Federal prosecutors say a long-troubled Northeast D.C. corner is finally getting some relief after a judge on Friday handed a 101-month prison sentence to the last remaining member of the violent “21st and Vietnam” crew.
Van Robinson, 44, known on the street as “Boogie,” was the twelfth and final defendant to be sentenced in the sprawling federal case. Once he finishes his time in prison, Robinson will also serve three years of supervised release, closing out what officials describe as a years-long fight to dismantle an entrenched open-air drug market in the neighborhood.
Robinson pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and cocaine and to possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, according to the Tampa Free Press. “With Robinson’s sentencing today, the 21st and Vietnam crew has definitively been put out of business,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in the announcement, the outlet reported.
How the crew ran its open-air market
According to court documents and federal investigators, the crew took over an apartment building in the 1900 block of I Street NE and turned it into a base of operations. Units inside were used to process, package and stash narcotics, while buyers met dealers outside the front of the building and in a rear parking lot, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office…