Crime Beat

a 1986 conviction for operating a drug house.
    “We believe he calls the shots from prison,” said Lt. Bernard D. Conine, chief of Foothill Division detectives.
    Linked to Statewide Gang
    Authorities said Bryant and other top-level members of his organization have been linked to the Black Guerrilla Family, a gang formed in California prisons in the early 1970s. The BGF, as it is more commonly known, at first focused on revolutionary politics but now is accused of operating a statewide drug network, authorities said.
    Bryant faces no charges in the Aug. 28 quadruple slaying at the house he previously owned in the 11400 block of Wheeler Avenue. But investigators said the arrests of several lieutenants in the killings have depleted his organization’s top echelon.
    Although police think they eventually will be able to break up the Valley organization, they noted that lower-level members are in line to take over for those arrested in the Wheeler Avenue killings.
    “We know there are people in the organization who want to step up,” Conine said. “The bottom line is, you can still buy rock cocaine in Pacoima.”
    Through informants and witnesses and from evidence gathered during searches of 26 locations where organization members lived and operated, authorities said, they have pieced together what happened at the house on Wheeler Avenue and why.
    Andre Louis Armstrong, 31, and James Brown, 43, both of the Pacoima area, were hit with shotgun blasts at the door of the house, police said.
    They said Lorretha Anderson English, 23, of Seaside, and her 28-month-old daughter, Chemise, were fatally shot while waiting in a car parked out front. English’s 1 1/2 -year-old son, Carlos, was slightly injured by flying glass.
    So far, 11 people, including Bryant’s younger brother, Stanley Bryant, 30, have been charged in the killings. Stanley Bryant; Le Roy Wheeler, 19; Levie Slack III, 24; Tannis Bryant Curry, 26; James Franklin Williams III, 19; John Preston Settle, 28; and Antonio Arceneaux, whose age was unavailable, each face four charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder. All are Pacoima residents.
    Antonio Johnson, 28, and Nash Newbil, 52, both of Lake View Terrace, and William Gene Settle, 30, and Provine McCloria, 19, both of Pacoima, each face charges of accessory to murder.
    The Settle brothers, McCloria and Arceneaux are still sought.
    Only Stanley Bryant, Wheeler, Slack and Johnson have been arraigned. Each pleaded not guilty. Wheeler also has pleaded not guilty to a fifth murder, the Sept. 25 fatal shooting of a Pacoima drug dealer who police think was attempting to compete with the Bryant Organization.
    According to police and court records, the slayings occurred during a power struggle in which Armstrong, who had served a prison term for a killing attributed to the organization, demanded money and a top position in the so-called Bryant Organization.
    A Group Decision
    Instead of giving Armstrong what he wanted, the organization decided to kill him at a meeting at the Lake View Terrace house, where the group kept money and cocaine, authorities said. When other people showed up with Armstrong, gang members decided to eliminate them too, police said.
    Wheeler told a police informant, “They had to be killed to protect the organization,” according to court records.
    “They were shot . . . through the metal door,” he is quoted as saying, referring to Armstrong and Brown. “The woman and baby had to be killed. She was writing down license numbers. I had to shoot them.”
    Authorities think the Bryant Organization took control of cocaine sales in the northeast Valley after James H. (Doc) Holiday, a leader of the BGF, was accused in a 1979 double murder in Pacoima.
    The charges against Holiday, who police think had controlled cocaine traffic in the area, were dismissed. But he was convicted of the attempted murder of a witness in the case and was sent to prison, leaving the northeast Valley to Jeffrey Bryant’s group, authorities said.
    The Bryant Organization began to distribute cocaine through street sales and at as many as six drug houses in the Pacoima and Lake View Terrace areas, police said. The organization soon earned a reputation for violence, police said.
    “The rock cocaine business is controlled by Jeff Bryant,” according to a police statement filed in the 1986 drug case that sent Bryant to prison. In the words of the statement, “He is the head of an organization consisting of family