A member of the Gangster Disciples ran a 24-hour hotline to sell heroin and cocaine this summer — scheduling shifts and pressuring his staff like a sales manager, a federal criminal complaint says.
Dexstin Bryant allegedly oversaw the West Side operation and the hotline cellphone as it was passed between a dozen drug dealers, the complaint charges.
Investigators learned about the hotline this summer and allegedly made two dozen undercover purchases of fentanyl-laced heroin and crack cocaine, the complaint states.
Investigators also tapped Bryant’s phone and allegedly recorded him angered at one dealer’s lagging sales.
“I don’t know what it is, if it’s just today or what?” Bryant, 31, is quoted as saying in the complaint.
“That’s what I think it is man,” someone replies.
Bryant allegedly then said that sales “start falling off” when that dealer was manning the phone.
“I feel it in the pockets,” he said, according to the complaint.
Bryant also had trouble remembering his hotline’s staff schedule, prosecutors said.
“You just gotta call and remind me so I don’t give it [the phone] to nobody else. Just call and remind me like the day before,” Bryant allegedly said.
“I been f- - - - - - around and I be double booking [phone shifts] sometimes,” Bryant allegedly said. “I need to write me a schedule down.”
Bryant allegedly used a home in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue in Lawndale as the operation’s hub. That’s where his drug dealers traded in the hotline phone at the beginning and end of their shifts and exchanged drug sale money, prosecutors said.
Police later searched the home and seized drugs, a drug mixer and multiple guns, prosecutors said. The hotline phone was also confiscated.
Bryant was arrested with 10 others who have been appearing for their arraignments in federal court. One of the alleged drug dealers, 21-year-old Enrique Hollins, remains at large.
Thirteen other people were charged earlier as part of the same investigation, prosecutors said.
