Phillips mom: Do-gooder or dealer?

Williams, 48, rules the roost in one of the tidiest homes on a tough block of Cedar Avenue S. But the mowed lawn and neat tan siding belie what police describe as a long history of complaint calls and drug trafficking.

In an indictment unsealed last week, Williams and 22 others -- including two of her adult sons and a nephew -- face federal charges in connection with an alleged nine-year-old drug ring that police say pumped crack cocaine, Ecstasy and marijuana into the Phillips neighborhood. Williams' house, the charges say, served from about 2003 as a "stash house" where drugs were stored, packaged and distributed.

The operation involved illegal firearms possession and carjacking, according to the indictment. It also says Williams and one of her sons laundered money.

It says they transferred drug proceeds to people who used the money to buy cars.

Williams denies being involved in drug trafficking, and some neighbors support her. She is no "cartel madam," said Carol Pass, president of the East Phillips Improvement Coalition and a friend who said she has popped in unannounced at Williams' house for years and never seen suspicious behavior.

"Her life is one huge social-work effort," said Pass, a neighborhood activist who said Williams has reached out for years to help local kids, prostitutes and homeless people and has "worked like a dog" to keep her own children out of trouble. "She'll try to salvage anyone -- the lowest of the low."

A longtime advocate for organizations such as the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities, Williams has served since October as a street outreach worker to the homeless for St. Stephen's Human Services. As a result of the indictment, she's now on unpaid administrative leave, said outreach director Monica Nilsson, who added that Williams passed a criminal background check before she was hired.

"Chiffon is out there doing a job on the street for the people who have nowhere to go," said Linda Leonard, a neighbor who believes Williams is innocent.

A matter of proximity?

Williams said she felt called to help after years of her own addiction to cocaine and alcohol, which she says she broke in 1992.

Even today, "she's close to many struggling people," Pass said. One -- Williams' brother -- was addicted to cocaine and heroin. He often went to her house for food and sleep -- not to use drugs, Williams said -- before dying in her basement in 2006. She acknowledges that one son, not among those charged, is addicted to Ecstasy. Asked whether he brings drugs into her home, she said, "I don't search him. He does need help, though."

A check of Hennepin County court records shows that Williams pleaded guilty in 2006 to fifth-degree drug possession, a charge she said came after police found a pound of marijuana in her house in 2003, along with a gun that she said a son hid in her closet without her knowledge.

Police who searched her house in January 2007 found cocaine, marijuana and a large amount of cash. They seized many items, including a dozen related to drugs, said Third Precinct Cmdr. Lucy Gerold. Williams said she knew nothing of the drugs. The cocaine was in the pocket of one of her son's friends and the marijuana was in a truck belonging to her son Mohammad Queadir Abdul-Ahad, she said.

She denies involvement in the alleged drug trafficking, arguing that police are trying to connect her house with an apartment building across the alley that was a crime hot spot for years.

"That's silly," said Minneapolis police Lt. Andrew Smith, head of the Violent Offender Task Force. The investigation "wasn't slapped together overnight. We understand what's going on and who's doing what."

Smith wouldn't say whether Williams was a leader of the drug ring or whether the apartment building behind her house was linked to the operation.

A "good percentage" of the criminal activity outlined in the indictment took place in the Phillips neighborhood, Gerold said, but Williams is one of the only defendants who lives there. The others, mostly men in their 20s or 30s, list addresses in Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Louis Park, Richfield and Tonka Bay.

The neighborhood may have attracted the alleged dealers, Gerold said, because "people both in the city and the suburbs will troll certain areas hoping that they might be able to score some drugs, and Phillips is one of those places."

Williams said she has never heard of many of those charged, some of whom go by nicknames such as "Pharaoh," "Uzi" and "White Dude." Williams said her sons -- 28-year-old Mohammad and 24-year-old Akbar Saleem Abdul-Ahad -- and nephew Vito Corleone Williams, 24, are in custody along with 16 others. They are merely "guilty of knowing people," she said.

All but one of the defendants have been charged with conspiring to possess and distribute drugs between 1999 and this spring, when 19 people were arrested. Eight have been charged with possessing firearms to further drug trafficking, and one -- James Edward King Jr., 26 -- is accused of carjacking a vehicle in 2004.

The alleged drug operation is one of several in Phillips that law enforcement officials have investigated in the past few years, Gerold said, including one last year that resulted in nearly 30 indictments and others that are still active.

Williams' house at 2626 Cedar Avenue S. has long been a problem, she said. "We've had many, many complaints about that address."

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016