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120 Are Charged in Gang Takedown in the Bronx 120 Are Charged in Gang Takedown in the Bronx
(about 9 hours later)
In what the authorities said was believed to be the largest gang takedown in the history of New York City, 120 people were charged on Wednesday with participating in murderous drug gangs in the northern Bronx. For the last 10 years, life in the northern Bronx has largely been defined by wanton violence perpetuated by the growing reach and competing interests of rival street gangs.
About half of the defendants were associated with the 2Fly YGz street gang, a faction of the Young Gunnaz, a gang that operates nationwide, according to a federal indictment filed in Manhattan. The others were part of the rival Big Money Bosses gang, the indictment said, whose violence had caused the murder of Sadie Mitchell, a 92-year-old woman killed in her home by a stray bullet in 2009, and the fatal stabbing last year of a 15-year-old near East Gun Hill Road. Drugs were openly sold near elementary schools. Playgrounds were used as hiding places for weapons. Disputes were settled with knives or guns, and the casualties, often teenagers, were left to die in the streets. In one case, a bystander, a 92-year-old woman, was killed in her home by a stray bullet in 2009.
The leaders of the Big Money Bosses, the indictment said, called themselves Big Suits, while other gang members, to signify their rank, were placed in categories like Burberry Suits, Gucci Suits, Ferragamo Suits and Sean John Suits, the indictment said. On Wednesday, in what the authorities said they believed was the “largest gang takedown” ever in New York, prosecutors announced charges against 120 people accused of being members of two gangs in the borough. By the afternoon, prosecutors said, close to 90 of the defendants had been taken into federal custody; 30 others were still being sought.
The charges are to be announced at a news conference on Wednesday by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, and officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies. Court papers say the gangs were responsible for at least eight murders. Defendants were arrested and arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan on counts including racketeering and narcotics conspiracies.
The defendants were being arrested and expected to be arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan throughout the day. The arrests were the latest effort to crack down on gang violence in the city, where the spread of street crews has been an anomaly and a vexing challenge for law enforcement: Though crime, especially murder, has fallen over all in the last 25 years, certain precincts, especially in the Bronx and Brooklyn, have experienced upticks in acts of violence.
The indictments also charged that the gang members trafficked drugs near schools and playgrounds. About half of the defendants charged are associated with the 2Fly YGz street gang, according to a federal indictment. The rest, a second indictment said, were part of a rival gang, Big Money Bosses, which was responsible for the death of Sadie Mitchell, the 92-year-old woman killed in 2009, as well as the fatal stabbing last year of a 15-year-old boy near East Gun Hill Road.
2Fly YGz, more commonly known as 2Fly, operated around the Eastchester Gardens public housing project in the Bronx and in the vicinity of Gun Hill Road, an area of the North Bronx also commonly called the Valley, the indictment charged. The leaders of Big Money Bosses, the indictment said, called themselves Big Suits, while other gang members, to signify their status, were ranked by names like Burberry Suits, Gucci Suits, Ferragamo Suits and Sean John Suits.
Much of 2Fly’s violence was committed against rival gangs in the Bronx, like the Big Money Bosses, which operated around White Plains Road and on Boston Road, and the so-called Slut Gang, which is based in the Boston Secor public housing project, the indictment said. The two gangs used social media “to promote, protect and grow their ranks,” including posting videos on YouTube “bragging about their criminal endeavors,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference where the charges were announced.
The Big Money Bosses gang was a faction of the Young Bosses, a street gang that operates around the city, the indictment charged. Mr. Bharara said the investigation began in December 2014, as violence surged around the Eastchester Gardens public housing complex. Much of it was found to have been caused by the two gangs.
During the investigation, Mr. Bharara said, the government obtained warrants for more than 100 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts linked to the gangs’ criminal activity, an investigative technique the authorities are using more often against gangs.
The monitoring of social media is just one way that prosecutors and the police have been trying to stem the growth of gangs. State prosecutors in New York have begun using conspiracy statutes to charge those connected to crews with every crime that individual members are accused of, even if only some were present during the offenses in question.
But even as the authorities move against one gang, others seem to fill the void.
“These gangs are the epitome of organized crime today,” Angel M. Melendez, who leads the New York office of Homeland Security Investigations, said at the news conference.
Nearly 700 police officers and federal agents swept through the city Tuesday night and Wednesday making arrests and conducting court-authorized searches, Mr. Bharara said. The arrests and charges, he said, would essentially “dismantle” the two gangs “from top to bottom.”
Eukeysha Gregory, 48, who lives on the first floor of an eight-story brick building in the Eastchester Gardens complex, said the thumping of a police helicopter woke her at 4 a.m. Wednesday. Looking out the peephole of her door, she said, she saw police officers in helmets and protective vests charge into the building with a battering ram. Over the next hour, she watched the police arrest young people across the complex.
“I’m so glad I would kiss the captain’s feet,” she said. “I’m so excited now my child can actually play in the park.”
Ms. Gregory said the sound of gunshots had become common in the six years since she moved into the apartment. Two bullets, she said, recently came through the window of a neighbor, and last weekend she heard the sound of around a half-dozen shots coming from between a playground in the center of the complex and her building’s front door.
Ms. Gregory said she had attended a community meeting with Eastchester Garden residents and the police on Tuesday night. There was no mention that a raid was imminent.
“It was exciting,” she said of the raid while sitting on a bench outside her building Wednesday with her daughter, Jewel Gregory, 9. “I was so glad.”
Mr. Bharara’s office said that the investigation was continuing, and that in addition to the murders attributed to the gangs in the indictments, several other killings were part of the inquiry.
The officials at the news conference focused on what New York’s police commissioner, William J. Bratton, cited as the “collateral damage” caused by gang violence, and Mr. Melendez noted that 2Fly YGz members had taken over a playground at Eastchester Gardens, which it used as its “base of operations” for selling and hiding drugs and guns.
Mr. Bratton said that the arrests announced Wednesday would go “a very long way toward ending the historical violence” that has plagued public housing projects in the area and that had also affected Bronx neighborhoods like Laconia, Wakefield and Williamsbridge.
Mr. Bharara noted that the arrests came as his office’s Civil Division has been conducting a separate investigation, previously cited in news reports, into environmental health and safety conditions in public housing projects. He said that there were over 400,000 public housing residents who, according to federal regulations, were entitled to housing that was “decent, safe, sanitary and in good repair.”
“And it’s clear,” he said, “that many are not getting that.”
Near the modest single-family house at 721 East 224th Street where Ms. Mitchell, the 92-year-old woman, was killed in 2009, neighbors reacted with resigned satisfaction to news of the arrests.
“Clean up the streets, you don’t want that happening to an old lady,” said Mike William, 30, who said he had known Ms. Mitchell. “This is the ghetto and things happen in the streets, but you don’t want your kids getting hurt, or an old lady getting hurt.”