The Nov. 12 arrest of several local residents charged with dealing cocaine, fentanyl and other illegal drugs is the second bust by police of major drug organizations spreading their territory into Peekskill over the past decade.
The first bust, the 2020 takedown of the vicious Untouchable Gorilla Stone Nation Bloods Gang (“Gorilla Stone”), sent more than 20 suspects to prison and culminated on Tuesday, Nov. 26 with a 35-year sentence in federal prison for a co-founder of that group.
The two kingpins of Gorilla Stone, Dwight Reid, a/k/a “Dick Wolf,” and Christopher Erskine, a/k/a “Beagle,” were both sentenced to 35 years in prison for their years-long leadership of the brutally violent street and prison gang that operates across the country.
Erskine, the gang’s street leader, also known as the “Sun,” is the gang’s second highest-ranking member and was sentenced by federal Judge Philip M. Halpern on Nov. 26 following a nearly three-week trial last year when Reid and Erskine were convicted of racketeering and narcotics offenses. Reid, the gang’s highest-ranking member, is the gang’s founder and prison leader, and was sentenced on May 21, 2024.
Reid is already incarcerated on a fifty-year-to-life sentence for a 2014 murder he committed by shooting a victim at point blank range in the head. Through the course of this investigation, law enforcement learned that Reid still maintained an iron grip over Gorilla Stone from behind bars, including the gang’s lucrative narcotics distribution operating in New York City and upstate New York, as well as the gang’s various fraud schemes.
The most high-profile member of the Gorilla Stone gang, rap star Caswell Senior, aka “Casanova,” pled guilty to charges of racketeering in May 2022 and is serving a sentence of 15 years in federal prison.
Three Peekskill Gorilla Stone gang members sent to prison
Three of the Gorilla Stone gang members were Peekskill residents who sold drugs here and committed other crimes. They were indicted in November 2020.
Dezon Washington, a/k/a “Blakk,” was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison; Roberta Sligh, a/k/a “Trouble,” was sentenced to eight years in prison in May 2022; and Jordan Ingram, a/k/a “Flow,” was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was arrested in December 2020 and pled guilty in August 2021.
According to the federal complaint filed against the three Peekskill gang members, they were a part of the drug trade in Peekskill.
Washington was charged with a gunpoint drug robbery in a Peekskill hotel room where the victim was savagely beaten. Evidence of the violent nature of the robbery was found at the crime scene. Washington was intercepted over wiretaps discussing how he could help another gang member acquire firearms (“duffles”). His role as a procurer of firearms has also been corroborated by screenshots he sent of websites selling firearms.
Ingram worked closely with another defendant to move large quantities of crack cocaine in the Peekskill area. He was also charged with carrying out the gunpoint robbery with Washington and another defendant. He also appeared to be a conduit to acquire weapons for Gorilla Stone, according to federal authorities. In a phone interception Ingram was heard calling a gun store in Pennsylvania and asking “if I were coming in to purchase a weapon is there a waiting process?” and messages appear to confirm that Ingram did travel to purchase a firearm in Pennsylvania.
In court papers, Ingram told the sentencing judge that he intended to learn from his past mistakes
“People I looked up to in the past have been leading me astray and the process has opened my eyes to the dangers I have and may have, and can cause if my life was to continue down the path I was leading. I believe that most of the time I was doing it to be in good grace of my friends/associates. The love I thought I had with the people I was around may or may not have been genuine but I realize that it’s not worth the cost. I am still able to bring good to my community and became a role model to the true friends I have. I believe that a lot of my actions was based off of wanting to be accepted by my peers. I am not making excuses for my past actions only speaking facts on how I have been living. My purpose for my letter is not to get out of punishment it’s more for to ask the Court to grant me some leniency. For which I have learned from my mistakes and past actions.”
Sligh was a Peekskill-based member of Gorilla Stone and close associate of defendant Naya Austin, a/k/a “Baby.” Cellphone extractions and social media search warrants have made plain that Sligh was intimately involved in moving large amounts of crack cocaine in the Peekskill community with Austin, which has had a devastating impact in that small community, federal authorities said. In addition, cellphone extractions have shown Austin and Sligh exchanging surveillance video of a brutal beating of a victim outside a convenience store on April 9, 2020 in the early evening hours.
During that video, Austin and Sligh are seen dragging an individual out of a convenience store while viciously beating the victim. A third individual is depicted beating the victim with a tire iron. Sligh has also exchanged messages with guns and, in one particularly telling exchange, Austin sent Sligh a screenshot of a conversation between her (Austin) and Washington about firearms available for purchase through a website.
Sligh carried out those crimes while under the supervision of Westchester County Probation, serving a five-year term of probation after being convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree in January 2020 after being arrested with a handgun in Peekskill.
In the aftermath of that arrest, Sligh proudly boasted to a Peekskill detective, in a recorded, post-arrest, post-Miranda interview, that she was a member of Gorilla Stone.
Austin, sentenced to 19.5 years in prison, served as the “God Mother,” or highest-ranking female member of the Gorilla Stone Reign Cave. Wiretaps on Austin’s cellphone in June and July 2020 revealed numerous conversations regarding her high-level participation in Gorilla Stone, and a significant amount of narcotics trafficking, which is corroborated by the more than 100 grams of crack cocaine that have been purchased directly from Austin in video- and audio-recorded buys, federal authorities said.
In addition to being one of the most prolific drug dealers for the gang, according to prosecutors, Austin is also charged with committing the brazen gunpoint robbery of a drug dealer at a hotel in Peekskill on June 12, 2020.
After the robbery, Austin was captured over the wiretap on her phone discussing the robbery and whether or not the victim of the robbery was planning a retaliatory attack. Austin and defendant Roberta Sligh were also captured on surveillance video savagely beating a victim outside a gas station in Peekskill on April 9, 2020. Austin also admitted to shooting at an individual in front of a house party in the early morning hours of August 2, 2020 in Peekskill.
Gorilla Stone is a violent street gang with a national presence that was founded by Dwight Reid, a/k/a “Dick Wolf.” Gorilla Stone has hundreds of members across New York State, including in all five boroughs of New York City, throughout the New York State Prison System, and across the country—most notably in Florida and North Carolina, according to prosecutors.
Gorilla Stone is comprised of eight different sets (or “Caves” as they are called by gang members). Each Cave has its own leadership hierarchy, and reports up to the respective leaders of their particular Cave. Gorilla Stone, like most other Bloods street gangs, has two separate hierarchical rank structures: a “Prison Lineup” for Gorilla Stone members in the prison system and the “Street Lineup,” i.e., members of Gorilla Stone that are not incarcerated.
Six other Peekskill residents taken off the streets
Ten days prior to Stone Gorilla leader Erskine’s sentencing, six other individuals were arrested here on Nov. 12 for allegedly participating in a drug conspiracy that distributed large amounts of cocaine and fentanyl in the city of Peekskill through a gang headed by Brooklyn resident Rakim “Bo” Mayo.
Charges were filed against them three days after several police raids in the state on Tuesday, including four raids in Peekskill.
Defendants include Peekskill residents Jason Tinsley (AKA “Floss), 42, Jerome Reed (AKA “Pops”), 35, Gary Burkett, 62, and Meisha Cato, 37, and Brooklyn resident Thomas Ryan, 43 and Mayo.
“The defendants participated in a conspiracy to flood the streets of Peekskill with cocaine, crack, and fentanyl,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Damian Williams. “They allegedly operated throughout the City of Peekskill, on the street and in public housing complexes, disrupting people’s everyday lives and brazenly infesting the streets and residential buildings of Peekskill with dangerous drugs while they sought to get rich.”
Peekskill Police Chief Leo Dylewski repeated the message he sent to the community at the time of the Nov. 15 raids and arrests. Contacted by the Herald, Dylewski said “The City of Peekskill Police Department will continue our efforts to make our community a safe place. We hear you and like I said, we ain’t done yet.”
