Gangs tied to 49 percent of shootings in New York City, mostly over petty disputes

Along with the mass killers and rifle-toting terrorists who are driving the nation’s gun debate are New York’s own gangbangers, who are behind the triggers of nearly half the city’s shootings, officials said.

And when gunplay across the five boroughs turns deadly, gang members are quite often responsible, accounting for 130, or 40%, of the city’s murders this year, police said.

It’s not just the traditional beefs over drugs or money, cops said. Crews are calling each other out over the smallest of slights or — worse yet — the belief that shooting someone will turn a boy into a man.

“It’s a fearsome reality: violence for its own sake,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told the Daily News. “The gun has come to define manhood for these young men, and the willingness to use it has become a rite of passage.”

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Killings by gangs or crews — smaller groups of young men who claim one or two blocks as their turf — are expected to be slightly higher this year than in 2014, although cops were still tallying the numbers, police sources said.

As of Dec. 6, the 324 murders in the city represented a 5.5% increase over the 307 homicides committed by the same date last year. The number of shootings as of Dec. 6 was 1,061, a 3.2% decrease from the 1,296 committed in the same time frame in 2014. Overall serious crime is down 2.4% citywide.

The News obtained data from the NYPD’s Gang and Juvenile Justice divisions and used it to create maps showing where gangs and crews operate in the city. There are about 375 citywide, mostly clustered around housing projects.

Street crews — some with members as young as 10 — can be found within spitting distance of each other in some neighborhoods. In Harlem, for example, the Air It Out Boys, the All About Money crew and the True Money Gang are fighting for control of the Johnson, Taft and Jefferson houses. The housing developments are all in an area bordered by E. 112th and E. 115th Sts. and Park and Third Aves.

In Brooklyn, two gangs fight over one seven-story building in the Cypress Hills Houses. The gangs call themselves Cypress Hills Frontside and Cypress Hills Backside, police said.

The data show Brooklyn has the highest number of crews, followed by the Bronx.

Most gang members are in their middle teens to early 20s, though hardened gang members can be as old as their 30s with multiple jail stints under their belts.

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About 38% of the city’s gangbangers are affiliated with the Bloods, 14% align themselves with the Crips and 14% have alleg­iances to the Latin Kings.

City cops and federal agents have been locking up gang members in large numbers. But violent crime persists.

More than two dozen gang members belonging to the 18 Park and Young Guns gangs in the Bronx were indicted Wednesday on murder, attempted murder, drug and weapons possession charges as the NYPD and federal agents put an end to their ongoing gunplay. In one of the shootings, a bullet went through a police officer’s hat.

A week before members of those two gangs were rounded up, 37 members of the Bronx’s Washside gang were indicted, ending their ongoing beef with the Sev-0 gang, who are fighting for control of E. 170th St. in Claremont Village in the Bronx.

And while most of the gun violence associated with gang members has been aimed at other gang members, several high-profile shootings have left innocent victims dead or wounded this year.

• Oct. 20: Police Officer Randolph Holder, 33, a third-generation cop whose family is from Guyana, was fatally shot by gang member Tyrone Howard following a drug-related shooting at the East River Houses about 8:30 p.m. Police sources said Howard was affiliated with East Harlem’s East Army gang, but had not been an active in the gang for a few years.
• Sept. 7: Carey Gabay, 43, a Harvard-educated lawyer and aide to Gov. Cuomo, was caught in a gang crossfire during a J’Ouvert pre-Labor Day parade celebration in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, about 3:40 a.m.
• When members of the Folk Nation and the 8 Trey Cowboys — both Crips sets — began blasting at each other, Gabay scrambled for cover, but a stray bullet hit him in the head, officials said. His heartbroken family pulled him off life support a week later. Cuomo gave the eulogy at Gabay's funeral. No arrests have been made.
• Aug. 3: Special-Caijae Houston, a 19-year-old pregnant woman, lost her unborn child when she was wounded in a drive-by shooting in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Authorities say she was the unintended target of the shooting that was part of an ongoing dispute between the Gangsta Money Makers and the Ow Ow Crew. Three gang members were arrested.
• July 7: Year-old Taylor McQueen barely escaped death and was left splattered in her 21-year-old father’s blood as he was fatally shot in the head while cradling the baby in his tattooed arms on Taylor Ave. in Parkchester, the Bronx. The tot’s father, Allen McQueen, ran with the Taylor crew, a violent street gang. A rival gang member, James Capers, 22, was arrested in the killing.

Bronx resident Shianne Norman, 30, knows the pain of losing a loved one to gang violence all too well.

In 2012, a wayward bullet took the life of her 4-year-old son, Lloyd Christopher Morgan, when rival gang members turned a playground at Morrisania’s Forest Houses into a shooting gallery.

Three years later, the pain still lingers.

This will be my fourth Christmas without my son,” Norman said. “Ever since he died, I haven’t put a tree up ... I haven’t done anything for the holidays. I don’t want to do anything.”

“Lloyd would have been someone, but they took my son away from me,” Norman said about the gang members. “I don’t have any respect for them ...I don’t care how much brotherhood they feel. Gangs are going to get them nowhere and left me with nothing.”

Roughly 375 gangs or street crews operate in the city, according to the NYPD. Brooklyn has the highest number with at least 130 — and 73 in north Brooklyn alone. The Bronx plays second stage to the gang epidemic, with 87 gangs or crews, officials said.

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But every borough has gangs, including Staten Island, where 13 are active, police said. There are 75 in Queens and 40 in Manhattan. Police officials say the numbers tend to fluctuate and do not represent exact figures.

The gangs have colorful names, like Gods, Thugs and Pimps (Queens), On Deck Boys (Chelsea), Addicted to Green (Harlem), Loopy Gang (East New York, Brooklyn), Mott Haven Gunnaz (the Bronx) and the Gorilla Stone Mafia (the Bronx). All are involved in some kind of violence — mostly over turf.

These turf rivalries can get so heated that gang members — and sometimes their siblings — are shot on sight if they step foot on a street belonging to a rival crew.

“Some gang members and their brothers and sisters have to go five or six blocks out of their way just to go to the corner store,” Brooklyn activist Tony Herbert told The News. “There are more gangs out there than you can imagine, and as a result our kids are suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. They hear the shots being fired or hear that a friend was shot or killed. Everybody needs to be up in arms about this.”

Deputy Chief Kevin Catalina, the commanding officer of the NYPD Gang Division, said most of the violence stems from “old beefs.”

“Some of it is Hatfield-and-McCoy-type stuff, but some of it is financially driven,” said Catalina, who said more and more gangs are getting involved in credit card fraud and the city’s burgeoning heroin trade. “A lot of times, it’s hard to figure out what’s driving it. It’s senseless violence.”

“It’s a tremendous problem with us,” Catalina said of the gang violence. “It’s one of the biggest issues that we are facing right now.”

Gang activity in the city seems to change with the times. During the mid-2000s, traditional gangs like the Bloods and Crips took a backseat to smaller, younger crews, Catalina said.

“Around 2010 and 2011, we started to see a transition back from those crews to traditional gang culture,” Catalina said. “As these crews were incarcerated, they would go into jail and realize there were not enough of them to really represent themselves inside and align themselves with each other.”

Over time, cops saw small groups of teens who would normally be squabbling with rivals a block away gather together and take on larger groups across the city. More violence soon followed.

In 2012, 300 additional cops were added to the Gang Division to combat the troubling trend.

“We follow the violence,” Catalina said. “There might be three guys operating in the Bronx who call themselves the Avengers, but if they’re not committing violence and not bringing attention to themselves, they are not going to be on our radar.”

But once a violent crew is on the NYPD’s radar, it’s over.

Cops begin massive multifaceted investigations that will take down an area gang.

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In June 2014, one such investigation led to the arrest of 100 members of Money Ave., Make It Happen Boys and 3 Staccs — three crews that were shooting up the Grant and Manhattanville houses in Harlem.

A year and a half later, those two housing projects remain relatively free of violence, Catalina said.

“We took down that core group and completely eliminated the violence over there,” he said. “There has been one shooting incident over there that we are aware of, and we don’t know if it’s gang-related.”

“Anytime we do a takedown, we see a direct correlation to decreased violence in a neighborhood that’s

affected,” he said. “The residents are much happier ... they’re sending their children outside to play again. It’s very encouraging.”