“Freeway” Ricky Ross: The King of Crack

Written By Max Gibson

In a country where greed often supersedes the influence of morals, Ricky Donell Ross rose to the pinnacle of power in America. To the world he was “Freeway Ricky”. Relentless ambition coupled with opportunistic intelligence catapulted Ross to the zenith of the cocaine trade. Living close to the Los Angeles freeway, Ross was known as “Ricky from the freeway” in his younger years. Later earning the moniker “Freeway Ricky” through his ownership of various properties along the Harbor Freeway, Ross built an empire off the addictive properties of cocaine, or more specifically, crack.

In many ways Freeway Ricky was the right man, in the right place, at the right time. A parable of predestination and a hefty dose of fate, Ross’ recollection of his criminal career relates his belief in a higher power that eventually set him on his journey. “You know how some people feel that God put them down here to be a preacher? I felt that he had put me down to be the cocaine man.”

Humble Beginnings

The story of Ricky Ross begins a thousand miles east of Los Angeles, in the small town of Troup, Texas. Moving with his family to South Central in the early 60’s, Los Angeles served as the foundation for Ross to birth his criminal career. Struggling to find the purpose of school, he lost interest in the institution soon after enrolling. Falling behind in reading and writing, it was difficult for Ross to see the value in his studies.

“School wasn’t for me. It wasn’t something that I saw I could use. I’m looking for stuff that I can use. And if I can’t use it, I don’t want it. So school. Now that I look back on it, nobody ever explained school to me. They never showed me why I should learn to read, why I should learn to write. Why I should learn mathematics… when it came to reading and writing, I didn’t never catch on.”

Although he never reached his potential in the realm of formal education, the young Ross excelled in the field of athletics. Gravitating to tennis, Ross quickly became a rising star in Los Angeles. Winning numerous tournaments throughout his scholastic career, Ross soon realized that a scholarship to a full time University would provide him with the opportunity to escape his impoverished environment.

When his grades hindered him from accepting available scholarships, the course of the young athletes life slowly turned. It was Christmas of 1979 when Ross was first introduced to cocaine. Quickly realizing the value of the seemingly harmless drug, his eyes were soon widened to the potential profits of cocaine.

“One of my partners went to college to play football and somebody had turned him onto it there. He came back and showed it to me. He said, ‘This is worth fifty dollars.’ I looked at it and said it wasn’t worth no fifty dollars. I said, ‘What is it?’ and he said, ‘It’s cocaine.’ I didn’t believe it.”

Introduction to the Game

When his friend offered him $100 for the same $50 piece of cocaine Ross was given, the entrepreneur had found his path. A student of people rather than theories, Ross slowly built his business through empowering the people around him. At a time when cocaine was still mainly used amongst a rich upper class market, he became one of the only African American dealers to serve to a primarily white and wealthy customer base. Benefiting from his clients ability to “pay up every Friday,” Ross quickly rose up the ranks as a dealer, putting his money earned back into the cocaine, continuing to purchase larger quantities of the drug at a lower and lower price.

As Ross’ business grew he began to invest in those around him. Initially employing friends and acquaintances, he created a trafficking hierarchy, buying up houses throughout South Central Los Angeles to use for the trade. Small-time dealers

would frequent one house, while middle of the pack dealers could frequent a different house to buy larger quantities. Finally, Ross established a main house that was used solely for distributing multi-kilo quantities of cocaine to wholesale dealers.

Under Ross’ management, smaller dealers had the opportunity to start their own trafficking operations. The more coke each buyer was able to sell, the higher the house they could visit, the larger the quantity they could purchase, and the lower the price it cost. In a matter of a few years, he had birthed an empire.

While many may consider cocaine to be a product that invariably markets itself, another nuance of Freeway Ricky’s business tact lay in his marketing prowess. When demand grew for the freebase form of cocaine, the marketing brilliance of Ross kicked in. Cooking up a small batch of cocaine freebase, the trafficker portioned out rocks to customers who wanted their hit immediately before they got home. He called his product, “Ready Rock.”

“It [Ready Rock] was kind of filling a gap, you know? When you come early in the morning, they got to go to work, you know, six o’clock, and then they got to go home and cook it up and they don’t want to go through all that. So we just started saying, ‘You want Ready Rock or powder? Whichever way you want it.”

Birth of an Empire

By 1983, the entire market for cocaine in South Central had virtually disappeared. In its place was Ross’ Ready Rock. Almost single handedly creating the market for crack cocaine in Los Angeles, Ross had nearly monopolized the market, choosing to recruit his rivals as opposed to compete. As the city turned in Ross’ favor, the demand for his product grew almost exponentially. By the end of ’83, Freeway Ricky Ross had built a thriving empire comparable to any fortune 500 company in the country. The profits were tremendous.

According to journalist Dominic Streatfeild, when Freeway Ricky had started, a kilo of cocaine went at the wholesale price of $25,000. At his peak, Ross was buying in such bulk that he was getting it for $9,500. Positioning himself to supply the buyers who were then dealing his product on the street, he could make an upwards of $100,000-$200,000 profit per day. Some days he would go through 1 or 2 million dollars’ worth of cocaine.

You’d wonder what it would be like to amass so much money so fast. While one could indulge in every temptation that presented itself, they must also deal with the constant paranoia of violence that comes with drug dealing. Rick Ross endured it, and in many ways thrived within that realm, building his empire not through fear or intimidation, but rather cooperation.

“If I heard somebody [I didn’t know] was selling it, I would go out and recruit them. Because they weren’t getting it as cheap as me, they didn’t have the buying power I had. It was always cheaper around me. I would go out and recruit…I would go out to different gang members and show them how to do it and maybe give them a start. I might give them eight ounces, ten ounces [225-280 grams]: ‘Here.’ So they went out and sold it. And then they loved me.”

It went on like this for a number of years. Throughout the 80’s Ross’ legend grew as he expanded his business throughout the United States. Starting in California, Ross also shipped to New Orleans, Texas, Cleveland, Seattle and Baltimore to name a few. Growing in size all the while, some sources speculate that Ross was making an upwards of $250,000 a day, sometimes peaking at $2 million on his best.

At the pinnacle of the cocaine trade by the late 80’s, it is said that by the end of his run, Ross’s profits neared $600 million. Adjusted for inflation, Ross’ earnings probably totaled something closer to $3 billion by 2011 standards.

Questions of Conspiracy

While it is evident that many benefitted financially from the crack cocaine epidemic of the 80’s, many questions remain as to how and why such massive amounts of drugs reached the United States in the first place. In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News published a series of articles entitled The Dark Alliance. Within, Webb claimed that a network had been formed between Latin American guerilla forces namely El Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN) and drug dealers that resided in South Central Los Angeles. Needing financing for the initiative, The FDN through Oscar Blandon Reyes, a Nicaraguan drug dealer and one of the founders of the FDN in California, looked to the urban neighborhoods of Los Angeles to raise money. The FDN along with other Latin American guerilla forces known collectively as the Contras, were being partly trained and organized by the CIA to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua. Webb posited that the CIA had combined these outfits into a united force aimed to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua.

In need of a person to distribute the drugs throughout Los Angeles, Ricky Ross emerged as Blandon’s perfect accomplice. Meeting the Nicaraguan trafficker in 1981, the two set out to reinvent the cocaine trade in South Central Los Angeles. When his customers began asking for cocaine’s freebase form, Ross’s ‘Ready Rock’ was aptly suited to monopolize the market.

Linking the CIA to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles, Webb’s articles alleged that the revenue earned from Ross’s sales was in part used to buy weapons and equipment for the U.S backed Contra group, El Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN). Claiming that Blandon had met with Contra military commander Enrique Bermudez both “before and while” crack cocaine was being sold in Los Angeles, Webb’s story highlighted the potential scandal underlying the CIA initiatives.

Breaking the story on the internet about 10 years after the birth of the crack epidemic, Webb’s story set off a firestorm of media attention. Major news outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post dismissed the accusations, stating that Webb’s story lacked the significant evidence needed to support his claims. Meanwhile, an even more direct negation of Webb’s story came from his own news outlet, The San Jose Mercury News, where

Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos stated that the Dark Alliance articles had several shortcomings. In a piece written for the Mercury in May of 1997, Ceppos wrote that, “Although members of the drug ring met with Contra leaders paid by the CIA, Webb believes the relationship with the CIA was a tight one, I feel that we did not have enough proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship.”

If even somewhat true, the effects of such an alliance were incredible and devastating. Initially emerging within black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, crack was a democratized substance which allowed the impoverished to use it at a very low price. Selling his Ready Rock for between $5 to $10, Ross even sold “Dollar Rocks” which effectively allowed even the most destitute members of society to fall prey to the powers of crack. Once a particular market became oversaturated, dealers used connections and relationships to expand into other untapped markets all over the country. Quickly spreading the plight of crack cocaine throughout black neighborhoods nationwide, the use of crack had become a national epidemic by the end of the 80’s.

Although Ricky Ross amassed an indescribable amount of wealth during his run, it was only a matter of time until his career choice caught up with him. Freeway Ricky’s partnership with trafficker Oscar Blandon Reyes served as his entry and exit to the cocaine trade. When crack markets exploded during the beginning of 1987, Ross found himself in a volatile situation. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s department began investigating Ross in 1985, but were unable to make any drug seizures or arrests. It wasn’t until 1987 when the LASD and the LAPD combined forces to create the Freeway Ricky Task Force that Ross began to feel the heat. Fleeing to Cincinnati with his girlfriend, once there, Ross was contacted by Blandon, who told him that he could offer him a cut of a 13 kilo shipment needing to be distributed. Of course, Ross was the man for the job, quickly redefining the cocaine trade in Cincinnati, while shipping off packages across the country. It wasn’t until one of Ross’ loads ran into a drug sniffing dog at a New Mexico bus station that he was finally caught. Tracing the package back to him, Ross pleaded guilty to trafficking crack cocaine, receiving a mandatory 10-year prison sentence beginning in 1990.

Serving as an informant for the LAPD during his time in prison, Ross’ jail time was cut considerably after his cooperation led to numerous arrests throughout the Los Angeles area, “They wanted me to talk about searches the task force made on crack houses, money at the houses, did they beat up (people) or steal money.” Once released from prison, it was only a matter of days before his former partner Blandon contacted Rick about receiving a 600 kilo shipment of cocaine estimated at about $12 million to be distributed throughout the country. Initially declining the offer, Ross later changed his mind, bending to Blandon’s persistence. His choice would be his final undoing. On March 2, 1995, in a parking lot near San Diego, Ross was ambushed when his deal was intercepted by police. Speeding off, he was arrested later on when his car swerved into some hedges. Serving his sentence without bail since then, Ross was released in August of 2010 with an aim to “lift up his people” by righting many of the wrongs he committed during his career.

The Legacy of “Freeway Ricky”

As the story of Freeway Ricky Ross is told, it becomes evident that there are many ways to view his iconic legacy. Was Rick Ross a villain or an opportunistic entrepreneur? The truth lies somewhere in between. While some see Ross as one of the greatest criminal minds of the 20^th century, others view him as a villain, who helped destroy urban communities throughout the nation. Whether or not you agree with his actions, it is hard to disregard Ross’ presence as a vital figure to consider when highlighting the connection between issues of race, drugs and politics in America. As one of the most recognized criminal entrepreneurs of urban America, we will forever wonder how far Ricky Ross would’ve gone had he chosen to apply his skills to a career within the law.