GANGWORLD CUSTOM SEARCH
Custom Search
GANGWORLD Headline Animator
San Francisco authorities have released one of two suspects arrested in a deadly gang-related shooting outside a nightclub at Fisherman's WharfWilliam Josefa Agbekoh was released Wednesday after prosecutors said they found insufficient evidence to charge him.The 25-year-old Agbekoh was arrested Feb. 14 in the shooting outside the Suede Nightclub and Lounge that left 19-year-old Lawon Hall of Richmond dead earlier this month.Prosecutors are still going forward against 20-year-old Keandre Davis of Richmond, who has been charged with murder.Investigators say Hall was fatally wounded during a shoot-out between rival gangs from Richmond.Davis was among four people wounded
deportation order against Oboc Peter Amon, 24, has been stayed and may be withdrawn completely if Amon successfully follows a raft of strict conditions for the next five years, IRB member Douglas Cochran ruled in a decision made public on Friday.Amon had been ordered deported based on recent convictions for aggravated assault and assault with a weapon — offences he served time in jail for.Amon appealed his deportation on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, claiming he had made great efforts to overcome a three-year-long addiction to crack cocaine that fuelled his criminal behaviour.'He's a nice guy. Great guy.'—Teen Challenge counsellor Steve SolomonCochran agreed to stay the order, saying Amon's successful completion of a tough faith-based rehabilitation program called Teen Challenge, combined with his efforts to stay in school and hold down a job, sufficed to show he should be allowed conditionally to remain in the country.From now until early 2015, Amon must meet with a Canada Border Services agent every month, continue to live with his father in Winnipeg's Transcona neighbourhood and not knowingly associate with criminals. Other conditions of the reprieve include that he not use drugs or alcohol, and continue going to school or work.Amon's deportation order would likely be renewed if he were convicted of a crime carrying a sentence of six months or more, according to Canadian immigration rulesPolice claim gang links
At a hearing in January, a former Winnipeg police organized crime detective presented evidence to back up the department's belief that Amon is a member of the African Mafia street gang.'On the balance of probabilities it has not been proven that [Amon] was a street gang member or associate.'—IRB member Douglas CochranThe gang, which has operated in the West End and downtown areas of the city since 2005, is made up of immigrants from war-torn East African countries. Police say the gang's main interest is to profit from and control the sale of crack cocaine in the city.The gang was formed as a splinter group of the Mad Cowz street gang after some members believed the leadership of the Mad Cowz group didn't do enough to avenge the gang-related shooting death of Sirak (Shaggy) Rezene — a friend of Amon — in 2004.
Const. William Degroot told Cochran that "several confidential sources" in the street gang underworld pegged Amon as a member of the group, but one who hadn't been seen on the streets for a considerable period of time.Degroot also testified that Amon had been arrested a number of times in the company of high-ranking African Mafia and Mad Cowz members, and that Amon's admission of membership was recorded on a booking sheet after an arrest.Degroot added that police believe Amon's assault on a fellow inmate at Manitoba's Headingley Correctional Centre in 2007 — the inmate lost an eye after Amon stabbed him with a pen — was done to elevate his status in the gang and intimidate corrections officers.Amon disputed this, saying the assault was done out of anger and frustration, not at the behest of a gang. The blinding of the inmate was an accident, Amon said.
At a hearing in January, a former Winnipeg police organized crime detective presented evidence to back up the department's belief that Amon is a member of the African Mafia street gang.'On the balance of probabilities it has not been proven that [Amon] was a street gang member or associate.'—IRB member Douglas CochranThe gang, which has operated in the West End and downtown areas of the city since 2005, is made up of immigrants from war-torn East African countries. Police say the gang's main interest is to profit from and control the sale of crack cocaine in the city.The gang was formed as a splinter group of the Mad Cowz street gang after some members believed the leadership of the Mad Cowz group didn't do enough to avenge the gang-related shooting death of Sirak (Shaggy) Rezene — a friend of Amon — in 2004.
Const. William Degroot told Cochran that "several confidential sources" in the street gang underworld pegged Amon as a member of the group, but one who hadn't been seen on the streets for a considerable period of time.Degroot also testified that Amon had been arrested a number of times in the company of high-ranking African Mafia and Mad Cowz members, and that Amon's admission of membership was recorded on a booking sheet after an arrest.Degroot added that police believe Amon's assault on a fellow inmate at Manitoba's Headingley Correctional Centre in 2007 — the inmate lost an eye after Amon stabbed him with a pen — was done to elevate his status in the gang and intimidate corrections officers.Amon disputed this, saying the assault was done out of anger and frustration, not at the behest of a gang. The blinding of the inmate was an accident, Amon said.
jailing Tobias Grant for 14 years and Tacumba Wheeler for eight, Judge Trevor Faber described it as a “wicked” weapon capable of causing mayhem and death.He told the defendants: “The public in the city of Birmingham and in particular those who live in Aston, Handsworth and Lozells, have the most grave concerns about the growth in the last few years of gun crime in those areas.“We all know of the tragic circumstances that have arisen in relation to those sorts of crimes in recent years.“You must understand substantial sentences of custody will follow, not only to punish you for your involvement with this wicked weapon and ammunition but to deter others.”Grant, 27, of Linwood Road, Handsworth, had been convicted following a trial in December last year, of possessing the gun with intent to endanger life while Wheeler, 20, of Hunters Road, Lozells, was found guilty of possessing a prohibited firearm.The gun was similar to the one used to kill innocent teenage party-goers Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis.Both men were also convicted of possessing expanding ammunition and ammunition without a certificate. Birmingham Crown Court heard that on December 30, 2008, police received reports of a disturbance going on in Burlington Street, Aston.When officers arrived a number of people fled from the scene while others were seen milling around.One of those was Wheeler, who had previously driven Grant to the scene in a car that had been loaned to him.When police looked into the vehicle they saw the machine pistol lying in the footwell. It was examined and had a magazine loaded with two different types of bullets.Forensic examination revealed Grant’s fingerprints on the magazine as well as a bag which it had been kept in while police also recovered a hat with his DNA.The incident happened just days before the sixth anniversary of the murders of New Year partygoers Letisha Shakespeare, aged 17, and 18-year-old Charlene Ellis and less than a mile from where they were killed.Robert Rinder, for Grant, said tests had shown that the gun was in poor working order, could only discharge one bullet at a time and was not capable of firing as an automatic weapon.He said that the machine gun had not been used during the incident.Mr Rinder said Grant was a family man with two children and that he had worked for community charities that had sought to address this kind of offending.Kirstie Montgomery, for Wheeler, said he had been aware of what had been brought into his car and had “tolerated” its presence.
“Obviously, this is a difficult time for his family, but I think he has accepted his position,” said Raj Sharma, Tran's lawyer.
Still, Sharma has not ruled out pursuing legal avenues to see Tran return.
“His entire life has been shaped in Canada. He’s got his mother here, his sister here. I think everyone wants to keep all options open, if it’s a possibility — a remote possibility — but a possibility nonetheless.”
Tran is in a fairly unique position of having two enforceable deportation orders against him.
He is being deported on one order issued for serious criminality, and a second one based on his alleged membership in a gang.
Tran received his first deportation order in 2004 after he was convicted for assault and drug trafficking. He appealed, and failed.
More recently, he failed in a bid to have a federal court find errors in the appeal and allow it to be heard again.
A January ruling to uphold the original appeal means the deportation order is enforceable.
Nevertheless, there is a date set for April in federal court where Tran could could ask revisit the other deportation based on his alleged gang affiliations.
Sharma said he intends to keep that appointment, even if Tran has already been sent away.
“I don’t see giving up; it hasn’t been his pattern to date,” Sharma said. “He continues to challenge these orders and it’s his right to do so."
Sharma said allegations of Tran's gang involvement are based on unnamed police sources.
“If you say, 'This guy is a gangster, but I can’t tell you the source of information,' you put a person in an impossible situation,” Sharma said.
“The fact is Mr. Tran is going to suffer very serious consequences on very limited evidence — that’s why we are taking it forward.”
Should he win that case and eventually see the order dismissed, it could mean Tran might have the opportunity to get a pardon and theoretically one day apply to return to Canada.
The 27-year-old, who has a younger sister, moved here with his mother from Vietnam in 1993.
Fulton Oates Jr., 18, of Thompsonville, was spotted riding in car on Breakey Avenue.Police and state troopers have been looking for him since Dec. 18, when they searched his Wood Avenue home in the village and found an M-1 .30-caliber rifle.It had been altered and its stock sawed off and fashioned into a pistol grip. It was loaded with a 25-round magazine.Oates was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and held in police lockup.He is a member of the Crips gang, police say.
Anthony D. Singh, 21, fired a bullet through a man’s right shoe after a confrontation in a downtown parking lot that police said stemmed from a dangerous culture of retaliation and intimidation common in gang life.
A jury convicted Singh of several felonies after a trial in December that included unusual testimony about Singh’s ties to the Rollin’ 60 Crips street gang.
Gang affiliations generally are considered inadmissible in trials, but prosecutors argued that Singh’s membership in the violent gang provided motive for the seemingly random shooting, which occurred near a downtown night club in July 2008.
“He has chosen this way of life, and it finally caught up with him,” said Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor on Wednesday.Singh’s father, Elvis Anthony Singh, urged O’Connor to show his son leniency in a letter mailed from a federal prison, where he’s been since 2002. He was sentenced to 10 years after federal drug agents busted a crack cocaine ring the quadriplegic was operating out of his Spokane home with his caregiver.“We missed those important teenage years,” Elvis Singh’s letter reads. “I regret that I was not there to be a positive influence on him.”O’Connor approved an exceptionally high sentence for Singh, ordering him to serve sentences for second-degree assault, drive-by shooting and unlawful possession of a firearm before serving sentences for witness tampering and conspiracy to commit assault, instead of serving the sentences at the same time.Singh’s court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Cooney, has said he’ll appeal the verdict, partly based on a Spokane police detective’s admission to jurors that Singh had previous convictions.Jurors were ordered to disregard Detective Michael Roberge’s statement, but Cooney said that made little difference.Singh, Cooney argued in court documents, “was convicted on his propensity to commit crime and for being a bad person who is a gang member, rather than on admissible character evidence.”Singh denies firing the bullet that hit Alex Tauala in his right shoe in a parking lot near Sprague Avenue and Stevens Street on July 26, 2008. Tauala didn’t identify Singh as the gunman during trial.
But police witnesses and Deputy Prosecutor Larry Haskell argued Singh shot at Tauala after Tauala confronted Singh and his brother, 25-year-old Jamal R. Singh, by saying “anyone else got any problems?”The brothers, prosecutors said, were driven to retaliate because of their ties to a gang where “respect is the center of the universe,” according to court documents.
Jamal Singh pleaded guilty to riot in August 2008 and was given a year probation and credit for 24 days served in jail.But police argued Anthony Singh was the shooter, and his extensive criminal history contributed to his lengthy prison sentence.That prison sentence was exactly what Singh’s imprisoned father hoped his son, a father of two, could avoid.“As he is now able to see, the greatest price for his mistakes will be paid by his children,” the letter says.
Fulton Oates, Jr., 18, a member of the Crips street gang, has been wanted since December 18, 2009 when village police, in conjunction with Liberty Street Police BCI, executed a search warrant at his residence at 67 Wood Avenue.He wasn’t home at the time, but police recovered a .30 caliber rifle that had been altered with its stock sawed off and fashioned into a pistol grip. It was fully loaded with a detachable 25 round magazine.
Just before 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 11, Oates was spotted by officers riding in a car driven by Daniel Rodriguez, 23, of Thompsonville on Breakey Avenue in Monticello.The vehicle was stopped and Oates was arrested on the warrant. Rodriguez was also arrested for aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the second degree after a computer check showed he was driving with six active suspensions.Rodriguez was also wanted by Monticello Police on a bench warrant for aggravated unlicensed operation.
Just before 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 11, Oates was spotted by officers riding in a car driven by Daniel Rodriguez, 23, of Thompsonville on Breakey Avenue in Monticello.The vehicle was stopped and Oates was arrested on the warrant. Rodriguez was also arrested for aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the second degree after a computer check showed he was driving with six active suspensions.Rodriguez was also wanted by Monticello Police on a bench warrant for aggravated unlicensed operation.
‘King of the Hill’ found shot dead in the Cheshire mansion of a controversial businessman Arran Coghlan.Stephen ‘Aki’ Akinyemi, 44, was said to be a prominent member of the notorious Cheetham Hill gang, which is believed to be behind major crime and the supply of drugs in Manchester.He was known for enjoying champagne and cruising Manchester’s clubland in his silver Porsche, with the private registration AKI.He had a string of previous convictions and most recently had been jailed for 13 months in 2006 for violent disorder.At the time of his death, he was on bail for allegedly attacking someone with a baseball bat outside the Lounge 31 nightclub in the city centre in November.He was found with serious stab injuries at Mr Coghlan’s Alderley Edge home on Tuesday afternoon. He was wearing a stab vest.But a post-mortem examination revealed he had died of a gunshot wound, not knife injuries.Mr Coghlan was also discovered with stab injuries at the scene and he was taken to hospital under police guard. He was later discharged although he remains in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of murder.Last night a tribute page to Mr Akinyemi on social networking website Facebook, titled ‘RIP AKI’, had more than 600 members.
Mr Coghlan was cleared in 1996 of murdering Stockport ‘Mr Big’ Chris Little, who was shot dead at the wheel of his Mercedes.In 2003, Mr Coghlan stood trial for the murder of drug dealer David Barnshaw, who was kidnapped and forced to drink petrol before being burned alive in the back of a car in Stockport in 2001.But the case collapsed when it was revealed police had failed to pass on important information about another possible suspect.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said that, with Thursday's arrests, all three people allegedly responsible for the Duisburg massacre have been detained.Six Italian men were gunned down Aug. 15, 2007, as they left a birthday party at an Italian restaurant in the western German city of Duisburg.
Prosecutors say the massacre was part of a long-running feud between two clans of the 'ndrangheta organized crime group of Italy's southern Calabria region.Authorities nabbed Giovanni Strangio from an Amsterdam apartment in March. They arrested Giuseppe and Sebastian Nirta on Thursday in the Calabrian town of San Luca, where the feud is based.
The feud, which pitted the Nirta-Strangio families against the Pelle-Romeo families, cooled from 2000-06 but erupted again when Maria Strangio, the wife of one of the presumed heads of the clan, was killed on Dec. 25, 2006.The slayings in Duisburg, an industrial city in Germany's Ruhr region, marked the first time a southern Italian crime syndicate had exported a vendetta.
The 'ndrangheta, linked to crime around the world, is today considered more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia.
Prosecutors say the massacre was part of a long-running feud between two clans of the 'ndrangheta organized crime group of Italy's southern Calabria region.Authorities nabbed Giovanni Strangio from an Amsterdam apartment in March. They arrested Giuseppe and Sebastian Nirta on Thursday in the Calabrian town of San Luca, where the feud is based.
The feud, which pitted the Nirta-Strangio families against the Pelle-Romeo families, cooled from 2000-06 but erupted again when Maria Strangio, the wife of one of the presumed heads of the clan, was killed on Dec. 25, 2006.The slayings in Duisburg, an industrial city in Germany's Ruhr region, marked the first time a southern Italian crime syndicate had exported a vendetta.
The 'ndrangheta, linked to crime around the world, is today considered more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia.
Eight men with ties to a street gang were ordered held without bond today for being part of a drug distribution network that was selling drugs on the West Side since 2008, FBI and Chicago police officials said.Six of the men were arrested on Tuesday, a seventh man was in custody on unrelated charges and an eighth man turned himself in to police today, Robert D. Grant, special agent-in-charge of the Chicagooffice of the FBI said in a press release.All of the men are suspected of being members or associates of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang, Grant said. The men were arrested as part of "Operation Snatched," a coordinated effort by federal, state and local law enforcement to target street gangs running drug distribution networks in the Chicago area, Grant said.
The men were charged with attempted possession or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, crack cocaine, the FBI said. Both of the charges are felonies and each faces a minimum of 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the FBI.Investigators electronically intercepted telephone conversations, used surveillance techniques and conducted undercover missions to investigate the network whose turf was bounded by the Eisenhower Expressway to the south, North Avenue to the north, Laramie Avenue to the east and Austin Boulevard to the west, officials said.
The residents who were charged include: Milton Bills, 32, of the 5800 block of West Ohio Street; Clarence Johnson, 45, of the 700 block of East 50th Street; Terrance C. Jones of the 1400 block of South Christiana Avenue; Damon Westbrook of the 100 block of East 49th Street; Frederick Taylor of the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue; and Eric Ollison, 26, whose address was not available but who is in state prison on an unrelated conviction.Also charged were Andre T. Beard, 29, of Glendale Heights and Dominique Finley, 34, of Bellwood.FBI officials credited the police department's efforts."Without the expertise and intimate knowledge of gang operations that CPD investigators offer, it would be almost impossible to achieve the results announced today," Grant said in the release.The men appeared today before Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in and were formerly charged. Cole ordered the men held without bond and were to be housed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center , according to the FBI.
The residents who were charged include: Milton Bills, 32, of the 5800 block of West Ohio Street; Clarence Johnson, 45, of the 700 block of East 50th Street; Terrance C. Jones of the 1400 block of South Christiana Avenue; Damon Westbrook of the 100 block of East 49th Street; Frederick Taylor of the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue; and Eric Ollison, 26, whose address was not available but who is in state prison on an unrelated conviction.Also charged were Andre T. Beard, 29, of Glendale Heights and Dominique Finley, 34, of Bellwood.FBI officials credited the police department's efforts."Without the expertise and intimate knowledge of gang operations that CPD investigators offer, it would be almost impossible to achieve the results announced today," Grant said in the release.The men appeared today before Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in and were formerly charged. Cole ordered the men held without bond and were to be housed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center , according to the FBI.
Julian Jose Garza, 28, of Notus was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, the United States Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.Garza pleaded guilty to the charge in September, admitting that he had a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun during a confrontation with two men in Caldwell on May 14, 2008. Because Garza had been previously convicted of firing a gun into an occupied dwelling, he was prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law.Garza is reportedly a member of Caldwell’s East Side Locos gang and was prosecuted by the special assistant U.S. attorney hired by the Treasure Valley Partnership and Idaho State Police to address gang crimes. His sentencing on Tuesday concluded a string of successful prosecutions of Garza’s family and girlfriend, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reports.His father, Gabriel Garza, pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 12 months of prison last March. His mother, Maria Garza, . was convicted as an accessory to a felony in April, charged with assisting Gabriel, in possession with intent to distribute marijuana. And his brother, Alex Garza, was sentenced to five years in state prison last month for aiding and abetting witness intimidation in Canyon County District Court on January 7, 2010.
Julian Garza’s girlfriend, Chelsea Robbins-Gonzalez was convicted of perjury and sentenced in June to two years of probation for lying to the federal grand jury about Julian’s possession of a firearm.
Julian Garza’s girlfriend, Chelsea Robbins-Gonzalez was convicted of perjury and sentenced in June to two years of probation for lying to the federal grand jury about Julian’s possession of a firearm.
gang sweep by local and federal agents in Tacoma.
Twenty-nine men, suspected members of the Tacoma Hilltop Crips gang, have been arrested in a series of raid since Tuesday morning.
One of the men arrested, Manuel Jose Hernandez, pleaded guilty to the Toews murder in 2000. Hernandez was 12 at the time. He was sentenced to state custody until he turned 21 in October of 2008.
Since then, prosecutors say, Hernandez has been an active gang member. He was arraigned Wednesday on charges including: conspiracy, robbery, auto theft and trafficking stolen property.
Cornell hopes Hernandez gets a longer sentence this time, but she said it won't do any good for her or Hernandez.
"I don't have any great hopes that prison's going to improve somebody's outlook on life," said Cornell.
Thirty-two men have been charged in connection with the investigation.
Share this article:
Sweep against the Hilltop Crips included serving a series of early-morning search warrants Tuesday. Officers arrested 11 suspected gang members without incident and confiscated guns, drugs and stolen property.
Investigators were still searching for five others. The remaining 16 were already in the Pierce County Jail on other criminal charges or serving time in state prison.
Prosecutors have filed 51 felony counts in the case. Charges include attempted murder, first-degree robbery and drive-by shooting. The 32 suspected gang members, ages 17 to 38, face various counts, but all are charged with one count of criminal conspiracy, according to court documents.
Among those charged are two third-strike candidates and Manuel Jose Hernandez, one of eight youths convicted of fatally beating Erik Toews, 30, as he walked down the street in 2000.
“We’ve got a big chunk of the group, and we’re not stopping,” said Steven Dean, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office. “We are looking at this group of gang members directly correlating to an increase in violent crime in the area.”
Filing conspiracy charges is a new approach in tackling gang violence, which has plagued the city since the late 1980s and left many dead and or wounded in drive-by shootings.
County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said this case marks the first time in Washington that the conspiracy statute is being used to prosecute gang violence. It’s being modeled after successful gang prosecution elsewhere in the country.
The charge usually is used in drug and identify theft cases. It’s being used against the gang members because prosecutors allege they joined the gang for the sole purpose of committing crimes – including robberies, drug dealing, shootings and car thefts.
In general, prosecutors say, a conspiracy occurs when two or more people get together and agree to commit a crime, and then at least one of them takes a substantial step toward carrying out the crime.
The others “can be legally accountable for the one person’s follow-through,” Pierce County deputy prosecutor Greg Greer said.
Those arrested Tuesday and previously booked into jail will be arraigned on the conspiracy and other charges today. Those in prison will return to Pierce County to face the conspiracy charges.
INCREASED VIOLENCE
Investigators say that the Hilltop Crips have increasingly flexed their muscle throughout the city during the last 18 months, targeting people who showed outward signs of wealth – including gold jewelry and fancy wheel rims on their cars – and working together to threaten or harm the victims to get what they wanted.
“They were active on a daily basis,” Tacoma police homicide detective John Ringer said. “Nothing slowed them down.”
Investigators contacted the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors researched different state statutes and found that the conspiracy charge worked with the facts and cases Tacoma police detectives presented, Greer said.
“The law is appropriate for the facts that we have in this case,” he said. “We want to be a little more proactive in addressing the gang problem.”
Most members of this targeted group have previously been convicted of felonies.
Hernandez was 12 in 2000 when he and seven other youths attacked and killed Toews on North Fourth Street.
Hernandez, the second-youngest person charged, was convicted as a juvenile of first-degree murder and three robberies in the days before the Toews beating. He was sentenced to juvenile detention until his 21st birthday.
Now 22, Hernandez was charged in connection with the gang conspiracy case and was among those arrested Tuesday.
FORMED IN LATE 1980S
About 15 teenagers formed the Hilltop Crips in the late 1980s after gangsters from Los Angeles moved into Tacoma and started selling crack cocaine. The gang was the first local black street gang, claiming South 23rd Street as its turf and recruiting other local teens to join their ranks.
Membership swelled to nearly 300 in the mid-1990s. Some of the original gang members were convicted of killing rival gangsters, while others were killed in gang-motivated violence. Some of the surviving original gang members remain in prison.
“Over the course of the past 20 years, the HTCs have been a powerful criminal force on the streets of Tacoma,” Ringer wrote in a search warrant affidavit as part of the recent crackdown. “They have been the strongest black street gang in the area and have dominated the local cocaine sales.”
Throughout the years, local and federal task forces have targeted the city’s gangs, which now total nearly 50. They’ve charged members with federal drug and gun charges and with shootings, homicides and an array of other crimes.
Among the crimes allegedly committed by the Hilltop Crips recently were burglaries at two secure facilities, including a Lakewood police parking lot where a member’s impounded car was rifled through for evidence.
NEW OUTBREAK OF CRIME
In mid-2008, Tacoma police and members of the South Sound Gang Task Force began to notice a new wave of crimes involving the Hilltop Crips, Ringer said.
Police reports detailed incidents in which victims were targeted for their financial assets, especially gold necklaces. Gang members stalked and jumped their victims around popular Hilltop Crips hangouts, police said.
Among the spots were a South Tacoma gas station, a South Tacoma convenience store, a South End restaurant and nightclubs that featured hip-hop music, police said.
Victims had necklaces ripped off in the clubs, faced armed robbers or were beaten on the sidewalk while others stole their car keys and wallets, court documents state.
The documents detail three incidents in which victims were critically injured. All survived, but one was paralyzed and another suffered permanent injury.
The gang task force focused on gang members who were still committing crimes. Many of the crimes had not been investigated, or charges had not been filed.
“These guys were off the hook,” Ringer said.
During the investigation, homicides involving Hilltop Crips were investigated separately, Ringer said. Other gang members were arrested in other cases.
In addition to interviewed witnesses and victims, investigators used informants, watched surveillance video of attacks and set up a surveillance camera in a Hilltop alley that was a favorite gathering spot.
They also sent shell casings and guns to the Washington State Patrol crime lab for analysis.
The lab matched casings from shootings in December 2008 at Oakland Playfield and in February 2009 at South 56th and Tyler streets to one Jan. 26 at a nightclub in Bellevue. A matching shell casing had been discovered in the car of one of the accused gang members.
Of the 28 shell casings collected after a shootout Dec. 2, 2008, outside a South End restaurant, one was matched with a casing taken from another member’s car during a search warrant.
“We were able to establish the conspiracy,” Ringer said. “When they join the group, they join the conspiracy.”
Investigators were still searching for five others. The remaining 16 were already in the Pierce County Jail on other criminal charges or serving time in state prison.
Prosecutors have filed 51 felony counts in the case. Charges include attempted murder, first-degree robbery and drive-by shooting. The 32 suspected gang members, ages 17 to 38, face various counts, but all are charged with one count of criminal conspiracy, according to court documents.
Among those charged are two third-strike candidates and Manuel Jose Hernandez, one of eight youths convicted of fatally beating Erik Toews, 30, as he walked down the street in 2000.
“We’ve got a big chunk of the group, and we’re not stopping,” said Steven Dean, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office. “We are looking at this group of gang members directly correlating to an increase in violent crime in the area.”
Filing conspiracy charges is a new approach in tackling gang violence, which has plagued the city since the late 1980s and left many dead and or wounded in drive-by shootings.
County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said this case marks the first time in Washington that the conspiracy statute is being used to prosecute gang violence. It’s being modeled after successful gang prosecution elsewhere in the country.
The charge usually is used in drug and identify theft cases. It’s being used against the gang members because prosecutors allege they joined the gang for the sole purpose of committing crimes – including robberies, drug dealing, shootings and car thefts.
In general, prosecutors say, a conspiracy occurs when two or more people get together and agree to commit a crime, and then at least one of them takes a substantial step toward carrying out the crime.
The others “can be legally accountable for the one person’s follow-through,” Pierce County deputy prosecutor Greg Greer said.
Those arrested Tuesday and previously booked into jail will be arraigned on the conspiracy and other charges today. Those in prison will return to Pierce County to face the conspiracy charges.
INCREASED VIOLENCE
Investigators say that the Hilltop Crips have increasingly flexed their muscle throughout the city during the last 18 months, targeting people who showed outward signs of wealth – including gold jewelry and fancy wheel rims on their cars – and working together to threaten or harm the victims to get what they wanted.
“They were active on a daily basis,” Tacoma police homicide detective John Ringer said. “Nothing slowed them down.”
Investigators contacted the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors researched different state statutes and found that the conspiracy charge worked with the facts and cases Tacoma police detectives presented, Greer said.
“The law is appropriate for the facts that we have in this case,” he said. “We want to be a little more proactive in addressing the gang problem.”
Most members of this targeted group have previously been convicted of felonies.
Hernandez was 12 in 2000 when he and seven other youths attacked and killed Toews on North Fourth Street.
Hernandez, the second-youngest person charged, was convicted as a juvenile of first-degree murder and three robberies in the days before the Toews beating. He was sentenced to juvenile detention until his 21st birthday.
Now 22, Hernandez was charged in connection with the gang conspiracy case and was among those arrested Tuesday.
FORMED IN LATE 1980S
About 15 teenagers formed the Hilltop Crips in the late 1980s after gangsters from Los Angeles moved into Tacoma and started selling crack cocaine. The gang was the first local black street gang, claiming South 23rd Street as its turf and recruiting other local teens to join their ranks.
Membership swelled to nearly 300 in the mid-1990s. Some of the original gang members were convicted of killing rival gangsters, while others were killed in gang-motivated violence. Some of the surviving original gang members remain in prison.
“Over the course of the past 20 years, the HTCs have been a powerful criminal force on the streets of Tacoma,” Ringer wrote in a search warrant affidavit as part of the recent crackdown. “They have been the strongest black street gang in the area and have dominated the local cocaine sales.”
Throughout the years, local and federal task forces have targeted the city’s gangs, which now total nearly 50. They’ve charged members with federal drug and gun charges and with shootings, homicides and an array of other crimes.
Among the crimes allegedly committed by the Hilltop Crips recently were burglaries at two secure facilities, including a Lakewood police parking lot where a member’s impounded car was rifled through for evidence.
NEW OUTBREAK OF CRIME
In mid-2008, Tacoma police and members of the South Sound Gang Task Force began to notice a new wave of crimes involving the Hilltop Crips, Ringer said.
Police reports detailed incidents in which victims were targeted for their financial assets, especially gold necklaces. Gang members stalked and jumped their victims around popular Hilltop Crips hangouts, police said.
Among the spots were a South Tacoma gas station, a South Tacoma convenience store, a South End restaurant and nightclubs that featured hip-hop music, police said.
Victims had necklaces ripped off in the clubs, faced armed robbers or were beaten on the sidewalk while others stole their car keys and wallets, court documents state.
The documents detail three incidents in which victims were critically injured. All survived, but one was paralyzed and another suffered permanent injury.
The gang task force focused on gang members who were still committing crimes. Many of the crimes had not been investigated, or charges had not been filed.
“These guys were off the hook,” Ringer said.
During the investigation, homicides involving Hilltop Crips were investigated separately, Ringer said. Other gang members were arrested in other cases.
In addition to interviewed witnesses and victims, investigators used informants, watched surveillance video of attacks and set up a surveillance camera in a Hilltop alley that was a favorite gathering spot.
They also sent shell casings and guns to the Washington State Patrol crime lab for analysis.
The lab matched casings from shootings in December 2008 at Oakland Playfield and in February 2009 at South 56th and Tyler streets to one Jan. 26 at a nightclub in Bellevue. A matching shell casing had been discovered in the car of one of the accused gang members.
Of the 28 shell casings collected after a shootout Dec. 2, 2008, outside a South End restaurant, one was matched with a casing taken from another member’s car during a search warrant.
“We were able to establish the conspiracy,” Ringer said. “When they join the group, they join the conspiracy.”
Valentino Sanchez, 33, whose last known address was 8105 White Ave. in west suburban Lyons, was placed into custody at 12:15 p.m. by Chicago Police in a secure area in a lower level terminal area at O’Hare, according to police.
Sanchez, an allegedly high ranking member of the Latin King street gang who also goes by the streets names of “Shorty” and “Devious” was found in Guadalajara, Mexico by an FBI gang task force and was transported by DEA and FBI officials to Chicago, police said.
A Feb. 2, 2009 U.S. Department of Justice and FBI release offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest of Sanchez, who has been the subject of nationwide manhunt since July 2005 when he was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago with violation of drug laws.
The release said Sanchez is allegedly a high ranking member of the Latin Kings and he is accused of overseeing the distribution of wholesale quantities of cocaine in the city and suburbs.
Sanchez remains in Chicago police custody early Wednesday but is scheduled to be turned over to federal authorities who will likely hold him in the Metropolitan Correctional Center pending an appearance in Federal Court, according to police.
Dominique Finley, 34, was the highest-ranking member among the defendants with the lofty title “5-Star Universal Elite.” Eric Ollison, 26, who goes by the nickname “Murder,” was his second-in-command, officials say.
“They didn’t get the moniker ‘Body Snatchers’ for no reason,” said Chicago Police Deputy Chief Nick Roti of the Organized Crime Section, adding that the faction is suspected of dozens of killings over the years.The charges unveiled Wednesday don’t accuse any of the defendants of murder, but said they were involved in a vast drug business.Since September, though, Ollison has been locked up after he was caught on the West Side with a loaded gun in a car, police said. He pleaded guilty to being a habitual offender and was sentenced to six years in prison, court records show.
According to FBI affidavits, the Body Snatchers were peddling large quantities of cocaine north of the Eisenhower Expy., south of North Avenue, west of Laramie and east of Austin. Two informants were paid a total of $20,000 to help investigators, the FBI said. Electronic surveillance also was used.
Most of the defendants lived in Chicago, but Finley has a Bellwood address and Andre Beard, 29, lives in Glendale Heights. Betts had lived in St. Charles.
“A lot of these guys, when they get higher up, move out to the suburbs and come to the city to work,” Roti said.Ironically, “they feel a little safer there,” he said.
Suspected of being members or associates of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang. The men were arrested as part of Operation Snatched, a coordinated effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to target street gangs running drug distribution networks in the Chicago area, Grant said.The men were charged with attempted possession or possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, the FBI said. The charges are felonies and carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the FBI.Investigators electronically intercepted telephone conversations, used surveillance techniques and conducted undercover missions to investigate the network whose turf went from the Eisenhower Expressway to North Avenue, between Laramie Avenue and Austin Boulevard, officials said.The Chicago residents who were charged were Milton Bills, 32, of the 5800 block of West Ohio Street; Clarence Johnson, 45, of the 700 block of East 50th Street; Terrance C. Jones, 32, of the 1400 block of South Christiana Avenue; Damon Westbrook, 32, of the 100 block of East 49th Street; Frederick Taylor, 23, of the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue; and Eric Ollison, 26, whose address was not available but who is in state prison on an unrelated conviction.Also charged were Andre T. Beard, 29, of Glendale Heights, and Dominique Finley, 34, of Bellwood.The men appeared Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in Chicago and were ordered held without bail in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, according to the FBI.
first gangland slaying of the year had originated in their district. John Paul 'JP' Joyce, a vicious criminal and member of a heroin distribution gang, had been kidnapped in Coolock on Thursday, January 7, murdered and his body dumped near the airport where it was found two days later.
The two murdered Joyce brothers, members of a settled Traveller family from Grove Lane, were notorious in north Dublin. John Paul was imprisoned for a terrible assault on an innocent man at a public house in Rush, Co Dublin on St Patrick's Day, 2006. The man's son had accidentally spilled a drink on someone in Joyce's company. He and another man dragged the man from the pub, beat him to the ground, jumped on him and slammed a door repeatedly on the man's head, causing severe injury. Joyce had only been released from prison last November.
Joyce, aged 30, was involved in a feud with a gang which has been establishing complete control over the drugs trade in an area stretching from the north inner city to north county Dublin and westwards to Ballymun, Finglas and Blanchardstown. It was responsible for murdering Joyce's brother, Thomas, in June last year and John Paul had vowed revenge. John Paul himself had already survived at least two attempts on his life.
The two murdered Joyce brothers, members of a settled Traveller family from Grove Lane, were notorious in north Dublin. John Paul was imprisoned for a terrible assault on an innocent man at a public house in Rush, Co Dublin on St Patrick's Day, 2006. The man's son had accidentally spilled a drink on someone in Joyce's company. He and another man dragged the man from the pub, beat him to the ground, jumped on him and slammed a door repeatedly on the man's head, causing severe injury. Joyce had only been released from prison last November.
Ryan Daniel Jones-Adams, 16, was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree murder committed in association with a gang.He is accused of fatally shooting Marvin Ray Maynard III, who was found Jan. 17 in the street on the 2600 block of James Avenue N. Maynard had his hands in the air when he was shot, according to the criminal complaint.A family member who declined to be named said Maynard was not a gang member and referred questions to his mother, who could not be immediately reached Monday.Police are not looking for anyone else in the case, said Sgt. Jesse Garcia, a spokesman.Garcia and the complaint gave this account:A witness who had been with Maynard and another male told police that they had been confronted by three people yelling "T Block" and "BTG," cliques in the Crips gang. Someone in Maynard's group mentioned the Tre-Tre gang.One male in the Crips group took off a skull cap and yelled a threat, the complaint said. The witness saw that the male, who ran past him, had a gun and that he fired twice at Maynard. The shooter and another male ran east between houses.A police dog tracking them went to a porch on the other side of the block, where police found a black hat with a loaded 9-mm handgun in it. On the gun were two latent fingerprints, one of which was identified as the right thumb of Jones-Adams, the complaint said.Police also found surveillance video of Jones-Adams and three others at a gas station six blocks from the shooting and taken about 90 minutes beforehand, the complaint said. Jones-Adams was wearing the same clothes in the video as the shooter was said to be wearing, Garcia said.
Medford Area Drug and Gang Enforcement Team officers arrested Dandre Davaune Parker, 20, on charges of possession, manufacture and delivery of heroin, possession of ecstasy, and manufacture of heroin and delivery of ecstasy within 1,000 feet of a school. He was lodged in the Jackson County Jail, where he remained Thursday evening on $100,000 bail.
Acting on a tip that members of the Crips street gang were dealing drugs near Jackson Elementary School, Medford police arrested a man on numerous drug charges Thursday morning.The arrest comes on the heelsof an unrelated investigation that led to three arrests and theseizure of an estimated $40,000worth of heroin and methamphetamine, team supervisor Medfordpolice Lt. Tim Doney said."We suspect Parker is associated with a Crips gang out of Stockton (Calif.)," Doney said.Investigators searched Parker's apartment in the 800 block of Summit Avenue at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, armed with a warrant based on allegations of gang and drug activity, Doney said. They found about half an ounce of heroin, 28 ecstasy pills and seized $3,000 in cash.
Police initially detained three men and a woman, who were in an apartment across from the school and the Jackson community pool. Only Parker was arrested and lodged in jail.California street gangs have made their way into Medford over the years, Doney said."We have had dealings with the Crips and Bloods before, but they are not prevalent in this area," Doney said. "But when you find out about them, you certainly want to act on that information."
The Crips gang is one of the largest and most violent street gangs in the United States, with an estimated 30,000 members in more than 200 cities. It was founded in the early 1970s in Southern California and is well known for committing violent crimes, drug dealing and for its bloody battles with a rival gang, the Bloods.
Medford police arrested Parker's younger brother, Dante Deon Parker, on Monday after he reportedly robbed a man of his wallet in the Minute Market parking lot on Crater Lake Avenue. The younger Parker was lodged in jail on a theft charge and has since been released and cited to appear in Jackson County Circuit Court.The arrest of Dandre Parker was the second incident involving heroin in two days. On Wednesday, drug and gang investigators searched an apartment in the 3100 block of Juniper Ridge Drive in northeast Medford at about 5:45 p.m., Doney said.
They found about three-quarters of a pound of heroin and an ounce of meth. Investigators estimated the street value of the seized drugs at about $40,000. They also seized $10,000 in cash.Four men at the apartment were detained and three of them were arrested.Ricardo Alonzo-Martinez, 24, and Armando Javier Avila, 30, who both live at the apartment, each were arrested on charges of possession, manufacture, delivery of heroin and meth. Both were lodged at the Jackson County Jail without bail on those charges and immigration holds.Mario Castellanos-Arango, 24, of the 3600 block of Antelope Road, White City, was charged with possession of meth. He also is held in jail without bail because of an immigration hold.
Officers did find three shots were fired in front of 1161 Mazatlan Cir., but were unable to locate a victim.Just after 11 p.m., officers were called to St. Francis Medical Center to investigate a shooting victim. A 20-year-old victim admitted being involved in the earlier disturbance and having an affiliation with the Crip street gang.The victim's injuries are not life threatening.
Bulldogs are described by authorities as the nation's largest independent street gang. Police estimate there are about 12,000 members in this city of 500,000.
For most of their 20-year existence, the Bulldogs escaped serious law enforcement scrutiny, even as they taunted cops with barks and howls. Police looked upon them mainly as wayward youth. But the gang that grew out of fights at San Quentin prison over respect eventually showed itself to be a deadly criminal enterprise. The 2006 shooting of a cop became a tipping point.
Now police are trying to bulldoze the Bulldogs, before the next generation takes over.The Fresno police are engaged in year four of tactical warfare against the gang, sweeping through neighborhoods and making more than 12,000 arrests, including many juveniles, and even going after petty offenses such as loitering by seeking injunctions.It's called "Operation Bulldog."
In other cities, such police pressure might have killed the beast. But with the loosely organized Bulldogs, many are independent operators who will turn on one another over territory.
"When you have structure," Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says, "you can cut the head off the snake and it dies. You can't do that with the Bulldogs."
Although gang activity declined across America between 2001 and 2006, gang membership in Fresno County grew by 33 percent, studies show.
"We found that 10 percent of the people in our city were committing 50 percent of the crime," Dyer said. "If you're talking about robbery, that increases to 80 percent."
In July 2006, a motorcycle officer was critically wounded during a traffic stop by a gun-toting Bulldog, Joaquin Maltos Figueroa, 25, who was shot to death days later by police.
In Maltos Figueroa's car, officers found a magazine of bullets and a scanner tuned to police frequencies. They realized gang members were more sophisticated than they previously had believed.
That same summer, 16-year-old Courtney Rice, a prostitute whom gang members feared was snitching, was raped, tortured and murdered by seven Bulldogs and associates.
In November 2006, Chief Dyer went on TV announcing a 10-person "Operation Bulldog" tactical unit to make gang members' lives miserable. This January, he added 100 more officers to focus on intelligence gathering on the 10 percent who are most active and promised to seek longer, federal sentences when possible.
"We know the war on gangs can never be won," the chief said, "but we also know it can be lost."
Today, easily half of those incarcerated in the county jail on any given day are Bulldogs.
"The chief's directive is to arrest as many Bulldogs as we can," said Sgt. Alex Robles. "He doesn't want us to let up the pressure."
Four days a week for 10-hour shifts, Robles and his team swarm Bulldog territory, the scruffy neighborhoods on the city's east side. Armed with lists of names supplied by parole agents, they make unannounced visits.
Parolees have no right to privacy, and the officers take advantage, searching homes for drugs and alcohol — even inspecting cell phones for gang photos or insignias.
If life is made unpleasant, police figure they will either leave gang life or move away.
"I don't know if we'll ever get rid of them" says Robles. "I know the goal is to get rid of them."
In the first three years of Operation Bulldog records show that violent crime has decreased in Fresno by 14.3 percent, ahead of the 9 percent state average, and police attribute the statistic to pressure on gangs. Rape is down 43.5 percent, and there were 26.3 percent fewer vehicles stolen.
After recording 314 shootings in 2006; in 2008 there were 226 and 231 in 2009.
"Still, it is too many, but it's a far cry from 314," Dyer says. "At least we don't have them standing on the corners barking anymore. Our goal is to take away their neighborhoods."
The figures do not capture the uptick in shootings since July 2009, when the History Channel's Gangland series featured the Bulldogs and egos swelled, prompting a summer police sweep that netted 200 arrests and dozens of confiscated weapons.
On one sweep officers arrested Naomi Copple, 27, on parole from Chowchilla State Prison for Women, because her parole agent said she tested dirty for drugs. As they searched her house, she sat on the curb, hands cuffed behind her back. With a shaved head, she could not hide the two dog paw tattoos over her right eyebrow, or the 5150 — police code for crazy person — inked on the back of her neck.
About the tats on her forehead: "It's just some stupid s--- I did a long time ago. I was a kid."
Police see it differently. "It's like a billboard on their face saying 'Hey, stop me,'" Robles said.
On Thanksgiving Eve, a year-long police investigation netted Christopher Chavez, 26, the suspect in the 1999 murder of a transvestite, his two brothers and a 16-year-old. Awaiting trial, Chavez is accused of being the shot-caller of a small Bulldog "cell." He wore a bulletproof vest and carried automatic weapons, police said.
At the arrest scene, police reported finding 50 marijuana plants in a toddler's bedroom.
"You always feel bad for the kids," said Detective Tony Gates. "We always say they have no chance."
Investigators eavesdropping on conversations learned that Chavez, who joined the Bulldogs as a young teen, sold methamphetamine to his own mother, a street dealer, and used juveniles to move drugs and guns. The electronic surveillance reaffirmed the importance of tattoos.
"One of the juveniles had a gang tattoo on his body, and it subjected him to being involved in more crime," said Gates. "Chris Chavez told him, 'You have to back that up.' As investigators, we knew it, but it was surprising to hear it."
Children in Bulldog neighborhoods live amid prostitutes and parolees, surrounded by crime and violence, unemployment and poverty. The gang offers security, a sense of identity and, for many, a livelihood. In the worst Bulldog neighborhoods, drug dealers wear the nicest clothes and drive the newest cars.
"The middle class and upper class think about and do things to plan for the future," says C. Ronald Huff, a University of California-Irvine criminologist who studies gangs. "People who don't have those things are more fatalistic because they don't believe they have a future. Parents don't imagine anything will be different for their children."
The police gang unit has confiscated photographs of infants posed in Fresno State Bulldog onesies, cuddling semiautomatic handguns instead of bottles.
A survey of Fresno County school officials in 2007 found gang affiliations begin as early as kindergarten. And a school survey this fall showed the Bulldog gang with a steady source of new recruits: Fresno County 8th graders were almost twice as likely to join gangs if their fathers were involved.
"We're seeing third generation Bulldogs now, and it's not stopping," said Robles. "It's sad that these parents don't want something better for their children."
Whether Enrique Gonzalez is the kind of parent Robles describes will be decided in court; a hearing is set for Feb. 11. The Fresno County district attorney has charged Gonzalez and his friend, Travis Gorman, with mayhem — plus gang enhancements — for tattooing Gonzalez' 7-year-old son's hip with a dog's paw. If convicted, they could serve two decades or more behind bars.
Police say the boy was an unwilling participant, held down and marked against his will. Gonzalez' estranged wife discovered the tattoo and took her son to police.
Defense attorney Douglas Foster said the tattooing was only a case of poor judgment, not a crime. He denied it was forced, saying the boy made that claim only because he was intimidated by police and upset by his angry mother.
According to the lawyer, friends who were there said the child begged for a tattoo. They quoted him as saying, "Daddy, I want to be like you."
For most of their 20-year existence, the Bulldogs escaped serious law enforcement scrutiny, even as they taunted cops with barks and howls. Police looked upon them mainly as wayward youth. But the gang that grew out of fights at San Quentin prison over respect eventually showed itself to be a deadly criminal enterprise. The 2006 shooting of a cop became a tipping point.
Now police are trying to bulldoze the Bulldogs, before the next generation takes over.The Fresno police are engaged in year four of tactical warfare against the gang, sweeping through neighborhoods and making more than 12,000 arrests, including many juveniles, and even going after petty offenses such as loitering by seeking injunctions.It's called "Operation Bulldog."
In other cities, such police pressure might have killed the beast. But with the loosely organized Bulldogs, many are independent operators who will turn on one another over territory.
"When you have structure," Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says, "you can cut the head off the snake and it dies. You can't do that with the Bulldogs."
Although gang activity declined across America between 2001 and 2006, gang membership in Fresno County grew by 33 percent, studies show.
"We found that 10 percent of the people in our city were committing 50 percent of the crime," Dyer said. "If you're talking about robbery, that increases to 80 percent."
In July 2006, a motorcycle officer was critically wounded during a traffic stop by a gun-toting Bulldog, Joaquin Maltos Figueroa, 25, who was shot to death days later by police.
In Maltos Figueroa's car, officers found a magazine of bullets and a scanner tuned to police frequencies. They realized gang members were more sophisticated than they previously had believed.
That same summer, 16-year-old Courtney Rice, a prostitute whom gang members feared was snitching, was raped, tortured and murdered by seven Bulldogs and associates.
In November 2006, Chief Dyer went on TV announcing a 10-person "Operation Bulldog" tactical unit to make gang members' lives miserable. This January, he added 100 more officers to focus on intelligence gathering on the 10 percent who are most active and promised to seek longer, federal sentences when possible.
"We know the war on gangs can never be won," the chief said, "but we also know it can be lost."
Today, easily half of those incarcerated in the county jail on any given day are Bulldogs.
"The chief's directive is to arrest as many Bulldogs as we can," said Sgt. Alex Robles. "He doesn't want us to let up the pressure."
Four days a week for 10-hour shifts, Robles and his team swarm Bulldog territory, the scruffy neighborhoods on the city's east side. Armed with lists of names supplied by parole agents, they make unannounced visits.
Parolees have no right to privacy, and the officers take advantage, searching homes for drugs and alcohol — even inspecting cell phones for gang photos or insignias.
If life is made unpleasant, police figure they will either leave gang life or move away.
"I don't know if we'll ever get rid of them" says Robles. "I know the goal is to get rid of them."
In the first three years of Operation Bulldog records show that violent crime has decreased in Fresno by 14.3 percent, ahead of the 9 percent state average, and police attribute the statistic to pressure on gangs. Rape is down 43.5 percent, and there were 26.3 percent fewer vehicles stolen.
After recording 314 shootings in 2006; in 2008 there were 226 and 231 in 2009.
"Still, it is too many, but it's a far cry from 314," Dyer says. "At least we don't have them standing on the corners barking anymore. Our goal is to take away their neighborhoods."
The figures do not capture the uptick in shootings since July 2009, when the History Channel's Gangland series featured the Bulldogs and egos swelled, prompting a summer police sweep that netted 200 arrests and dozens of confiscated weapons.
On one sweep officers arrested Naomi Copple, 27, on parole from Chowchilla State Prison for Women, because her parole agent said she tested dirty for drugs. As they searched her house, she sat on the curb, hands cuffed behind her back. With a shaved head, she could not hide the two dog paw tattoos over her right eyebrow, or the 5150 — police code for crazy person — inked on the back of her neck.
About the tats on her forehead: "It's just some stupid s--- I did a long time ago. I was a kid."
Police see it differently. "It's like a billboard on their face saying 'Hey, stop me,'" Robles said.
On Thanksgiving Eve, a year-long police investigation netted Christopher Chavez, 26, the suspect in the 1999 murder of a transvestite, his two brothers and a 16-year-old. Awaiting trial, Chavez is accused of being the shot-caller of a small Bulldog "cell." He wore a bulletproof vest and carried automatic weapons, police said.
At the arrest scene, police reported finding 50 marijuana plants in a toddler's bedroom.
"You always feel bad for the kids," said Detective Tony Gates. "We always say they have no chance."
Investigators eavesdropping on conversations learned that Chavez, who joined the Bulldogs as a young teen, sold methamphetamine to his own mother, a street dealer, and used juveniles to move drugs and guns. The electronic surveillance reaffirmed the importance of tattoos.
"One of the juveniles had a gang tattoo on his body, and it subjected him to being involved in more crime," said Gates. "Chris Chavez told him, 'You have to back that up.' As investigators, we knew it, but it was surprising to hear it."
Children in Bulldog neighborhoods live amid prostitutes and parolees, surrounded by crime and violence, unemployment and poverty. The gang offers security, a sense of identity and, for many, a livelihood. In the worst Bulldog neighborhoods, drug dealers wear the nicest clothes and drive the newest cars.
"The middle class and upper class think about and do things to plan for the future," says C. Ronald Huff, a University of California-Irvine criminologist who studies gangs. "People who don't have those things are more fatalistic because they don't believe they have a future. Parents don't imagine anything will be different for their children."
The police gang unit has confiscated photographs of infants posed in Fresno State Bulldog onesies, cuddling semiautomatic handguns instead of bottles.
A survey of Fresno County school officials in 2007 found gang affiliations begin as early as kindergarten. And a school survey this fall showed the Bulldog gang with a steady source of new recruits: Fresno County 8th graders were almost twice as likely to join gangs if their fathers were involved.
"We're seeing third generation Bulldogs now, and it's not stopping," said Robles. "It's sad that these parents don't want something better for their children."
Whether Enrique Gonzalez is the kind of parent Robles describes will be decided in court; a hearing is set for Feb. 11. The Fresno County district attorney has charged Gonzalez and his friend, Travis Gorman, with mayhem — plus gang enhancements — for tattooing Gonzalez' 7-year-old son's hip with a dog's paw. If convicted, they could serve two decades or more behind bars.
Police say the boy was an unwilling participant, held down and marked against his will. Gonzalez' estranged wife discovered the tattoo and took her son to police.
Defense attorney Douglas Foster said the tattooing was only a case of poor judgment, not a crime. He denied it was forced, saying the boy made that claim only because he was intimidated by police and upset by his angry mother.
According to the lawyer, friends who were there said the child begged for a tattoo. They quoted him as saying, "Daddy, I want to be like you."
six Florencia 13 gang members life in prison sentence appears to bring to a close a prolonged and terrifying spate of violence in the Florence-Firestone district allegedly brought on by orders from a prison gang member in solitary confinement 700 miles away.Beginning in 2004, the unincorporated Los Angeles County area north of Watts was the site of one of the region's worst gang sieges since the early 1990s, evolving into what some residents felt was a race war.The violence left dozens of people dead, including many with no gang affiliation, and required enormous county resources to combat."Things have gotten a lot better," said Chris Le Grande, pastor of Great Hope Missionary Baptist Church on Compton Avenue in Florence-Firestone.
U.S. District Judge David Carter sentenced Florencia member Francisco Flores, 24, to life in prison on Wednesday, saying that he "preyed on victims because they were black and for no other reason," according to a U.S. attorney's office news release.
Earlier this year, Carter had handed out life sentences to Florencia members Jesse Vasquez, 36; Alberto Hernandez, 28; Gilberto Oliva, 41; Manuel Hernandez, 27; and Noe Gonzalez, 28. Arturo Cruz, 34, was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Jose Gonzalez, 36, received a 20-year sentence. Two more gang members are scheduled to be sentenced later this month. An 11th defendant, Alejandro Rincon, will be retried in April.
Their trial, which took place in federal court in Santa Ana in 2008, grew from an indictment of 104 Florencia gang members on charges that included racketeering, conspiracy to sell drugs and murder.Of those indicted, 94 have pleaded guilty or have been convicted. Four more await trial; two have died and four are fugitives.The case showed the remarkable power the Mexican Mafia prison gang holds over Southern California Latino street gangs. Prosecutors alleged that Mexican Mafia member Arturo "Tablas" Castellanos essentially created a crime wave in the Florence-Firestone district.Castellanos was not indicted because he is already serving a life prison term in a maximum security cell in Pelican Bay State Prison. He hasn't been on the streets since 1979.Yet he wrote letters, introduced as evidence at the trial, that presumed to control a street gang, most of whose members had never seen him.Castellanos ordered gang members to stop rampant infighting; to tax drug dealers in their neighborhoods, as well as prostitutes, fruit vendors and vendors of phony ID cards in nearby Huntington Park; and to funnel the proceeds to him and other mafia members. He also ordered the gang to attack the local Crips gang, whose members are black."The Mexican Mafia has a powerful grasp on these [Latino] gangs," said Peter Hernandez, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case.
"The prison system is a segregated place. Those rules and letters from Castellanos attempted to adhere those prison rules to the street," he said.
As Castellanos' letters appeared on the street in the fall and winter of 2004, Florencia 13 erupted in a spate of violence against African Americans.
"They just went out and started shooting" at black people, Hernandez said.
East Coast Crips responded with shootings of their own, often targeting Latinos who were not gang members.Few actual gang members died. Instead, residents said, they lived amid a race war.
U.S. District Judge David Carter sentenced Florencia member Francisco Flores, 24, to life in prison on Wednesday, saying that he "preyed on victims because they were black and for no other reason," according to a U.S. attorney's office news release.
Earlier this year, Carter had handed out life sentences to Florencia members Jesse Vasquez, 36; Alberto Hernandez, 28; Gilberto Oliva, 41; Manuel Hernandez, 27; and Noe Gonzalez, 28. Arturo Cruz, 34, was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Jose Gonzalez, 36, received a 20-year sentence. Two more gang members are scheduled to be sentenced later this month. An 11th defendant, Alejandro Rincon, will be retried in April.
Their trial, which took place in federal court in Santa Ana in 2008, grew from an indictment of 104 Florencia gang members on charges that included racketeering, conspiracy to sell drugs and murder.Of those indicted, 94 have pleaded guilty or have been convicted. Four more await trial; two have died and four are fugitives.The case showed the remarkable power the Mexican Mafia prison gang holds over Southern California Latino street gangs. Prosecutors alleged that Mexican Mafia member Arturo "Tablas" Castellanos essentially created a crime wave in the Florence-Firestone district.Castellanos was not indicted because he is already serving a life prison term in a maximum security cell in Pelican Bay State Prison. He hasn't been on the streets since 1979.Yet he wrote letters, introduced as evidence at the trial, that presumed to control a street gang, most of whose members had never seen him.Castellanos ordered gang members to stop rampant infighting; to tax drug dealers in their neighborhoods, as well as prostitutes, fruit vendors and vendors of phony ID cards in nearby Huntington Park; and to funnel the proceeds to him and other mafia members. He also ordered the gang to attack the local Crips gang, whose members are black."The Mexican Mafia has a powerful grasp on these [Latino] gangs," said Peter Hernandez, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case.
"The prison system is a segregated place. Those rules and letters from Castellanos attempted to adhere those prison rules to the street," he said.
As Castellanos' letters appeared on the street in the fall and winter of 2004, Florencia 13 erupted in a spate of violence against African Americans.
"They just went out and started shooting" at black people, Hernandez said.
East Coast Crips responded with shootings of their own, often targeting Latinos who were not gang members.Few actual gang members died. Instead, residents said, they lived amid a race war.
four accused - Nicola Ciconte, 54, of Rowville, Michael Calleja, 51, of Kew, Vincenzo Medici, 45, of Mildura, and Carmelo Loprete, 41, of Adelaide - will be tried in absentia in the town of Vibo Valentia in Calabria after a failed attempt by the Italian government to extradite them from Australia.Anti-mafia prosecutor Salvatore Curcio has told The Age the prosecution will use testimony from a Mafia turncoat, whose name has been suppressed, to corroborate phone taps, photographic and video evidence allegedly linking the four to a multimillion-dollar drug smuggling network that stretched from Colombia through Spain and Italy to Australia.According to court documents, the turncoat has confirmed the alleged link between the Calabrian Mafia and what prosecutors have termed ''leading crime figures operating in Australia''.
He has told prosecutors the four Australians made several trips to Italy to arrange the shipment of large quantities of cocaine while members of the elite Carabinieri special operations group filmed their alleged meetings in Calabria.
''The essential nucleus of the investigation with which we are dealing can, without any doubt, be confirmed in the statements and accusations made by [unnamed turncoat]; through the taps of telephones and public places; in international documents; and as a result of searches and seizures carried out in identifying assets,'' prosecutors said in one document.Security is expected to be tight at the trial after a bomb attack outside a court building in nearby Reggio Calabria and the discovery of explosives during a visit by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in January.
Court documents allege the four Australians conspired with the Calabrian Mafia in the ''transportation and importation'' of 500 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated street value of $35-$50 million from South America via Italy to Melbourne between 2002 and 2004.
The trial is the latest in a series of cases that arose from an investigation into a vast Mafia drug-smuggling network that sought to ship enormous quantities of cocaine inside slabs of marble, plastic tubes and canned tuna across four continents.
Italian court documents obtained by The Age allege that Nicola Ciconte played the lead role in negotiating with the Italians in setting up the operation.
Prosecutors are expected to present detailed transcripts of long-distance telephone conversations allegedly between Ciconte and Vincenzo Barbieri, a senior Mafia figure who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2005.The four Australians are charged with criminal association aimed at international cocaine trafficking and attempted importation of cocaine. If convicted, they would face lengthy prison terms if they set foot on Italian soil.Arrest warrants for them were issued by anti-Mafia prosecutors and Italian police in January 2004.While the Australians are not expected to appear at the trial, a court lawyer will be appointed to represent them.When approached by The Age, the Italian Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the status of the extradition request or whether it had ever been formally put to the Australian Attorney-General's department or the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
He has told prosecutors the four Australians made several trips to Italy to arrange the shipment of large quantities of cocaine while members of the elite Carabinieri special operations group filmed their alleged meetings in Calabria.
''The essential nucleus of the investigation with which we are dealing can, without any doubt, be confirmed in the statements and accusations made by [unnamed turncoat]; through the taps of telephones and public places; in international documents; and as a result of searches and seizures carried out in identifying assets,'' prosecutors said in one document.Security is expected to be tight at the trial after a bomb attack outside a court building in nearby Reggio Calabria and the discovery of explosives during a visit by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in January.
Court documents allege the four Australians conspired with the Calabrian Mafia in the ''transportation and importation'' of 500 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated street value of $35-$50 million from South America via Italy to Melbourne between 2002 and 2004.
The trial is the latest in a series of cases that arose from an investigation into a vast Mafia drug-smuggling network that sought to ship enormous quantities of cocaine inside slabs of marble, plastic tubes and canned tuna across four continents.
Italian court documents obtained by The Age allege that Nicola Ciconte played the lead role in negotiating with the Italians in setting up the operation.
Prosecutors are expected to present detailed transcripts of long-distance telephone conversations allegedly between Ciconte and Vincenzo Barbieri, a senior Mafia figure who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2005.The four Australians are charged with criminal association aimed at international cocaine trafficking and attempted importation of cocaine. If convicted, they would face lengthy prison terms if they set foot on Italian soil.Arrest warrants for them were issued by anti-Mafia prosecutors and Italian police in January 2004.While the Australians are not expected to appear at the trial, a court lawyer will be appointed to represent them.When approached by The Age, the Italian Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the status of the extradition request or whether it had ever been formally put to the Australian Attorney-General's department or the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
Bloods gangster Keyaan L. Young was busted by city vice-enforcement cops on charges he tried to peddle almost 4,000 decks of the smack.Police said the 21-year-old Trentonian was arrested following a motor vehicle stop off Route 29 near Warren Street. Cops accused Young of being a drug mule, alleging he possessed 3,750 decks of heroin that was packaged into 75 individually wrapped “bricks.”Cops said drug dealers often package heroin in “bricks” to promote bulk sales. Police allege Young concealed his heroin inside two cereal boxes. Drug-sniffing K-9 “Raven” and handler Detective Phillip Peroni found the drugs and seized about $1,000 in drug money, cops said.
Police charged Young with possession of heroin, possession of heroin with intent to distribute, possession of heroin with intent to distribute within 500 feet of a park, and possession of heroin with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a school.Announcing the arrest over the weekend, cops said they arrested Young about 5 p.m. Jan. 27 after a longterm and ongoing investigation into the Gangsta Killa Bloods street gang. Police described their operation as “another crushing blow delivered by the Trenton VICE Unit to the heroin trafficking in the city.”
Police charged Young with possession of heroin, possession of heroin with intent to distribute, possession of heroin with intent to distribute within 500 feet of a park, and possession of heroin with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a school.Announcing the arrest over the weekend, cops said they arrested Young about 5 p.m. Jan. 27 after a longterm and ongoing investigation into the Gangsta Killa Bloods street gang. Police described their operation as “another crushing blow delivered by the Trenton VICE Unit to the heroin trafficking in the city.”
NARCO gangs in Mexico claimed 40 lives over the weekend in Mexico, including at least 18 young people gunned down at a high school party, officials said.The worst act of slaughter happened in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's murder capital, when gunmen drove up to the house in several cars, first shooting at people gathered outside, then chasing and cornering some of the partygoers who jumped over a fence frantically running for their lives.Enrique Torres, a military spokesman, said the gunmen had apparently been looking for someone who was not even at the party, which was to celebrate a birthday.
DARED to enter enemy territory and paid for it with their lives. Three young men were shot dead while attending a wake for their cousin at Meggie Top in Salt Spring, St James. They lived in neighbouring Buck Toe Lane, which was at war with Meggie Top.According to residents, 22-year-old Ricardo Rickettes, 26-year-old Roy Rickettes Jr, and 24-year-old Fabian Bailey were killed because they had "foolishly" crossed the borderline."Me blame 'Blood' (Roy Rickettes). He shouldn't leave him head back careless inside enemy territory," stated one of the friends of the deceased. "We are not going to take it lightly though ... trust me on that."Residents of Salt Spring will not forget that night - April 18, 2009. The unfortunate predawn incident occurred while a wake was in full swing. Mourners from the area and several outsiders had gathered in the yard, located in Buck Toe Lane, to honour the life of a well-known hotel employee who had accidentally drowned in a pool at his workplace.At approximately 1 a.m., the lights illuminating the bars, which were located at opposite ends of the yard, suddenly went out. Seconds later, heavy gunfire erupted in the yard, sending those who had gathered, including visiting co-workers of the deceased, fleeing in panic.
When the shooting ended, the three cousins - all from nearby Meggie Top - lay dead in the yard with gunshot wounds to their heads and upper bodies.Based on reports garnered in Buck Toe Lane, gangsters in that area had a long-standing feud with Ricardo Rickettes, also known as 'Blood'.Today, Meggie Top is still angry because 'Blood' was highly revered among his peers. Some of his friends openly declared that there could still be reprisals.Roy Rickettes Sr, still mourning the loss of his son, described the gang warfare in the area as evil. "The devil finding work for idle hands," he said. The solution, in his view, to the vicious cycle of murders, is to create employment for the many idle youngsters in the area.
When the shooting ended, the three cousins - all from nearby Meggie Top - lay dead in the yard with gunshot wounds to their heads and upper bodies.Based on reports garnered in Buck Toe Lane, gangsters in that area had a long-standing feud with Ricardo Rickettes, also known as 'Blood'.Today, Meggie Top is still angry because 'Blood' was highly revered among his peers. Some of his friends openly declared that there could still be reprisals.Roy Rickettes Sr, still mourning the loss of his son, described the gang warfare in the area as evil. "The devil finding work for idle hands," he said. The solution, in his view, to the vicious cycle of murders, is to create employment for the many idle youngsters in the area.
James Bucheger of Oakhurst, is in jail -- accused of breaking into two cabins near Bass Lake. Bucheger told deputies -- he's a Juggalo. The Juggalos claim they're just extreme fans of the band "Insane Clown Posse". But many law enforcement agencies consider them -- a violent street gang. Deputies found the suspect covered in blood at a third home where a party was taking place. The two burglarized homes had smashed windows and blood splattered throughout them.
seven Latin King members were arrested, the FBI said: Rene Ramirez, 27, of Orlando; Ricky Montesino, 26, of Orlando; Frederic Salizan, 28, of Orlando; Kevin Sullivan, 29, of Orlando; Derrick Hester, 21, of Davenport; Rafael Rodriguez, 35, of Davenport; Emilio Rosa, 37, of Davenport.Four others were already in state custody: Jose Santana, 28; Jason Rohena, 22; Jose Garcia, 23; and Vic Melendez, 22.Authorities are still looking for Luis Gelpi, 20, of Park Manor Drive, Orlando. Gelpi is considered armed and dangerous.The Latin Kings are one of the largest gangs nationwide, said Orlando police Sgt. Jose Velez. They’re very well organized, and each city or geographic area has a leader who reports to a nationwide leader.
“They are dangerous. They are criminals. They sell drugs. They fight for territories. They threaten people. They shoot people if necessary,” Velez said. “Anytime you can put people like this away, it makes the community a lot safer
Ricardo McKendrick Jr., a Salem County, N.J., resident who has been in jail since his arrest in April 2008, was described as a "dealer's dealer" by U.S. District Judge Gene E. K. Pratter before she imposed a 108-month prison sentence.The term was substantially below recommended sentencing guidelines, and came in response to a government motion that detailed the extent of McKendrick's cooperation.Pratter also had a private, 15-minute sidebar session in the midst of the hearing in which she heard more details about why the prosecution felt a lesser sentence was appropriate.
The motion seeking a sentence reduction was filed under seal and is not available to the public.Neither the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Tsao, nor McKendrick's lawyer, Brian McMonagle, would comment about the motion or the sidebar session after the hearing.Pratter called the motion "very compelling," but provided no details.Under guideline recommendations, McKendrick, 38, faced a sentence of 188 to 235 months.The soft-spoken, admitted kingpin apologized to family members and friends who had packed the eighth-floor courtroom for the hearing.He said he was motivated by a desire to "get ahead" and had seen the money he made from drug dealing as a measure of success."It was the greatest mistake I ever made," he said. "I hurt so many people."
Police and the FBI seized nearly 600 pounds of cocaine, valued at about $28 million, and more than $1 million in cash when McKendrick was arrested in April 2008.
The stash included $982,000 hidden in the trunk of a Mercedes parked in the garage of a home in Woodstown, N.J., where McKendrick lived with his wife, who is a lawyer, and their 4-year-old daughter.Authorities said McKendrick used his father's Grays Ferry rowhouse in South Philadelphia to store his drugs.Ricardo McKendrick Sr., once a member of the notorious Black Mafia, pleaded guilty to a drug conspiracy charge in December 2008 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Authorities raided his house in the 2600 block of Federal Street after receiving a tip that the younger McKendrick had received a shipment of cocaine.
During that raid authorities found 274 kilograms of cocaine (about 600 pounds).
"In terms of the sheer amount of cocaine seized in the offense, the scope of the defendant's crime is unmatched in recent Philadelphia history," Tsao wrote in a sentencing memo filed prior to Tuesday's hearing.McKendrick's decision to cooperate is not a secret.He testified for the government in the trial of rogue Philadelphia cop Malik Snell last year.Snell was charged with using his badge and his gun to rob drug dealers. McKendrick testified about a bogus police stop in which Snell stole $40,000 from the backseat of his car.But McKendrick's decision to cooperate could extend well beyond the case of a corrupt police officer.Described by Tsao as a "major player in the Philadelphia cocaine market," McKendrick could offer authorities inside details about the Philadelphia drug underworld.
McKendrick, according to law enforcement sources, bought and sold in bulk, and his information could help make cases against both the drug suppliers from whom he was buying and the dealers to whom he was selling.
The motion seeking a sentence reduction was filed under seal and is not available to the public.Neither the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Tsao, nor McKendrick's lawyer, Brian McMonagle, would comment about the motion or the sidebar session after the hearing.Pratter called the motion "very compelling," but provided no details.Under guideline recommendations, McKendrick, 38, faced a sentence of 188 to 235 months.The soft-spoken, admitted kingpin apologized to family members and friends who had packed the eighth-floor courtroom for the hearing.He said he was motivated by a desire to "get ahead" and had seen the money he made from drug dealing as a measure of success."It was the greatest mistake I ever made," he said. "I hurt so many people."
Police and the FBI seized nearly 600 pounds of cocaine, valued at about $28 million, and more than $1 million in cash when McKendrick was arrested in April 2008.
The stash included $982,000 hidden in the trunk of a Mercedes parked in the garage of a home in Woodstown, N.J., where McKendrick lived with his wife, who is a lawyer, and their 4-year-old daughter.Authorities said McKendrick used his father's Grays Ferry rowhouse in South Philadelphia to store his drugs.Ricardo McKendrick Sr., once a member of the notorious Black Mafia, pleaded guilty to a drug conspiracy charge in December 2008 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Authorities raided his house in the 2600 block of Federal Street after receiving a tip that the younger McKendrick had received a shipment of cocaine.
During that raid authorities found 274 kilograms of cocaine (about 600 pounds).
"In terms of the sheer amount of cocaine seized in the offense, the scope of the defendant's crime is unmatched in recent Philadelphia history," Tsao wrote in a sentencing memo filed prior to Tuesday's hearing.McKendrick's decision to cooperate is not a secret.He testified for the government in the trial of rogue Philadelphia cop Malik Snell last year.Snell was charged with using his badge and his gun to rob drug dealers. McKendrick testified about a bogus police stop in which Snell stole $40,000 from the backseat of his car.But McKendrick's decision to cooperate could extend well beyond the case of a corrupt police officer.Described by Tsao as a "major player in the Philadelphia cocaine market," McKendrick could offer authorities inside details about the Philadelphia drug underworld.
McKendrick, according to law enforcement sources, bought and sold in bulk, and his information could help make cases against both the drug suppliers from whom he was buying and the dealers to whom he was selling.
fatal shooting of a man and his teenage cousin on a Jersey City street corner may have been a gang-related execution.Police found 26-year-old Lester Thompson and 17-year-old Mileak Richardson sprawled face down on the sidewalk at around 4 a.m. Tuesday. Both had been shot in the head.A neighbor reported hearing five shots and a car racing away.Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said the attack was "clearly premeditated'' and money may have been taken from at least one of the victims.
Authorities are still searching for the shooter
Authorities are still searching for the shooter
Adrian Ramírez, known as "El Rama" or "12" was killed in a shootout with Mexican soldiers the day after two squads of gunmen massacred 15 students who were celebrating a birthday party. The killings has shocked Mexico, and called into question President Felipe Calderón's war on the violent drug cartels who are fighting for control of profitable routes to the U.S.Police interrogated José Dolores Arroyo, who is accused of being a lookout for the gunmen. Mr. Arroyo told police the gunmen, who worked for the Juárez Cartel, also known as La Linea, believed the students belonged to a rival gang known as the Artistic Assassins who work for Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, Mexico's most powerful drug lord. Mr. Guzmán has been battling to take over Ciudad Juárez from the hometown Juárez Cartel for the past two years. During that period, violence has spiraled out of control. Last year, more than 2,600 people were killed in drug related violence in Ciudad Juárez, up from 1,600 in 2008.
fugitive Bloods gangster with roots in Liberia was captured and charged yesterday with shooting a local man at a homecoming party for a U.S. Marine on upscale Palton Road.Police said Daniel “Rush” Potepa, 20, shot 23-year-old Anshul Rastogi in the arm, hip and pelvis, wounding him gravely. Rastogi was reported in critical condition on a respirator at Aria Health’s Torresdale hospital.According to a probable cause affadavit, the party was held on Jan. 23 for Iraq War returnee Michael Shannon, a Marine who saw Potepa’s gun jam when the suspect pointed it at him and tried to fire.The legal papers also said the shots were fired at the party at the same time Potepa’s ally in the Sex Money Murder wing of the Bloods was smashing liquor bottles and threatening to cut people with the jagged edges.Four Bensalem detectives cracked the case by checking the social networking Internet site Facebook to compile a list of party attendees and see some of their pictures. (Also on Facebook, Shannon recounted the incident and ID'd Rastogi as his best friend.)
Promoted on the Internet as the “The Party at the Mansion,” the celebration at the $600,000 home stopped minutes before 3:30 a.m. when, police said, the host said someone had stolen a cell phone from the kitchen.When the party “bouncers” tried to stop anyone from leaving before they were frisked, “Rush” Potepa allegedly balked and in crude language said what he thought of the phone and its owner.That’s when, police said, the Liberian national pulled out a gun and started shooting. With Rastogi down on the floor bleeding heavily, Potepa allegedly stood over him and fired another shot at the victim just seconds after the misfire at lucky Marine Shannon.
Shannon was cited in the probable cause papers as saying he thought Potepa had shot Rastogi in the head.The papers also said Potepa’s fellow gangster, 24-year-old Augustine “Lyrico” Kiawu, allegedly smashed the liquor bottles, cut Shannon’s brother and threatened others.
With help from the Web site and videos taken at the party, cops were able to arrest Kiawu last week. He was charged with aggravated assault and other offenses, as was Bristol Township resident Potepa when cops caught up to him.
A judge ordered Potepa held on $3 million bail as Rastogi was fighting for his life in the intensive care unit. Police said Rostogi needs a ventilator to keep breathing and that he was twice taken off the device and quickly put back on both times.
The hospital would not release information on the condition of the victim, a Bensalem High graduate and college student whose family was said to be with him in the intensive care unit.But Rastogi’s sister, Monica, told friends on Facebook that he was able to talk when a tube was taken out of his mouth and that the family is hopeful.
Promoted on the Internet as the “The Party at the Mansion,” the celebration at the $600,000 home stopped minutes before 3:30 a.m. when, police said, the host said someone had stolen a cell phone from the kitchen.When the party “bouncers” tried to stop anyone from leaving before they were frisked, “Rush” Potepa allegedly balked and in crude language said what he thought of the phone and its owner.That’s when, police said, the Liberian national pulled out a gun and started shooting. With Rastogi down on the floor bleeding heavily, Potepa allegedly stood over him and fired another shot at the victim just seconds after the misfire at lucky Marine Shannon.
Shannon was cited in the probable cause papers as saying he thought Potepa had shot Rastogi in the head.The papers also said Potepa’s fellow gangster, 24-year-old Augustine “Lyrico” Kiawu, allegedly smashed the liquor bottles, cut Shannon’s brother and threatened others.
With help from the Web site and videos taken at the party, cops were able to arrest Kiawu last week. He was charged with aggravated assault and other offenses, as was Bristol Township resident Potepa when cops caught up to him.
A judge ordered Potepa held on $3 million bail as Rastogi was fighting for his life in the intensive care unit. Police said Rostogi needs a ventilator to keep breathing and that he was twice taken off the device and quickly put back on both times.
The hospital would not release information on the condition of the victim, a Bensalem High graduate and college student whose family was said to be with him in the intensive care unit.But Rastogi’s sister, Monica, told friends on Facebook that he was able to talk when a tube was taken out of his mouth and that the family is hopeful.
Criminal charges have been filed against a dozen local members of the violent Latin King street gang
The Latin Kings are one of the largest gangs nationwide, said Orlando police Sgt. Jose Velez. They’re very well organized, and each city or geographic area has a leader who reports to a nationwide leader.Criminal charges have been filed against a dozen local members of the violent Latin King street gang as part of a multi-agency operation, the FBI said Tuesday.Law-enforcement officials executed several arrest warrants Tuesday morning throughout Orange, Osceola and Polk counties. Those arrested face charges ranging from murder to conspiracy to commit racketeering.By Tuesday afternoon, seven Latin King members were arrested, the FBI said: Rene Ramirez, 27, of Orlando; Ricky Montesino, 26, of Orlando; Frederic Salizan, 28, of Orlando; Kevin Sullivan, 29, of Orlando; Derrick Hester, 21, of Davenport; Rafael Rodriguez, 35, of Davenport; Emilio Rosa, 37, of Davenport.Four others were already in state custody: Jose Santana, 28; Jason Rohena, 22; Jose Garcia, 23; and Vic Melendez, 22.Authorities are still looking for Luis Gelpi, 20, of Park Manor Drive, Orlando. Gelpi is considered armed and dangerous.
“They are dangerous. They are criminals. They sell drugs. They fight for territories. They threaten people. They shoot people if necessary,” Velez said. “Anytime you can put people like this away, it makes the community a lot safer.”
“They are dangerous. They are criminals. They sell drugs. They fight for territories. They threaten people. They shoot people if necessary,” Velez said. “Anytime you can put people like this away, it makes the community a lot safer.”
Juan Palo Lopez Ruiz, 35, of Watsonville was pronounced dead at the scene of the 9:11 p.m. shooting at a residence in the 8800 block of Vista de Tierra Circle, deputies said. A second victim, Fernando Ramirez Ruiz, 35, of Castroville was taken by air to a San Jose hospital, deputies said. Sheriff's units swarmed to the scene to find one of the wounded men lying in the roadway and the second near the entrance of a housing unit, deputies said. Witnesses told deputies that the two men were at a birthday party when "unknown individuals" came up and asked if they belonged to any gangs. The interlopers were told to leave, and they started shooting, deputies said.
The shooters were seen leaving the area on foot, deputies said. They shot at a third man but missed, deputies said. Several of the rounds entered residences in the housing complex but no one else was injured, deputies said. The fatal shooting is being investigated as gang-related, deputies said.
The shooters were seen leaving the area on foot, deputies said. They shot at a third man but missed, deputies said. Several of the rounds entered residences in the housing complex but no one else was injured, deputies said. The fatal shooting is being investigated as gang-related, deputies said.
Robert Schultz shot Carlton Ewing with a .40 caliber semi-automatic gun on the evening of Aug. 17, which was a Latin King organized "Hood Day," Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Antara Nath said. "Hood Days" are designated days when gang members look for for rival members so "shorties" — or those hoping to join the gang — can target enemies. Ewing did not belong to a gang, Nath said. Ewing, who was wearing a red baseball cap, was traveling in a car with three others in the 9800 block of South Ewing when Schultz's co-defendant Juan Macias yelled out, "GD killers" and motioned for Schultz to fire, Nath said. Schultz, then 17, sprung from the gangway he was hiding in and allegedly shot eight times at the car. One of the bullets went through the truck and hit Ewing in the back, Nath said.
The now 18-year-old Schultz, of the 9500 bock of South Avenue L, was arrested on Sunday in Crown Point, Ind. The 5-foot-5 alleged shooter, who goes by the nick name "Lucky Charms," looked nervous and gripped on to the table as Judge Donald Panarese told him he was charged with first-degree murder.
"Do you speak?" Panarese asked the part-time carpenter and roofer.
"Yes," Schultz replied. Schultz has no prior convictions.
The now 18-year-old Schultz, of the 9500 bock of South Avenue L, was arrested on Sunday in Crown Point, Ind. The 5-foot-5 alleged shooter, who goes by the nick name "Lucky Charms," looked nervous and gripped on to the table as Judge Donald Panarese told him he was charged with first-degree murder.
"Do you speak?" Panarese asked the part-time carpenter and roofer.
"Yes," Schultz replied. Schultz has no prior convictions.
Julian Escobar, 24, was arrested Saturday as he drove away from his Pajaro Circle house and will be in court Tuesday to face murder, attempted murder, gang and gun charges, authorities reported.Escobar and another, still unidentified man went to the Apple Hill neighborhood in Watsonville the afternoon of March 21, confronted a group of young men playing basketball on public court and asked what gang they claimed, according to police.Angel Escobedo, 19, and his friends said they weren't involved in gangs. He and the other basketball players fled when gang members pulled a handgun, but Escobedo was shot several times and died.Although police suspect Escobar came to Watsonville to retaliate for a prior incident - which officers are tight-lipped about - Watsonville Police Chief Manny Solano said the gang member was not seeking out Escobedo in particular."This young man was an innocent victim of the terrible, terrible gang crimes we see," District Attorney Bob Lee said.
Escobedo had grown up in Watsonville but lived in Hollister. He was planning to go into law enforcement or join the military before he was killed, according to Solano.
His death was one of four homicides in the city in 2009. Of those, three were gang-related murders. Police have made arrests in two of the gang killings as well as the fourth homicide.Investigators identified Escobar, an ex-con, as the suspect based on "a new little bit of information" they received last week, according to Watsonville police detective Jarrod Pisturino."It was something that we followed up on and it just snowballed," Pisturino said. "It was very exciting and almost unbelievable."Before Escobar surfaced as a suspect, detectives had chased hundreds of leads in the 10 months since the killing and shown photo lineups to dozens of people, including many Apple Hill residents who cooperated with the investigation.
"We went into the neighborhood immediately afterward," said Solano, highlighting the department's community outreach efforts, including the Post-Incident Team and chaplain program. "I do believe that's why it fostered trust."
In addition to witness accounts, detectives relied on video surveillance from a nearby apartment complex. A police sketch artist made two renderings of the suspect, one of which included a teardrop tattoo below the assailant's left eye.
Escobar has the same tattoo and Pisturino said seeing that marking when detectives pulled up Escobar's mug shot last week helped things click.A judge signed a $1 million arrest warrant Thursday for charges that include the personal use of a firearm, likely meaning he is suspected of firing the deadly shots.Police declined to discuss the evidence in the case or where the tip leading them to Escobar came from. They also did not say if the gun was recovered or confirm that Escobedo was the shooter.Escobar was arrested Saturday morning after Watsonville gang investigators, agents from the county's Anti-Crime Team and Salinas police officers staked out his house and other hangouts for two days.Monday, he was transferred from the Monterey County Jail to the Santa Cruz County Jail.Solano said Escobar doesn't have a history with Watsonville police, but he was arrested by Salinas police in 2005 after he brandished a gun at officers and ran when he was pulled over. Escobar served three years in prison for the incident.
Escobedo had grown up in Watsonville but lived in Hollister. He was planning to go into law enforcement or join the military before he was killed, according to Solano.
His death was one of four homicides in the city in 2009. Of those, three were gang-related murders. Police have made arrests in two of the gang killings as well as the fourth homicide.Investigators identified Escobar, an ex-con, as the suspect based on "a new little bit of information" they received last week, according to Watsonville police detective Jarrod Pisturino."It was something that we followed up on and it just snowballed," Pisturino said. "It was very exciting and almost unbelievable."Before Escobar surfaced as a suspect, detectives had chased hundreds of leads in the 10 months since the killing and shown photo lineups to dozens of people, including many Apple Hill residents who cooperated with the investigation.
"We went into the neighborhood immediately afterward," said Solano, highlighting the department's community outreach efforts, including the Post-Incident Team and chaplain program. "I do believe that's why it fostered trust."
In addition to witness accounts, detectives relied on video surveillance from a nearby apartment complex. A police sketch artist made two renderings of the suspect, one of which included a teardrop tattoo below the assailant's left eye.
Escobar has the same tattoo and Pisturino said seeing that marking when detectives pulled up Escobar's mug shot last week helped things click.A judge signed a $1 million arrest warrant Thursday for charges that include the personal use of a firearm, likely meaning he is suspected of firing the deadly shots.Police declined to discuss the evidence in the case or where the tip leading them to Escobar came from. They also did not say if the gun was recovered or confirm that Escobedo was the shooter.Escobar was arrested Saturday morning after Watsonville gang investigators, agents from the county's Anti-Crime Team and Salinas police officers staked out his house and other hangouts for two days.Monday, he was transferred from the Monterey County Jail to the Santa Cruz County Jail.Solano said Escobar doesn't have a history with Watsonville police, but he was arrested by Salinas police in 2005 after he brandished a gun at officers and ran when he was pulled over. Escobar served three years in prison for the incident.
Stephen Marshall, 38, sensationally confessed to the other atrocities He admitted through his barrister that he sliced up and dismembered the victims a decade before he slaughtered his landlord Jeffrey Howe - whose flat he wanted for himself and his hooker girlfriend. At the time the four died he said he was working for North London's most vicious crime family - the notorious Adamses.
The cleaver-loving ex-gangster, whose confession stunned detectives, was taken away to begin a life sentence after REFUSING to identify the other corpses. Murder cop Michael Hanlon, who nailed Marshall after kitchen salesman Mr Howe's body parts were found, planned to visit the beast in jail. The Detective Chief Supt, who admitted the confession was a "surprise", confirmed: "Clearly we will seek to interview him further." Police suspect they know who two of the victims were.
The FIRST is gangster Gilbert Wynter - an enforcer for the Adams gang. He vanished in 1998 after the family accused him of double crossing them by skimming off drug profits. His remains are believed to be under the Millennium Dome - now known as the 02 arena. The SECOND is a hoodlum known only as Manchester John.
His body parts are thought to be somewhere in the North of England after he stole £100,000 from the mob family. Marshall's QC Peter Doyle told how for four years in the late 1990s his client was a bouncer at nightclubs in London and the Home Counties run by the mobsters. The QC said murder victims would be brought to the clubs late at night for the hulking bodybuilder to cut to pieces.
His client thought it "sensible" to get on with the grisly job no questions asked. Remains were disposed of by other gangsters.The gruesome routine was long suspected by Scotland Yard. Det Chief Supt Hanlon said: "We've now got for the first time from Marshall that he has been involved in those types of crime. That gives us areas to investigate." Man mountain Marshall, who boasts a 52in chest, became adept at using a meat cleaver, knives and sometimes a chainsaw. But his inexperience at HIDING remains came back to haunt him when he stabbed Mr Howe, 49, to death last March.
He simply dumped the cut-up body around the countryside in Hertfordshire and Leicestershire - the limbs wrapped in plastic and the torso in an old suitcase.
Within days passers-by began stumbling across body parts, including a head with eyes, ears and tongue cut away.The victim became known as Jigsaw Man as horrific discoveries continued for three weeks. When cops identified him they found Marshall and his lover still living in Mr Howe's flat in Southgate, North London - and spending his money. The lodger admitted cutting up the body in an ensuite bathroom and disposing of it. But bizarrely he denied murder - and a jury was sworn in at St Albans Crown Court, Herts. They heard three weeks of evidence before Marshall suddenly changed his plea to guilty last Friday. He had to wait until yesterday - when the trial of his prostitute girlfriend ended - before being sentenced to life with a minimum of 36 years. Lover Sarah Bush, 21, was also charged with murder, which she denied. Yesterday the prosecution accepted guilty pleas on two charges of perverting justice - involving covering up the killing and helping to dispose of the body. She got three years and nine months. CCTV caught the pair driving near where some of the body parts were dumped. The mum of two was working for an escort agency when Marshall started paying her for sex. He had a job with Kitchens Direct - a long way from the days when he used to call gang bosses Terry and Tommy Adams "uncle".
Police spent 25 years trying to nail Terry Adams - whose mob is suspected of 25 gangland murders. Vice girl Bush quit charging Marshall for sex when she fell for the twice-wed charmer who is dad to four kids. When her mum kicked the pair out, salesman colleague Mr Howe let them stay at his flat. The heavy smoker, who had lung disease, was yesterday described by his family as "a charming character who had a heart of gold." Bush told a pal Marshall would let him join them for three-in-a-bed sex.
The cleaver-loving ex-gangster, whose confession stunned detectives, was taken away to begin a life sentence after REFUSING to identify the other corpses. Murder cop Michael Hanlon, who nailed Marshall after kitchen salesman Mr Howe's body parts were found, planned to visit the beast in jail. The Detective Chief Supt, who admitted the confession was a "surprise", confirmed: "Clearly we will seek to interview him further." Police suspect they know who two of the victims were.
The FIRST is gangster Gilbert Wynter - an enforcer for the Adams gang. He vanished in 1998 after the family accused him of double crossing them by skimming off drug profits. His remains are believed to be under the Millennium Dome - now known as the 02 arena. The SECOND is a hoodlum known only as Manchester John.
His body parts are thought to be somewhere in the North of England after he stole £100,000 from the mob family. Marshall's QC Peter Doyle told how for four years in the late 1990s his client was a bouncer at nightclubs in London and the Home Counties run by the mobsters. The QC said murder victims would be brought to the clubs late at night for the hulking bodybuilder to cut to pieces.
His client thought it "sensible" to get on with the grisly job no questions asked. Remains were disposed of by other gangsters.The gruesome routine was long suspected by Scotland Yard. Det Chief Supt Hanlon said: "We've now got for the first time from Marshall that he has been involved in those types of crime. That gives us areas to investigate." Man mountain Marshall, who boasts a 52in chest, became adept at using a meat cleaver, knives and sometimes a chainsaw. But his inexperience at HIDING remains came back to haunt him when he stabbed Mr Howe, 49, to death last March.
He simply dumped the cut-up body around the countryside in Hertfordshire and Leicestershire - the limbs wrapped in plastic and the torso in an old suitcase.
Within days passers-by began stumbling across body parts, including a head with eyes, ears and tongue cut away.The victim became known as Jigsaw Man as horrific discoveries continued for three weeks. When cops identified him they found Marshall and his lover still living in Mr Howe's flat in Southgate, North London - and spending his money. The lodger admitted cutting up the body in an ensuite bathroom and disposing of it. But bizarrely he denied murder - and a jury was sworn in at St Albans Crown Court, Herts. They heard three weeks of evidence before Marshall suddenly changed his plea to guilty last Friday. He had to wait until yesterday - when the trial of his prostitute girlfriend ended - before being sentenced to life with a minimum of 36 years. Lover Sarah Bush, 21, was also charged with murder, which she denied. Yesterday the prosecution accepted guilty pleas on two charges of perverting justice - involving covering up the killing and helping to dispose of the body. She got three years and nine months. CCTV caught the pair driving near where some of the body parts were dumped. The mum of two was working for an escort agency when Marshall started paying her for sex. He had a job with Kitchens Direct - a long way from the days when he used to call gang bosses Terry and Tommy Adams "uncle".
Police spent 25 years trying to nail Terry Adams - whose mob is suspected of 25 gangland murders. Vice girl Bush quit charging Marshall for sex when she fell for the twice-wed charmer who is dad to four kids. When her mum kicked the pair out, salesman colleague Mr Howe let them stay at his flat. The heavy smoker, who had lung disease, was yesterday described by his family as "a charming character who had a heart of gold." Bush told a pal Marshall would let him join them for three-in-a-bed sex.
ONE of the country's main criminal gangs has been dealt a major blow after gardai seized €300,000 worth of heroin and arrested a leading member of the outfit.
The crime figure was arrested in Limerick by gardai investigating the latest feud-related shooting in the city over the weekend. Officers also recovered a shotgun that was used in the attack.On Saturday evening, during a major search, gardai recovered a major cache of heroin on the Ballysimon road -- four miles from the city. Two men were arrested as part of the investigation, and heroin with an estimated street value of €300,000 was recovered. It is understood the narcotics belonged to the Collopy criminal gang.A 22-year-old man, considered to be a leading member of the gang, was arrested by gardai. He is a well-known criminal in the city and served a prison sentence for drug dealing. The other individual being detained is from Dublin.Meanwhile, detectives from Roxboro garda station were last night questioning a 25-year-old man suspected of being involved in the shooting of another man in the city on Saturday evening. The victim, aged in his 20s and from Bruff, Co Limerick, was shot on Carey's Road at around 5pm. An assailant armed with a shotgun fired at least one shot at the intended target. He suffered pellet wounds to the legs and was brought to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital.The man suspected to have carried out the shooting was arrested a short time later on Hyde Road. He can be held for up seven days. It is believed that the incident is drug-related and that the victim was targeted after he fell into debt with one of the city's criminal gangs.Separately, gardai recovered a shotgun they believe was used in the shooting of a 27-year-old criminal in the city on January 22. The victim, who is also a member of the Collopy gang, was shot twice in the Ballynanty area of the city as thousands of rugby fans left nearby Thomond Park. He was targeted by members of the McCarthy-Dundon criminal gang after his release from prison for drugs offences.
A 17-year-old who was arrested in connection with the incident was released without charge over the weekend.
The crime figure was arrested in Limerick by gardai investigating the latest feud-related shooting in the city over the weekend. Officers also recovered a shotgun that was used in the attack.On Saturday evening, during a major search, gardai recovered a major cache of heroin on the Ballysimon road -- four miles from the city. Two men were arrested as part of the investigation, and heroin with an estimated street value of €300,000 was recovered. It is understood the narcotics belonged to the Collopy criminal gang.A 22-year-old man, considered to be a leading member of the gang, was arrested by gardai. He is a well-known criminal in the city and served a prison sentence for drug dealing. The other individual being detained is from Dublin.Meanwhile, detectives from Roxboro garda station were last night questioning a 25-year-old man suspected of being involved in the shooting of another man in the city on Saturday evening. The victim, aged in his 20s and from Bruff, Co Limerick, was shot on Carey's Road at around 5pm. An assailant armed with a shotgun fired at least one shot at the intended target. He suffered pellet wounds to the legs and was brought to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital.The man suspected to have carried out the shooting was arrested a short time later on Hyde Road. He can be held for up seven days. It is believed that the incident is drug-related and that the victim was targeted after he fell into debt with one of the city's criminal gangs.Separately, gardai recovered a shotgun they believe was used in the shooting of a 27-year-old criminal in the city on January 22. The victim, who is also a member of the Collopy gang, was shot twice in the Ballynanty area of the city as thousands of rugby fans left nearby Thomond Park. He was targeted by members of the McCarthy-Dundon criminal gang after his release from prison for drugs offences.
A 17-year-old who was arrested in connection with the incident was released without charge over the weekend.
I will be home one day and I can’t wait to look into certain people’s eyes and see the fear of me being there.closed down the Facebook account of 42-year-old Colin Gunn, who, according to the London Times, had been using the social networking site for the last two months to post messages for his 565 "friends" to see. While the current reports do not appear to indicate where it is Gunn, master of what is being described as a "criminal empire" in the city of Nottingham in Central England before being jailed for conspiracy to murder and corrupting police officers, is serving his sentence a website set up by/for Gunn gives an address of HMP Whitemoor, Near March in Cambridgeshire. The last update to the site was September 11 2009. The Independent reports that while Gunn was thought to have some involvement in the robbery which led to the murder of 64-year-old Marian Bates at her family's jewelery shop in Nottingham in 2003 - Mrs Bates died attempting to protect her daughter - it was the murder in Lincolnshire in 2004 of John and Joan Stirland, aged 55 and 51, that brought about his sentence for conspiracy to murder. Gunn ordered the murder of the Stricklands after his nephew Jamie died from pneumonia at the age of 19. The young man's death came about due to the alcohol and drugs to which he had turned following an incident in 2003 in which he was shot and another man murdered by Michael O'Brien, the son of Joan Stirland. Among the messages Gunn had posted on his Facebook page before it was closed down on Friday were two that read:
It’s good to have an outlet to let you know how I am, some of you will be in for a good slagging, some have let me down badly, and will be named and shamed, f****** rats
The London Times quotes critics as saying that Gunn was allowed to maintain a Facebook account because authorities feared he may take action against them using human rights legislation. Indeed Gunn reportedly claims he was allowed to use Facebook because it was considered to be his legal right.
However the Telegraph states that a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice has insisted access to Facebook by prisoners is forbidden, with only staff-supervised access to the web for educational purposes permitted. The spokesman also explained:
We are extremely concerned that prisoners are able to update Facebook and other social networking sites either through illicit technology or via outside contacts. 'The Public Order Act 1986 created offences dealing with causing harassment, alarm or distress. We will not hesitate to refer to the police any published material that appears to breach this. We recognise that it is deeply distressing for victims and their families and friends and we have made it clear to Facebook that we do not think it acceptable or appropriate for these sites to remain active, something Facebook agrees with
Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw has stated too that the authorities are working with Facebook to remove the profiles of known criminals.
Those who have lost loved ones to violent crimes have, says the Telegraph, been pressing for electronic anti-social behaviour orders.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
