Prosecutors have filed charges against a 48-year-old gang member who allegedly forced a young woman into prostitution on Aurora. We covered the police investigation here.

PI.com:

A man charged with kidnapping and promoting prostitution on Aurora Avenue North served two decades in prison for selling crack cocaine within 1,000 feet of Garfield High School.

Additional police documents in the case against Derrick "Vamp" Hargress were released Tuesday. Hargress has pleaded not guilty to first-degree promoting prostitution and second-degree kidnapping.

His next court date is Aug. 19.

Hargress told a 21-year-old girl he allegedly forced himself upon that he was a Hoover Crip.

When Hargress, now 48, pleaded guilty to selling crack and using a firearm while dealing, a federal judge said he would consider lowering his sentence if he wrote a letter warning Los Angeles Crips gang members of the risk of committing crimes in Seattle.

"Crip members, wake up and learn from my experience (not the hard way!) that coming to Seattle to sell cocaine isn't wise at all," Hargress wrote in a two-page letter, according to a 1988 P-I story.

But prosecutors questioned his sincerity and after Hargress' letter he said he is "probably the most dangerous and the most dedicated to crime of the 26 'gang-related defendants' indicted thus far."

From 1986 and 1988, Seattle saw an influx of gang members from Los Angeles who were paid more for crack cocaine here than in Los Angeles. Many were members of the Nine Deuce Hoover Crips, a name that comes from the intersection of 92nd and Hoover streets in L.A.