Weekly Gang Roundup

***  In Newburg, NY the feds indicted 60 individuals with suspected ties to the Bloods and 18 individuals with suspected ties to the Latin Kings on drug conspiracy charges:  “The indictments of the Newburgh Bloods and Newburgh Latin Kings say they held elaborate drug operations, used violence to protect their drug territories, engaged minors in drugs and violence, held gang meetings, talked in code and purchased their drugs from New York City illegal markets.”

***  Two Latin Kings members are sentenced to life in prison following their convictions for a double murder in a drive-by shooting in Big Spring, TX in a dispute over drug turf.

***  A Crips member gets 17 years following his racketeering conviction for his role in a drug enterprise in Wichita, KS:  “The 31-year-old was among 28 Crips members indicted in September 2007 on Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, conspiracy charges. * * * Several other members of the gang have been sentenced on similar charges. Others are still awaiting sentencing.”

***  Three Crips members get 20-to-30 years following their convictions for abducting and raping a 19-year-old woman in Orlando, FL:  “Court records show all five men in the case — the three rapists and two other men who watched while the woman begged and screamed for help — had long criminal histories and belonged to gangs based near the Osceola-Polk County Line.  The victim had passed out after visiting an Orlando nightclub, where she sipped a single drink prosecutors think had been doctored with drugs.”

***  A man in Hugo, MN has been charged with “tattooing teenage girls with gang markings as a way of branding them as his ‘home girls’“:

Police began investigating Jimmy Carter Lee, 29, in the fall, after a runaway teen was found at his home, according to an application for a search warrant filed in Washington County District Court in January. A Harding High School resource officer and a St. Paul vice squad officer reported speaking with several 15-year-old girls who had been frequenting Lee’s home. Some of the girls had been tattooed with the letters “OMG,” which police say marks them as the “girls” of the OMB, or Oroville Mono Boys gang, according to a criminal complaint filed May 1 in Washington County. * * * Some girls said they had been sexually assaulted at Lee’s home, according to the complaint, but Lee has not been charged in connection with those allegations. “They did not identify him as the one having sex with them,” Washington County Attorney Doug Johnson said.

***  Two reputed members of Florencia 13 have been acquitted of participating in the gang rape of a 15-year-old runaway girl “but could be retried on racketeering and drug charges after an Orange County jury failed to reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared”: “Prosecutors have had more success in earlier prosecutions of the gang. They charged 105 people in connection with their investigation of Florencia 13, with 94 pleading guilty, three dead and four listed as fugitives, according to court records.”

***  In Scranton, PA “violent crime committed by youths at six-year high“:

Nearly a third of Scranton’s violent crime arrests last year were of youths under 18, the highest percentage in at least six years, a Times-Tribune analysis of police data found. * * * Local justice system officials are unsure whether the numbers represent a harbinger or a statistical blip. They offer explanations that include domestic disorder and a breakdown in parenting, the prevalence of street gang culture, and an evaporation of social respect. Assistant District Attorney Frank Castellano described a previously unseen “level of aggressiveness.” “There are some kids who stand before the judge and have no sense of, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m really in trouble,’ ” said Mr. Castellano, who leads the district attorney’s juvenile unit.

***  Trial is underway in San Antonio, TX against three alleged members of the Mexican Mafia “on charges of racketeering and the unsolved murders of two dozen people“:

The three are the remaining holdouts from a case that included 34 defendants in early 2008 — the fruits of an FBI-led investigation that began in 2004 and was aimed at crippling the gang’s operations outside prison. * * * Most of the case’s defendants, including other high-ranking members, took plea deals to avoid potential life sentences, agreeing to prison terms ranging from six to 40 years. Several admitted to participating in slayings that occurred between 2000 and 2005 in and near San Antonio. * * * The three on trial are accused of having been part of the shot-calling board of directors that ordered hits on rivals, witnesses or fellow gang members who had fallen out of favor.

***  In Fairfield, CT two men challenge their identification by law enforcement as reputed Norteno members subject to a gang injunction:

[T]he injunction gives a judicial imprimatur to barring gang members and gang activity from large swaths of the city, the better to ensure that violence between the Norteños and their rivals, the Sureños, is curbed and the community is safer from the outbreaks of gunfire that have resulted in 10 killings since 1994. * * * In a hearing scheduled for July, a judge will decide whether the men are in fact gang members who should be named in the injunction. The judge will also decide at that time whether to make the injunction permanent. The issues raised by civil libertarians go well beyond the question of accurately identifying gang members. Lawyers for the A.C.L.U. have argued that civil gang injunctions violate a host of constitutional rights, including the First Amendment right of freedom of association and due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth and 14th Amendments.

Weekly Gang Roundup Archives