#freepreme

The Supreme Team was a street gang organized in the early 1980s in the vicinity of the Baisley Park Houses in Jamaica, Queens, New York, by a group of teenagers who were members of the Five Percent Nation. Under the leadership of Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff, with Miller, his nephew, as second-in-command, the gang concentrated its criminal efforts on the widespread distribution of crack cocaine. At its 1987 peak, the Supreme Team's receipts exceeded $200,000 a day, and the gang regularly committed acts of violence and murder to maintain its stranglehold on the area's drug trade. After McGriff went to jail in 1987, leadership of the Supreme Team was assumed by Gerald "Prince" Miller. Miller solidified his control by increasing the security force and employing it against rivals and against Team members suspected of disloyalty. During 1987 alone, Miller and the then-incarcerated McGriff ordered at least eight homicides.

The Supreme Team's narcotics operations used dozens of employees, including layers of drug sellers to insulate the gang leaders from the street-level activity. Team members communicated using the Five Percenter Supreme Alphabet and Supreme Mathematics as a coded language and numerical systems. To thwart law enforcement efforts further, Miller used armed bodyguards and deployed sentinels with two-way radios on rooftops. The sophistication of the gang's operation enabled it to survive the periodic targeting of various members for prosecution by the New York City Police Department ("NYPD") and the Queens County District Attorney's Office (collectively, the "State").

In late 1987, however, while Miller was incarcerated on state charges, a task force of NYPD and Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") agents executed search warrants on a number of Supreme Team storage locations, drug outlets, and residences. Although the gang was tipped off about the raid shortly before it occurred and was able to remove 11 kilograms of cocaine and $200,000 from targeted premises, authorities nonetheless seized an array of weapons, narcotics trade hardware, photographs, documents, and instructional manuals on criminal conduct, as well as a kilogram of cocaine and thousands of dollars. Following that raid and his own arrest by federal agents, McGriff ordered that the gang's operations be shut down.

When Miller was released from prison in the spring of 1989, he began to rebuild the Supreme Team and regained control of two of its most lucrative retail locations known as "spots." The reorganized gang under Miller included Arroyo as the second-in-command, Hunt as Miller's bodyguard, Ernesto Piniella as head of security, and Hale, Jimenez, and Julio Hernandez as security workers. Tucker and Coleman managed retail spots and supervised crews of workers; long-time gang member David Robinson helped supervise the drug operations and kept records. Raymond Robinson assisted in arranging cocaine purchases, provided security during drug transactions, supervised the processing of cocaine into crack, and delivered crack to sales locations. The Supreme Team began to reclaim its hold on the area drug trade and built its gross receipts up to $10,000 a day.

The substantive narcotics distribution charges against the present defendants focused on the period from December 1989 to March 1990, during which the State was monitoring the gang's activity with wiretaps. During that period, the Supreme Team conducted its business in the Baisley Park apartment of David Robinson's mother. Tucker, Coleman, and David Robinson would deliver to the apartment the moneys received at the retail spots they supervised; Miller and the Team's primary drug courier Trent Morris would negotiate cocaine deals by telephone with William Graham, a supplier who had Colombian connections; and Morris and Raymond Robinson would then drive to Graham's apartment with money to purchase kilogram-quantities of cocaine. The cocaine would be brought back to the Robinson apartment, where it was processed as crack, packaged, and given to Arroyo, David Robinson, Tucker, or Coleman, who in turn arranged for its sale by street-level employees.

The gang also resumed its use of violence and homicide. The government presented evidence at trial, not all of which resulted in convictions, of homicides committed both prior to the Supreme Team's 1987 shut-down and after its 1989 renaissance. You can also hear stories of other queens legends who 50 cent looked up to comming up on the mean streets of jamacia queens. the song is called "Ghetto Qua'ran". Russell simmons and his brother also hail from the same neighborhood in new york with a slew of other infamous players in the music industry.