Nation's Premier Gang Now A Broken Shell

CHICAGO - They were the nation's ultimate street gang, creating an empire of murder and muscle that raked in millions. They were feared, they were dreaded, they were invincible. Until now.

After 25 years, police say the El Rukns finally are where they want them - off the streets and behind bars. Nine leaders were sentenced in recent weeks, the latest of 52 members to fall in a domino-like collapse of a notorious gang often compared to Capone and the Mafia.

"That gang is history in Chicago," said police gang-crimes Commander Robert Dart. "The El Rukn nation is, in fact, decimated. No question. . . . Will they rise back up? I just don't think so."

This isn't the first El Rukn obituary. The gang, a nefarious force since the '60s under various names and guises, has died and been resurrected more times than Jason of `Friday the 13th.' But this burial looks final.

Most of the leaders, including chieftain Jeff Fort, are in prison, largely because of other El Rukns who turned against them. The survivors, police say, lack the savvy or skills to run their lucrative drug-dealing trade.

The gang is so weakened it has gone from predator to prey.

"It is extremely dangerous for a person to be an El Rukn on the streets," Dart said. "Because of that, you don't see them out there."

"People remember what they did to `my brother, my cousin, my friend.' Before you couldn't do anything," he added. "Their power was absolute. Now it's perceived to be watered down. It's payback time in many cases."

The exploits and evolution of the El Rukns are fodder for fiction. In the '60s, they were the Blackstone Rangers, darlings of the left, recipients of federal money and associates of mainstream politicians; a few even wangled invitations to President Nixon's inaugural.

`STONES RUN IT'

They became the Black P Stone Nation, an amalgamation of gangs with a ruling body called the `Main 21', a membership estimated at 15,000 and a slogan - "Stones Run It" - that inspired fear wherever it was scrawled.

After Fort's release from prison in the mid-'70s, the El Rukns were formed, named after the cornerstone of the Kaaba, a sacred shrine in Mecca. They claimed to be a religious group; authorities said that was a diversion to obscure illicit activity.

In the '80s investigators called the El Rukns the nation's ultimate street gang and drugs were their financial lifeblood: they sold everything from codeine-based cough syrup to heroin and their $50,000-$100,000-a-week business included a sophisticated cocaine processing and distribution network.

The gang was so flush with cash, according to trial testimony, it stashed millions in pipes, sewers and basement holes in its headquarters, a former South Side theater.

The El Rukns also bought dozens of buildings, operated a restaurant, formed a security-guard business and established a political arm.

"They're really very, very bright people," said William Hogan, an assistant U.S. attorney. "Had they been channeled into legitimate activities, they had the potential to be equally successful."

They were insular, living together in gang-owned buildings, intermarrying and making crime a family activity.

Five members, including Fort - a sixth pleaded guilty and a seventh is a fugitive - were convicted in 1987 of conspiring to obtain money from the Libyan government by offering to commit terrorist acts in the United States.

Police estimate El Rukns have been responsible for hundreds of murders.

Key to their survival was their paramilitary hierarchy of generals, officers, ambassadors and soldiers.

`ORGANIZED CRIME'

"The Rukns really weren't a street gang by the '80s," said Theodore Poulos, an assistant U.S. attorney. "They were organized crime. I don't think there was a group of people anywhere in the country that was as highly organized and tightly structured . . . (and able) to commit the wide variety of crimes."

In the '80s, there were about 400 El Rukns, all devoted to one man - Fort.

A fourth-grade dropout, Fort maintained his iron-fisted control even from behind prison walls: He was given daily accountings of every cent, from huge drug profits to $10 grocery bills and the cost of shoes and tuition for his children - for private school.

The beginning of the end for the El Rukns came in 1985, when a high-ranking leader cooperated with authorities. Based on his information, the government began wiretapping Fort's prison calls and later, phones at the headquarters.

It gathered 3,500 hours of conversation but it was in a code - Fort feared eavesdropping - that combined street talk, Arabic and Swahili.

El Rukns who turned government witnesses helped authorities decipher the secret language. They explained, for example, cornmeal meant millionaire and brewery was one word for cocaine.

Sixteen members pleaded guilty, but the full scope of the El Rukns' power has been unveiled in seven trials since 1991. They've been shown to be shrewd entrepreneurs, legal and political fixers and ruthless dictators - even with their own families.

According to testimony:

-- Businessman Noah Robinson hooked the gang up with cocaine and heroin suppliers, helped them form a security-guard business and inherited what prosecutors called his own "private army of gangsters."

Robinson, half-brother of Jesse Jackson, was convicted of hiring El Rukns to kill a former employee and to try to kill two others.

-- A Cook County judge returned a $10,000 bribe to fix an El Rukn murder case after he suspected the FBI was on to it. Fort demanded the money back after he mistakenly believed the wrong case was fixed.

The judge has been indicted. The attorney has pleaded guilty.

-- An imprisoned Fort, in a telephone hookup to El Rukn headquarters, ordered his teenage son beaten when he tried to form his own gang. The gang took photos of the boy's bloody face.