Detroit drug gang chief Dwayne (Weezy) Taylor was apprehended this week by authorities in Troy, Michigan after six years on the run from the law. The 42-year old Taylor had been overseeing the Powell Brothers narcotics organization in the wake of both the siblings getting convicted in federal court in 2014 and being sent to prison. Carlos (Big 50) Powell, 44, and his baby brother Eric (Little 50) Powell, 40, were the biggest drug kingpins in Detroit in the mid-to-late 2000s and early part of this decade, dealing in cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Before ascending to the top of the food chain following the Powells incarceration, Taylor acted as the gang’s “head of distribution,” manning the day-to-day affairs of the group’s wholesale operation on the street. The Powell brothers are both serving life prison sentences. The DEA made Taylor “Public Enemy No. 1” in 2016. He headed the Detroit DEA’s Most Wanted List for over two years. The government seized $22,000,000 from the gang over the course of investigating it, some of the cash discovered in safes stashed across Metro Detroit and other parts of the country and the rest in bank accounts and safety deposit boxes in the brothers’ names or names of their affiliates. Taylor was busted with the Powells in their 2012 indictment, but avoided arrest. The Powell brothers are members of the Moorish Science Temple, a sect of the Muslim religion founded in New Jersey in the early 20th Century. They bolted on the morning of their jury verdict in May 2014. Less than a month later, Carlos Powell was apprehended in St. Louis and Eric Powell in Atlanta. They laundered portions of their drug money through car dealerships they owned in Michigan and Arizona and maintained friends in high places – one of their co-defendants (Ken Daniels) was a former state representative in Lansing. While on the street, the Powell brothers lived in suburban Macomb County. Taylor was caught in Troy, Michigan, which is in Oakland County, roughly 10 miles north of the Detroit border.
