February 2, 2007
20 Members of Violent Street Gang Arrested in New Jersey Raids
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
WEST TRENTON, N.J., Feb. 1 Staging a series of raids that ranged
from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the Jersey Shore, the police on
Thursday arrested 20 members of a street gang that is accused of
widespread drug dealing and gun violence in Trenton and central New
Jersey, the authorities said.
Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, the New Jersey State Police superintendent,
said the organization, a faction of the Bloods who referred to
themselves as "Money, Sex, Murder," are considered the state's most
violent youth gang and are believed to have been involved in as many
as 19 of the 31 homicides in Trenton in 2005.
The raids on Thursday, which began before dawn and ended about 9:30
a.m., produced 300 grams of crack cocaine, 3 pounds of powdered
cocaine and 9 illegal weapons, including a loaded Mac-11 submachine
gun equipped with a silencer, the authorities said.
Most of those apprehended in the raids face charges of racketeering,
conspiracy, extortion, money laundering or drug crimes; two were
charged with murder. The authorities said that at least five other
suspects were still being sought.
Gang members many of them with prominently displayed dog paw
tattoos on their necks and faces were also believed to be at the
center of a five-day shooting spree in March and April 2006 that left
15 people in Trenton wounded. The shootings, with one victim a 7-year-
old girl who was wounded in the face, brought an outcry from
community leaders.
The raids were the second major wave of arrests the New Jersey State
Police have conducted since adopting a new strategy that focuses
resources of more than a dozen state and federal law enforcement
agencies not on the most visible gangs, but on the most violent.
"The not-so-subtle message is this," Colonel Fuentes said. "The more
you shoot, the more we will fire back with an arsenal of detectives,
investigators and prosecutors."
New Jersey has seen a significant rise in gang violence in recent
years as small groups of local drug dealers and street criminals have
banded together in cities, suburbs and small towns across the state.
While many have adopted the rules, rituals and violent street code of
established national gangs, most operate independently. Lt. Col.
Frank E. Rodgers, the state police deputy superintendent of
investigations, said New Jersey was now home to at least 700 gangs
with 20,000 members, many of whom were brought into the organizations
while in prison.
In many crime-ridden neighborhoods, teenagers say they feel pressured
to join gangs to protect themselves from street violence, and are
then forced to commit crimes to maintain their status within the
groups. The problem has become so pervasive that some communities,
like the Trenton suburb of Hamilton, have enacted ordinances that
make it a crime to recruit gang members near schools.
In July, the authorities carried out the largest gang-related
operation in state history, arresting more than 60 members of
the "Nine-Tre" set of the Bloods, who operated across the state.
Evidence seized in that case led to the arrests on Thursday.
Gregory A. Paw, director of the criminal justice division in the
state attorney general's office, said the Money, Sex, Murder gang
used a sophisticated structure to manage a lucrative drug and cocaine
business and was quick to use violence to protect and expand its
operations.
Trenton's police director, Joseph J. Santiago, said that the arrests
would help reduce some violence, but that the city was still plagued
by far too many street gangs.
"We're going to keep coming after them," he said.
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