Federal colleagues will miss longtime leader
JOE CARLSON
NWI Times
Jan 7, 2008
nwitimes.com/news/local/federal-colleagues-will-miss-longtime-leader/article_21bf68dd-4e14-53d8-a222-48a5c4ecb6c0.html
Mark Becker, the hard-charging, gang-busting leader of the FBI's Gang Response Investigative Team, is leaving a void in the region's federal law enforcement world that won't be easy to fill, colleagues say.
"His name has been synonymous with GRIT for so long, it's hard to imagine it without him," said Brad Bookwalter, the special agent in charge of the FBI's white-collar crime squad in Merrillville. "But GRIT will go on."
Bookwalter served alongside Becker for a year on the anti-gang team and said the Wisconsin native built a reputation among fellow agents for working long hours at street level while also building relationships of trust in the community.
"He was an agent's agent," FBI spokeswoman Wendy Osborne said. "He was on the ground, knocking on doors, talking to people."
Becker has served as the supervisory agent over GRIT for all but six months of the task force's 11 years of existence. During that time, the squad conducted more than 100 raids and arrested more than 500 people who eventually were convicted, the office reports.
Becker, 50, joined FBI ranks one year out of college and kept at it. In 1987, he transferred to Northwest Indiana, where he took part in one of the region's last major organized crime investigations that resulted in indictments against 15 people from Chicago crime boss Dominick "Tootsie" Palermo's Indiana street crews.
Becker helped set up GRIT in 1996 -- when the G in GRIT stood for Gary -- and took over as supervisor of the special task force of federal, state and local agents six months after its creation.
He said the most significant cases with which he was involved probably were the takedowns of two rival street gangs, the Bronx Boys and the Renegades.
Each investigation resulted in the arrests of more than 20 gang associates, and both cases went to trial at the same time, becoming the first and second criminal cases ever to go to trial in the then-new federal courthouse in Hammond.
"It was just so ironic that two notorious gangs that had terrorized the West Side of Gary for so many years came to a conclusion simultaneously," Becker said.
The Gary Police Department issued a statement Thursday saying Becker's efforts will be greatly missed.
Although it's too soon to say if Becker's reputation for street-level involvement will follow him to Portage, Bookwalter said he would not bet against it.
"I can tell you this: I wouldn't go speeding through Portage any time soon," Bookwalter said.
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