Two Baltimore men who worked with a corrupt city police officer in the Gun Trace Task Force to sell heroin in North Baltimore have been sentenced to 25 and nearly 16 years in prison.
Antonio Shropshire, the namesake for what police dubbed the Shropshire Drug Trafficking Organization, received the longer sentence after being convicted of heroin and cocaine distribution and possession charges. His co-defendant, Alexander Campbell, was sentenced to 15 years and eight months.
Both men, along with Omari Thomas, Antoine Washington, Glen Kyle Wells and former Baltimore police officer Momodu Gondo, were convicted of running a heroin ring primarily out of The Alameda Shopping Center for more than seven years. The drugs they sold were linked to 15 fatal overdoses and 48 non-fatal ones in Baltimore and Harford counties.
One of those fatal overdoses happened in 2011, landing Washington in prison on a charge of distribution of heroin resulting in death, according to an indictment.
It was there that authorities caught him discussing the operation with his associations on a recorded jailhouse phone. The conversations spanned multiple years. During one recorded call on New Year’s Day of 2016, Campbell detailed how he was saving money from drug proceeds for Washington.
“Don’t say dumb shit on the phones,” Wells had warned Washington earlier on in the group conversation.
Shropshire was caught selling 10 grams of heroin to an undercover officer in July 2015, and police documented other instances in which he and the others sold or possessed drugs.
Gondo, a former Gun Trace Task Force member who pleaded guilty to racketeering and heroin distribution charges in October 2017, was found to have tipped off Shropshire in March 2016 about a tracking device that U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents had placed on his car, which Shropshire then moved. That summer, Gondo was also found to have been tipping Wells off about police targeting their drug ring, and to have convinced a fellow officer to back off of investigating Wells.
“I’m runnin’ every light out here, man,” Gondo said, per his indictment, referring to his fellow police officers. “F*** these lights. No question, yo.”
Gondo and seven other officers have been convicted of racketeering for their years-long scheme of duping the department to sell drugs, commit robberies, falsify overtime and other misconduct. Former detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor were the only ones to take their cases to trial.
Shropshire and Campbell are the latest members of the heroin ring to be sentenced. A judge already gave Thomas six years in prison, while Washington and Wells have yet to be sentenced. Three others were also arrested in the drug ring.
Fourteen former heroin customers testified against Shropshire and Campbell at their trial, according to a U.S. Justice Department release.
