Three weeks before Christmas last year, a pair of teenage cousins made a midnight trip to a Quick Chek convenience store in Ocean County. As they walked home to the Woodlake Manor condo complex in Lakewood, the boys were met with a night-piercing blast of bullets from the gun of a Bloods gang member, police say.Luis Enrique “Ricky” Garcia, a muscular 17-year-old from a rival gang who had no trouble defending himself in the past, was shot in the head and killed.Silence and fear took hold of the neighborhood as Garcia’s blood dried on the ground. Authorities couldn’t find any eyewitnesses. But then one woman did break the silence, providing what information she could about the shooting.Two weeks later, police arrested suspected Bloods member Jamil “Animal” Parson, 27, and charged him with Garcia’s murder. The motive, a law enforcement official familiar with the case said, was a dispute — between two gang members — about a girl.Police told no one of the lone witness, according to sources.Yet just hours after Parson’s arrest, a suspected gang member personally confronted the witness to deliver a threat. The message: We know who you are. Snitches get stitches.The full scope of gang violence, the extent of the power wielded by gangs, the money made through the drug trade and an increasing variety of crimes have made gangs the No. 1 threat to New Jersey residents, according to law enforcement authorities at all levels.Gangs were born in the inner cities. Today they claim as their domain not only cities, but many suburban communities — white-collar and blue-collar, rich and poor, black and white, Hispanic and Asian.They’re in cities like Vineland and Millville, and suburban communities like Buena and Franklin.They infiltrate and attend colleges, high schools and even elementary schools.They commit 80 percent of the crime in communities nationwide, according to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment.
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And they’re ratcheting up their illegal activities across the United States.
“There is no safe haven in New Jersey,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Luis Valentin said.
Gangs, as one ranking New Jersey Bloods member put it, are “everywhere.”
We are “in the nicest neighborhoods, the best schools — colleges, too,” a gang leader, called “P,” told Gannett New Jersey. (His identity and known crimes have been verified by sources in law enforcement.) “Where street life goes, violence goes. Just wait.”
Where there is money, gangs see opportunity.
“These people are,” said Lee Seglem, assistant director of the State Commission of Investigation, “domestic terrorists.”
Killed On A Rumor
When 21-year-old Bloods member Latyria M. Nealy was gunned down at the Jersey Shore in December 2006, her family and friends set up a shrine of flowers and balloons.
Her fellow Bloods brought five loaves of bread to the memorial site in Asbury Park. Why? The gang members had met behind her back to arrange her execution. They said she was “food” and would be “eaten” — killed. She had been marked for death because, authorities said, the gang mistakenly thought she had snitched on fellow members in a theft case.
“The Bloods will leave you cold, dead on the ground,” Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Thomas Huth said during the sentencing of Nealy’s killer, Samuel Ling, who was 19 when he shot Nealy in the head.
Superior Court Judge Ira E. Kreizman told Ling that Nealy’s mother died in October “of a broken heart.” He sentenced Ling to 30 years in prison.
Just feet away, Ling’s mother spoke about the devastation of one bullet and one moment.
“I would like to apologize to the Nealy family. It’s a tragedy. But we’ve both lost,” Phyllis Ling said through tears. “If there was any way I could take this back, I would.”
“You can’t,” a relative of Nealy’s replied.
“You can’t,” a relative of Nealy’s replied.
“My son wasn’t raised this way,” Phyllis Ling explained. “He got caught up in a dangerous game … We’re so sorry, so sorry, so sorry.”
'A Difficult Road'
While murders and shootings may be the most obvious form of gang crimes, gang specialists in law enforcement say current movement into white-collar crime is insidious and harder to control.
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According to the 2009 federal gang assessment, insurance fraud, mortgage fraud, identity theft, weapons trafficking and home invasions are among the crimes other than drug trafficking committed by gangs. But indictments and arrests in these areas are sparse, limited by the lack of centralized data and intelligence, gang experts said.
Authorities wonder why there isn’t more outrage from the community.
“How is it acceptable that we’re relinquishing our fundamental rights to freedom without a whimper?” asked SCI’s Edwin Torres, a nationally recognized gang expert who specialized in juvenile gang members during his tenure with the state Department of Corrections. “How is it acceptable that we can’t go here, that we can’t wear that color, that we have to close down a school for a day because of gangs? How are we allowing this?”
Ocean County Assistant Prosecutor Rory Wells said: “I always thought everything came in waves. That didn’t happen with gangs. They came. They ravaged. They left destruction in their wake. … It looks like we’re in for a difficult road — for 10, 15 years. Maybe the next generation will reject this.”
Or maybe not.
“We’re planning for the future,” said one Latin King member who long has played a leadership role in a Central Jersey-based branch of the gang that’s highly structured and business-oriented. “Kings are very versatile. Financiers? Sometimes those bigwigs are Latin Kings. We’ve got Kings on Wall Street.”
In fact, he said, today’s Latin King shuns tattoos, doesn’t mark the neighborhood in which he lives with identifying graffiti, avoids clothing that might brand him a gang member and either has, or is in the process of, getting a college degree.
“We’re a growth industry,” the gang member said.
Gangs And Schools
Authorities say schools are a prime growth market for gangs.
In Vineland, police said, high school was the No. 1 setting where gangs did their recruiting last year. In Buena, police said, gangs primarily recruited members before they entered high school.
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Are schools and parents equipped to handle the problem? The fact is, Torres said, “more kids know about the fundamentals of gangs than their parents do.”
“It’s amazing what kids know about gangs, their structure, what goes on,” said Lt. Dan Riccardo of the New Jersey State Parole Board. “At 10, 11, they’re so well-schooled. There are recruitment videos glamorizing gangs.”
Riccardo, coordinator of the Street Gang Unit for the Parole Board, said kids are “buying their way into gangs,” as opposed to getting “beaten in or ‘sexed’ in. For kids in affluent communities with disposable incomes, this is an option. They meet gang members at a school sporting event or a dance. Many colleges in this state have huge gang problems.”
Gangs aren’t only about kids on the streets.
College students from New Jersey last summer were charged in connection with a two-year bank fraud scheme orchestrated by the Nine Trey set of the Bloods. The gang members used their recruits to negotiate more than $654,000 in counterfeit payroll checks at bank branches in dozens of towns. Indicted last July in the scheme were six Bloods and 19 non-gang members who participated.
Most of the recruits have pleaded guilty. The names of the colleges they attended have not been released by police.
Gangs And The Community
Once again, in Lakewood, the fear factor came into play in fall 2008 as a murder trial was set to begin.
The morning Bloods members were to stand trial in connection with the murder of Jose Francisco Oliveras, the mother of the girlfriend of a key state witness was shot dead in her apartment.
Message sent: Snitches get stitches.
Or worse.
“You ask (a witness) to put a gun in a gang member’s hand, and they’re afraid not only of that person, but of the whole gang,” said First Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Peter E. Warshaw Jr. “Their reach is long.”
County Prosecutor Valentin says residents must get involved.
“The community needs to be a strong and compelling voice for why gang violence will not be tolerated,” he said. “They can help law enforcement on a daily basis. By staying silent, we empower criminals.”
The Parole Board’s Riccardo says the collective reach of gangs deeper into the community is all about one thing: greed.
“The root of all evil with gangs is money,” Riccardo said. “Money drives the gangs.”
It’s what they use, too, to lure an increasing number of people from an ever-diverse cross-section of New Jersey into their sphere.
It’s what they use, too, to lure an increasing number of people from an ever-diverse cross-section of New Jersey into their sphere.
Since gangs rely on ready cash flow, leaders can entice youngsters with instant cash.
“You wanna make money?” That’s the come-on Torres says gang leaders frequently use to draw in children of middle-school age.
“Come join my family” is another line used to make a 12-year-old feel wanted and accepted.
Indeed, gangs are everywhere. “Even in the nice cities,” said La Grima, the nickname of a ranking member of the MS-13 gang based at the Jersey Shore. “Maybe your neighbor is selling kilos. You never know.”
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