Leroy "Chico" Brown was a Corner Pocket Crip and major [[Compton]] [[Crack Cocaine|crack]] dealer who became a business partner of [[Ricky Ross|"Freeway" Ricky Ross]].[^1] Brown pleaded guilty to drug charges in [[San Diego]] in 1996 and was serving an eleven-year sentence.[^2] ### Witness to Ross's Operations Brown described visiting one of Ross's "cook-houses" where crack was manufactured in industrial quantities. A house in a cheap neighborhood would be purchased by a front man and gutted. The windows would be barred and steel doors installed. Large, restaurant-size gas ranges and big aluminum pots would be brought in at night and set up. Cookers worked in shifts, arriving and departing as if they lived in the house. The only visitors would be couriers - one to drop off the powder, another to pick up the crack. "They were stirring these big pots with those things you use in canoes," Brown said with wonder. "You know, oars."[^1] Brown, heavily influenced by the film *Scarface*, said of Ross: "You ask any of the people who they looked up to back when they was startin' out, and all of them will tell you it was Ricky Ross. He was like a legend in the neighborhoods. He got a lotta people started."[^1] ### The DEA Sting After Ross's release from prison in 1993, Brown loaned him $30,000 for the recording studio at the Freeway Academy. When Ross could not repay, Brown proposed a solution: he would put up the money for a drug deal with [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]], using friends from Baltimore. If the deal went through, Brown would forgive the debt and pay Ross $70,000. "My word is bond," Brown told Blandón. "Whatever I say is the truth."[^3] In late February and early March 1995, Brown, Ross, and Brown's associate Curtis James met Blandón and a Colombian associate in National City, south of San Diego. On March 2, 1995, at the Bonita Plaza Mall in Chula Vista, Brown handed over $169,445 in a black-and-green shopping bag. The [[DEA]], running Blandón as an informant, had booby-trapped the cocaine vehicle. Federal agents swarmed the parking lot and arrested everyone. Brown pleaded guilty to drug charges and received an eleven-year sentence.[^3] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 8: "A million hits is not enough" [^2]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Cast of Characters [^3]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 24: "They're gonna forget I was a drug dealer"