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The New Jersey Newsroom
Fruit Town's "T Brim" Pleads Guilty in Racketeering Case
United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced the sentencing of a ranking member of the Jersey City Fruit Town Brims set of the criminal street gang, the Bloods. Tequan Ryals, 34, was sentenced Wednesday, June 13, 2012, to 63 months in prison for his role in a criminal enterprise which involved the distribution of drugs and violent crimes – including acts pertaining to murder, conspiracy to commit murder, aggravated assaults, a kidnapping, and firearms offenses.
Ryals, also known as, "T Brim," previously pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering before Newark federal court District Judge Stanley R. Chesler, who also imposed the more than three years prison sentence.
According to the indictment, acting as a member of the Fruit Town Brims, Ryals participated in the criminal set’s activities on a daily basis from 2004 until his arrest in April 2009 by a task force of six heavily armed squads made up of city, federal, state and county law enforcement agencies. During the sweep, officers seized a loaded .357 magnum, and mass quantities of cocaine and heroin, the Jersey Journal reported.
While under surveillance by police, Ryals was observed making two narcotic sales on December 10 and December 18, 2008.
Between December 2008 and February 2009, Fishman said Ryals acted as an intermediary drug distributor, supplying bricks of heroin, which were given to him by a fellow gang associate and later resold to other gang members.
The charges in Ryals' case were the first of its kind in the federal District of New Jersey to dismantle the leadership of a gang from various cities. Other gang members charged in this indictment governed the gang's activities in Newark, Paterson, Jersey City and other localities.
Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, (Michael B. Ward), along with law enforcement officers from the Hudson County Sheriff’s Office, (Sheriff Frank X. Schillari); the Paterson Police Department, (Police Chief William Fraher); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, (Matthew W. Horace); the Jersey City Police Department, (Police Chief Thomas J. Comey); the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, (Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio); the National Gang Targeting Enforcement & Coordination Center, (Director Adam W. Cohen); and the New Jersey Department of Corrections, (Commissioner Gary M. Lanigan).
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Melissa Jampol, Lisa Colone, and Robert Frazer of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Newark represented the government.
According to the web site, Rap Dictionary, the Fruit Town Brims are a dissenting group of the original W/S (West Side) Fruit Town Pirus gang, founded in 1974 by a former member who moved to the westside of Los Angeles. The Fruit Town Pirus gang also counts Cedar Block Piru and West Side Piru gangs as allies.
The names of these various outfits were derived from neighborhoods in north Compton (California) where the streets are named Cherry, Peach and Pear. Because these gangs operated under the Brims umbrella, each carry the first name of the original posse, Fruit Town.
The Fruit Town posses most revered Crip rivalry is with the Rollin 30's Harlem Crips, originally known as the Harlem Godfathers during the early 1970s. Aside from the Fruit Town Pirus, they are also considered allies of the Harvard Park Brims.
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