more respect they earned in the gang, Sims said.
The goal? “To stay on top … the most violent, the most aggressive, the most feared,” he testified.
Sims has prior convictions for assault, robbery and being a felon in possession of a gun.
He said the gang had a more selective membership when he joined – looking for people who were “down for the cause, not afraid to do crime.” But now, it appears the leaders “let anybody in,” he said.
Sims said he met Jones only three times but knew Jones’ reputation. “That he was a killer … I respected his reputation,” Sims testified.
The lawyers for Rhodes and Jones urged jurors to be skeptical of the co-defendants’ testimony, arguing that they’re murderers and robbers who are cooperating with the prosecution with the hope of shaving time from their own prison sentences.
“Their case is built upon cooperating witnesses who have contracts with the government,” said Ryan O’Connor, one of the attorneys representing Jones.
O’Connor and Richard Wolf, another lawyer representing Jones, pointed out that prosecutors didn’t record any of their initial conversations with the cooperating witnesses. They also elicited testimony from an FBI agent that the federal government paid at least three of the cooperating defendants and their families thousands of dollars to help relocate.
Some of the co-defendants’ previous statements to police contain outright lies and their accounts have changed over time, O’Connor said.
O’Connor further said that police and prosecutors have had “tunnel vision” in trying to link Jones to the 1998 killing of Garcia. As a result, he said, they have ignored or failed to pursue other evidence that suggests another person could have been involved.
“The Hoovers are a gang. Mr. Jones is a Hoover. We don’t dispute that,” he said. “Mr. Jones has committed crimes in the past, done his time. He’s no angel, has certainly made his own mistakes.”
But, he argued, gang members made no agreement to commit crimes or deal drugs.
Rhodes was shuffled among foster homes before he was adopted. He sold drugs to support himself and hung out with friends and relatives who also had gang ties. “Basically, Mr. Rhodes was just trying to get by selling drugs for himself, not for the Hoovers,” Dupre, his lawyer, told jurors.
Jones was 14 when he got involved in the gang after his father died, O’Connor said. He was in juvenile detention, and in adult prison by age 18. The gang provided him with a surrogate family, O’Connor said.
Bolstad, reading from a transcript, shared with jurors Jones’ statement from a previous sentencing stemming from two shootings in Eugene: “I think it was the hurt of losing my father that chose me to be that aggressive and that deep into the gang. Which is really – it is really hard to explain, because if you are not involved in it, you know, you couldn’t – you would not be able to understand the hate. The anger that binds the group together. It knows that there is love there. It is a negative love. Nobody is going to hurt me, and I will die before I let somebody hurt you.”
The Hoovers formed in Los Angeles in the 1960s, initially as the Hoover Crips. In the 1990s, the gang broke away from the Crips and became known as the Hoover Criminal Gang, Bolstad said.
They established a presence in Portland in the early 1980s, with two main sets: Hoover 107 and 74 Hoover.
To be initiated into the gang, members were beaten, known as “jumping in,” for either 74 or 107 seconds, depending on their gang set, by other members, Bolstad said.
Hoover gang members consider two Blood sets as their allies, the local Unthank Park Hustlers and California’s Inglewood Family Bloods. But the Hoovers are rivals with most every other gang in the city: Rollin’ 60s Crips, Kerby Blocc Crips, Columbia Villa Crips, Woodlawn Park Bloods and the Loc’d Out Pirus, for example, according to Bolstad.
The Hoovers aligned with the Unthank Park Hustlers after a Hoover, Sims’ brother, ran after and gunned down a man suspected of killing an 18-year-old Unthank Park Hustler in 2008. The Unthank Park Hustler who died, Willy Lewis Butler, 18, was Wilbert Butler’s twin brother.
Prosecutors plan to call about 120 witnesses and present about 250 exhibits, including photos from social media, video surveillance images, as well as ballistic and DNA evidence.
Bolstad said the testimony from cooperating witnesses and police, county sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents will cover three murders, 12 or more attempted murders that were largely retaliatory shootings and six or more armed robberies allegedly committed by Hoover gang members over the past 30 years, starting as far back as 1989, in the Portland metropolitan area.
In one case, Hoover gang members are accused of forcing their way into a rival Woodlawn Park Blood’s Gresham home around 4:30 a.m. on May 22, 2017, and firing shots into a bedroom where the target’s children and mother cowered in a bed, Bolstad said. A 9-year-old boy was shot in the eye and suffered significant brain and eye damage but survived, the prosecutor said.
She said the Hoover gang members often used the initials CK, for Crip Killer, or EK, for Everybody Killer.
“The Hoovers were enemies with just about everyone else - everybody killers,” Bolstad said.
The case is being prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO, which is among the federal government’s most powerful tools to combat long-running criminal organizations.
The government has used racketeering laws to cripple street gangs in cities nationwide. This is only the second racketeering conspiracy case brought in Portland in recent years, following the prosecution earlier this year of the Gypsy Jokers Motorcycle Club members in the torture-style killing of a former club member.
Unlike state laws, which mostly address individual crimes, the RICO law permits prosecution of gang members for being part of an enterprise that commits a series of crimes.
