Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Toth said he was at a loss to explain how pieces of Brandon “Baywatch” Parks’ life fit together.
After a tough and unstable upbringing in Chicago, Parks, now 46, joined the Marine Corps in 2005, then was deployed to Iraq. Years later, he joined the Sin City Deciples, serving for a couple years as a right-hand man to notorious founder Kenneth “Angel” McGhee.
Then, Parks got “fired” from the violent motorcycle gang, severed ties with the group and talked his way into becoming a volunteer, then a respected teacher at a Southside Chicago high school.
Toth acknowledged there was no evidence Parks dealt drugs. He didn’t personally kill anyone, but he traveled with McGhee and knew what was going on around him.
Ultimately, despite his denials, Parks knew who they were, what they did, was swept up and convicted after an 18-day trial in the gang’s massive RICO case, U.S. District Court Judge Philip Simon noted.
“You joined it,” he said.
These are “bad” people, Simon later said.
He sentenced Parks to three years in federal prison, with the last year possibly in a halfway house, then one year on supervised release. Parks had faced about 4-5 years from the case in the U.S. District Court in Hammond.
Toth, with Assistant U.S. Attorney David Nozick, said Parks joined the gang around 2013 and was the “longest serving” national president, second in command, before he left in 2017.
They showed transcripts of recorded phone calls with Michael “Puerto Rican Mike” Rivera, a high-ranking member, who testified during Parks’ trial. Parks took Rivera’s role as president after he was jailed.
Among other allegations, Toth said Rivera got into a “weird standoff” with a man in East St. Louis in 2014, took Parks’ gun, then shot the man twice in the leg.
Earlier in the hearing, Simon rejected a trio of allegations that would have added more time to Parks’ sentence — including that he extorted “cuts” in Las Vegas in 2017 from the affiliate, all-female Sin City Angels motorcycle gang. It was alluded to in recorded jail calls with Rivera.
“That’s it? That’s the evidence,” Simon asked. “That just doesn’t cut it.”
Prosecutors asked for seven years, documents show.
Defense lawyers Brandon Brown and Andre Grant presented a half-dozen people who testified on Parks’ behalf, including a retired teacher, school program administrator, and former student.
Phylydia Hudson, Corliss High School’s STEM program manager, said she brought Parks on as a “vendor” around 2018 to teach computer-assisted design in IT classes. He helped create a maker space and develop their drone program. He eventually got an alternative teacher’s license and joined the staff. His arrest left a “void,” she said.
Vincent Smith, 19, a computer engineering college student, said Parks was an “amazing teacher.”
Toth noted all of those who testified met Parks after he left the gang. Parks was one of 16 men indicted in the case.
The 57-page superseding indictment reads like a television drama, weaving a tale of influence, obedience, intimidation, an internal power struggle, drugs, guns and murder spanning multiple states and including local, regional and national chapters of the Sin City Deciples.
The club’s leadership ran the group with an iron fist, enforcing a strict code of respect and obedience, where offenders could be disciplined with beatings and death, according to court documents. The documents outline how the Sin City Deciples would intimidate other motorcycle clubs into become their support clubs, extorting dues and support.
Federal prosecutors say high-ranking Sin City Deciples member Ronnie Major paid his brother-in-law Antoine Gates to kill Jocelyn “Pie Face” Blair, 31, on Dec. 19, 2010, who she was eating breakfast at the counter inside Coney Island Restaurant in Gary. Blair was a witness against him in an upcoming county trial.
Rivera, with them, was shot in the leg.
Months earlier in Feburary 2010, Gates shot a second man, the other county witness, a dozen times. He survived.
McGhee was sentenced to 30 years in September.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.
