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.
The probe involved the DEA, the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Metropolitan Police Department, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrea Duvall and Solomon Eppel. Authorities say the coordinated federal-local effort was designed to shut down not just individual dealers, but the entire operation that had staked out territory near 21st Street and Maryland Avenue NE.
Violent incidents and raids
Investigators linked the crew to a string of shootings that rattled neighbors, including a March 2024 incident in which a masked gunman opened fire on a passerby and an April drive-by that wounded four people, according to court filings and reporting.
When agents executed a search warrant at Robinson’s home in May 2024, they recovered a loaded Glock 27, roughly 14 grams of suspected fentanyl and drug-packaging materials, the Tampa Free Press reported.
Sentences that followed
Robinson’s case capped a series of convictions that had already sent other crew members to federal prison on lengthy terms. The U.S. Attorney's Office has laid out earlier sentences and detailed the violence tied to the conspiracy in its releases, emphasizing that the investigation dismantled an organized open-air drug market in Northeast D.C.
Prosecutors and local officials say the sentencing closes a long-running investigation that relied on undercover buys, surveillance and coordinated search warrants to target a key fentanyl and cocaine hub near 21st Street and Maryland Avenue NE. With Robinson now headed to federal prison, authorities say they plan to keep a close eye on the corridor to make sure a new crew does not try to move in on the old territory.
