City fights crack-dealing in Campbell projects

By Patricia Meade

Roughly 40 percent of calls to police involve trouble at the Kirwan Homes.

CAMPBELL — Eric T. VanCobb Jr. is accused of selling crack cocaine at the Michael J. Kirwan Homes, a trade that landed his father in federal prison three years ago.

In June 2005, the senior VanCobb, aka “Cowboy,” 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute crack at the same housing project and was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison. He is expected to be released from a Cincinnati halfway house in July, records show. That indictment had listed 15 defendants.

FBI Special Agent Mike Cizmar recalled the elder VanCobb’s arrest and mentioned that the younger VanCobb, when a juvenile, was “grabbed at a Monroe Street market selling dope.” Kirwan Homes includes Jean, Jackson Murray and Monroe streets.

The junior VanCobb, 28, is now named in a 35-count secret indictment unsealed Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. In all, 16 men and two women are accused of trafficking in crack at the Kirwan Homes.

Many of the alleged drug dealers are loosely associated with the street gang Soup City Boyz, said Lt. Robin Lees, commander of the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force. The gang name is a play on words that links the city — Campbell — to the famous soup.

Lees said the indictment is the result of an investigation that began in November 2006 and ended in December 2007. Police were out Tuesday rounding up the defendants.

Rob Duffrin, task force prosecutor, described the defendants as “low end thug types” and said the housing project has been an area where it was easy to buy drugs. He said police fielded a lot of complaints about drug sales.

Evidence of the drug trafficking includes audio and video records of the undercover transactions, Duffrin said.

Cizmar said the investigation included Mahoning County deputy sheriffs, Campbell and Youngstown police, Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force gang unit, Ohio Adult Parole Authority officers and the FBI/Mahoning Valley Violent Crimes Task Force gang unit. Lees added that such investigations require the manpower of task forces because police departments such as Campbell’s are too small to handle them.

Cizmar said this indictment is the third of its kind since 2001 that involves drug dealing at the housing project. As with the first two investigations, the task forces acted on a request from Campbell Police Chief Gus Sarigianopolous. The chief could not be reached.

Cizmar said the customers came from surrounding communities, some as far away as Columbiana. He said roughly 40 percent of the calls handled by Campbell police are for trouble — shootings, murders, assaults, robberies — at the Kirwan Homes.

In late February, a Howland woman was shot in the projects and died after driving home with her live-in boyfriend. Police said the shooting was drug related.

Cizmar said “99 percent” of the task force work is centered in Youngstown but Campbell represents part of Youngstown’s drug problem because so many of the dealers have ties to both cities. He said the gangs involved are loosely based drug conspiracies.

At the Kirwan Homes, most of the crack was sold out in the open, on street corners.

Federal court records, meanwhile, show at least two of the defendants, Jermaine Hodges, 27, and Michael Walker II, 28, were sent to prison in 2001, convicted of distributing crack.

meade@vindy.com