A top target of the feds’ largest-ever New Haven drug sweep is to spend a decade in jail.
The target, Jameel “Biggs” Wilkes, received a 127-month sentence Thursday in federal court in Hartford.
Biggs was a top target of 2012’s “Operation Bloodline,” the largest-ever federal-state-local drug sweep in the city’s history, focused on the Dwight-Kensington and Fair Haven neighborhoods. After his arrest, Wilkes, who also played a leading role in New Haven rap circles, offered his side in this interview with the Independent. He subsequently pleaded guilty to conspiracy to one count of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, the offense for which he was sentenced Thursday.
Before his sentencing Thursday, Wilkes’ attorney, Aaron J. Romano, presented a different side of Wilkes’ story — of a boy growing up fascinated by drug dealers and unable to avoid the omnipresent narcotics trade in his neighborhood, eventually turning to both dealing and abusing drugs himself.
“Jameel became fascinated by the dealers on Poplar Street. Even after the family moved to Farren Avenue, Jameel would return to Poplar Street everyday after school just to soak in the surroundings. To Jameel, the drug dealers seemed to be the epitome of success. Their luxury cars and clothes symbolized everything Jameel wanted. ‘I didn’t know nobody who was doing good in the legit world. Anybody I saw that was doing good, with nice cars and clothes, they was selling drugs,’” Romano wrote in a sentencing memo. Wilkes’ mother sent him down South to live with a strict grandmother — but other relatives there, too, were immersed in the trade. Click here to read the full memo.
Click here to read the government’s memo, which included this paragraph: “In a post-arrest statement, Mr. Wilkes admitted that he had been involved in the distribution of crack cocaine since 1994. He further admitted that he had distributed over 500 grams of cocaine base in the past two years and that he had a roster of approximately ten crack customers. Mr. Wilkes explained that he would collect money from customers, acquire cocaine and then convert the cocaine into cocaine base. He would then supply the cocaine base to the customers and make a profit on the transactions. Mr. Wilkes described himself as “nasty” in converting cocaine to crack, meaning he was very good at making high quality crack cocaine.” The memo also cites a video WIlkes made and posted on Youtube in which he said that government cooperating witnesses, including one whose nickname he used, “need to die a horrible death.”