A leader of a violent North Hartford gang dodges a life sentence

One of the leaders of a murderous Hartford drug gang avoided spending the rest of his life in prison Friday.

Jimel “Velly” Frank was charged in the ambush murder of a rival drug dealer, but was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 10 years after cooperating with federal agents cracking down on the lucrative drug trade in the city’s upper Blue Hills section. Frank was a member of a group known variously as Team Grease and West Hell, which police said used threats, violence and an arsenal of weapons to control drug distribution in the area around Cornwall Street.

Frank and fellow Team Grease gangster Karl “Eagle” Roye lured Anthony “Smooth” Parker, 24, to a driveway at 15-17 Thomaston Street on April 6, 2011, and emptied two, 9 mm automatic pistols into his head, neck and chest while he sat in a parked car.

There is evidence that Parker was a member of The Ave, a gang of rival drug dealers who controlled narcotics distribution around Albany Avenue. Federal prosecutors presented evidence in court that Frank and Roye believed Parker, backed by others, had pointed a gun at the head of the mother of another Team Grease member, Kendall Brown, in an aborted drug rip-off.

Team Grease believed Frank was the intended target of the rip-off, but the mother was mistakenly confronted as she drove into her backyard on Chatham Street, probably because she and Frank drove nearly identical automobiles. When she appeared in court, the mother testified that she stomped her car’s accelerator and fled after seeing the gun and later reported the encounter to her son, who was selling drugs out of her house.

Frank was charged in the Parker murder but agreed to testify against Roye in the hope of getting out of prison while he is alive. During a previous court proceeding, he explained to the jury why he and Roye riddled Parker with bullets and left him for dead.

"I felt disrespected," he said. "I felt that could have possibly been me and what would have happened? And what would have happened if (Brown's mother) hadn't drove off?"

Roye will probably die in prison after he denied involvement in the murder and a jury convicted him in 2016 of racketeering murder at age 25. He was sentenced to life without parole. Prosecutors have presented evidence in court that Team Grease was a continuing criminal enterprise under federal racketeering law and that the murder was a business decision.

Frank made a long, remorseful apology to U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton, who imposed the sentence in New Haven. He already has served five years since his arrest. U.S. Attorney John H. Durham, who prosecuted Frank, Royce and related cases, did not make a sentencing recommendation Friday.

There was evidence that gang members had been storing guns and selling drugs from houses on Cornwall, Holcomb and Chatham streets since at least 2009. Federal prosecutors believe the gang is responsible for at least three murders, dating to a shootout at the 2008 West Indian Day Parade, in which a rival drug dealer was killed and four teens and two children under the age of 10 were wounded by errant shots.

There also was evidence that drug dealing is a multi-generational business. A gang member has followed his father to prison for drug dealing. Court filings charge that the gang had an associate who distributed drugs in schools, with help from his aunt. A gang member testified that, shortly before he helped set up the Parker murder, he and his mother were counting cash in her kitchen and planning a bulk cocaine purchase. There was testimony that another gang member turned over his drug distribution duties to his mother when he was in prison.

Team Grease made so much money selling drugs that the gang incorporated itself and produced music videos glorifying the drug business. In one of the characteristically obscene videos, gang members wave bricks of $100 bills and throw wads of them at girls dancing at a Hartford nightclub.

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