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Gangs of NY: NYPD Bronx unit

targets
By Tina Moore and Sofia Barnett
killer, crime-happy crews July 22, 2023 9:09am Updated

Drill rap video – Real Talk

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A halfdozen members of a Bronx gang called the Vatos sat on the stoop of a Vyse Avenue building in
Morrisania on a recent Tuesday afternoon as a black unmarked van carrying plainclothes cops rolled by
slowly. Trending Now
on NYPost.com
“They’re watching us,” one of the cops noticed.
71,112
The teen and twenty-something gangbangers — affiliated with the larger Mac Baller Brims crew — glared
into the van, seemingly unafraid.

They should be.

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Captain James Whitlock leads the Bronx Violent Crime Squad about five miles north of where he grew up in Harlem.
J.C. Rice

The Bronx Violent Crime Squad wants to put them out of business.
Texas handyman and pet-sitter, 35,
The Bronx team and four other borough-based squads were developed in 2018 to help build the strongest loses arms, part of feet in amputation
after single flea bite
cases possible against gangs — who make their money selling drugs, stealing cars, heisting credit cards
— and, sometimes, making drill rap videos, cops said.
The squad was created, in part, to keep young bangers who were caught from being immediately
released due to the state’s Raise the Age Law.
Columnists
Steve Cuozzo
The measure, enacted a year earlier, bumped the age at which a teen can be prosecuted as an adult up
to 18.
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“If you and you lower what we call the consequences for bad behavior, then you’re going to
raise the age,
get an influx of bad behavior because there’s just no accountability for it,” squad commander Capt. James
Whitlock said. “So that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now.” Johnny Oleksinski
And the numbers bear that out.
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This year, there have been 219 shooting victims in the Bronx — an astonishing 40.4% increase from the happen
156 victims in 2017, before the Raise the Age Law passed, NYPD data show.
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Vato crew members, whose 17-year-old associate was shot to death, hang out on Vyse Avenue in the Bronx.
J.C. Rice

Shootings also increased in the NYPD’s Brooklyn North Precinct, which contains the borough’s most
crime-ridden precincts. The number of people shot there jumped 22.3% from 103 in 2017 — to 126 in
2023.
In Manhattan North, which also sees a high level of gun violence, the number of gunshot victims Amy Robach, T.J. Holmes still going
increased by 50.9% from 55 in 2017 to 83 in 2023, the data show. strong, go bar-hopping together in
NYC
This increase in gang violence fueled a nearly 35% citywide jump in gunshot victims from 479 in 2017 to
644 in 2023. Jerry Seinfeld dines with Larry David,
Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer and
David Geffen in Italy
Before the van pulled up, a lookout on East 174th Street warned the group that police were coming.
Stars who came out to support Lionel
“These are the drivers of violence here, hanging out in broad daylight,” said Sgt. Anthony Donato, a Messi for first Inter Miami game
supervisor on the squad that investigates shootings and other crimes when gangs are believed to be
involved.
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“They watch every car that goes by,” another cop in the squad added.
Video
A few doors down from the gangsters’ spot, neighbors — including residents of a senior center — who are
often the collateral damage in gang warfare raging across the city, also took in the sunlit day Video shows shocking 'attempted
murder' in NYC by son of prominent
Israeli official

The Bronx Violent Crime Squad wants to the Mac Baller Brims crew out of business.
J.C. Rice

“There’s hardworking people just trying to enjoy themselves,” one of the NYPD squad members said,
shaking his head. “And they are the victims.”
Rapping About A Killing

Kather Werts, 17, was an affiliate of the Vatos — the name stands for Vyse Avenue Takeover — when he
was killed in Morrisania in 2020 by two gangs — called Sevway and Spectway — who were enemies of
the Vatos that joined forces.

“You need to send the police right now,” said an elderly woman who called 911 to report seeing Werts’s
body.

“Please somebody, they have to get out here,” she begged. “This is too much, this is too much.”

The brutal execution style killing of Kather Werts on Hoe Avenue captured on surveillance video.
DCPI
Last month, 11 members of Sevway and Spectway were indicted for Werts’s murder, as well as on
additional counts including three non-fatal shootings, robberies, and drug possession.

“Thiscase in general highlights what’s going on in the streets right now,” said Whitlock, who grew up in
Harlem in the 1970s and ’80s and saw families lose loved ones to gang violence.
“You have these two crews who have historical gripes with each other,” he said. “It’s passed down through
generations and now we see the newest generation coming up. And what the newest generation is doing
is, they’re exploiting this through social media and music.”

Inone video posted on YouTube a year after Werts was slain, the crew rapped about killing him and
mocked the victim’s weight.

Screen shots from drill rap video by Yoley x Chance Bibby – Real Talk, with lyrics about the shooting of Kather Werts.
YouTube
“Wanna know who killed Kather?” one crew member raps in the video. “Your little homie ran, he should’ve
ran faster. I forgot he’s a little fatter. Bullets hit his brain, we saw his brains splatter.”

The teen’s heartbroken mom went to court every day, the officers said.

“When these guys were finally arraigned, she met the investigators outside and thanked them,” Sgt.
Donato said of his squad’s sleuths. “They did a really good job. They made the evidence solid so these
guys are going to be put away now.”

Brooklyn rapper Michael Williams, aka rapper Sheff G, offered gang members
cash, jewelry for violence.
Sheff G / Instagram

Werts’s was part of a troubling rise in shootings

killing over two-year span in the neighborhood’s 42nd
a
Precinct. The number of gunshot victims skyrocketed by 228% — from 7 to 23 — between June 1, 2019,
and June 1, 2021.
The work of the Violent Crime Squads — whose team members collect video from shooting scenes, know
gang members by name, research their social media, and build rapport with possible informants — has
been paying off with a series of high-profile cases across the city.
One of the Bronx Violent Crime Squad’s investigations culminated in the federal indictment of the gang
Sev Side and the arrest of drill rapper Kay Flock, 20, who has earned an estimated $1 million for his
music.
Drill sub-genre that’s frequently
rap, a violent tied to street gangs, is often flagged as the motive behind
shootings when members taunt each other.
The February indictment charged Kay Flock — who was born Kevin Perez and rose to fame in 2020 with
his hit single “Shake It” — with conspiracy, murder, and assault with a deadly weapon .

He was also charged with the gang-related murder of Hwascar Hernandez, who was shot to death on
December 16, 2021 in the Hamilton Heights section of Upper Manhattan.
The indictment tied Perez and and fellow gang members to a shocking string of seven shootings in the
Bronx that terrorized residents between June 2020 and February 2022.

Rapper Kay Flock was indicted on murder charges as part of the Sev Side gang in the Bronx.
Youtube / Kay Flock

In Brooklyn, drill rapper Sheff G born Michael Williams, was named in an indictment in May charging him
,

and other alleged members of 8 Trey Crips with murder, gun violence, and other crimes.
One of the genre’s biggest names, Sheff G made his mark with his 2017 hit single “No Suburban.” The
rapper, worth about $5 million, also founded his own Winners Circle record label.

Rapper Sheff G was indicted for his alleged activities with the gang 8 Trey Crips in Brooklyn.
Gregory P. Mango
“What we learned during the course of this investigation is that Sheff G used a lot of the money he earned
to help facilitate further gang activity, encouraging gang members to participate in violent crimes,”
Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said at the time.
His song “No Remorse” even heckles the district attorney with the lines, “Still duckin’ courts and the DA,
look (you) gon’ see how we play.”
Another entrenched Brooklyn gang is the Brownsville-based Woo (“We On Our Own”) gang.

A 3-year-old girl was shot in the shoulder and wounded when a Woo gang
member mistook her dad for a member of the rival Choo gang in Brooklyn last
year.

Last year , 32 Woo members were charged with murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy in connection
to 19 shootings with 14 victims.

Several of the shootings were allegedly part of a grander scheme to take out members of the rival Choo
gang, also Brownsville-based, authorities said. One of their victims was a 3-year-old girl who was shot
and wounded as she left a Brooklyn daycare last year when a Woo gang member mistook her dad, who
was holding her hand, for a Choo member.
Drill pioneer Pop Smoke gave a shout-out to the gang in his 2019 song “Meet the Woo.” The rapper
rap
was killed the following year in a Los Angeles home-invasion robbery that’s still being investigated. was It

unclear the murder was gang-related.

if

Dozens of Woo gang members were charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in relation to 19 shootings
with 14 victims.
Paul Martinka

In Bronx, the Mac

the Baller Brims are the largest subset of the national Bloods gang and have been
considered one of the city’s most violent, according to police. The gang formed in 2001.
Mac Morrishow is wanted in the shooting of a 5-year-old girl who was riding in her parents’
Baller Austin
car at East 214th Street and Holland Avenue in Williamsbridge over the July 4 weekend. The gunfire
occurred outside a vigil for another shooting victim.
Morrishow and an associate allegedly thought they were exchanging fire with gunmen in a car who they
believed to be firing on them.
Bullets struck the child in the back, cops said — but the shooters may have been set off by the vehicle
backfiring, cops said.

The little girl, who needed surgery on her wounds, survived.

The Mac Baller Brims commit violence beyond their turf, too.

Lastmonth, three members were indicted in connection to a string of brazen gunpoint robberies at lower
Manhattan smoke shops in Chelsea, Union Square and the West Village, prosecutors said.

MS-13 gang members, Leyla Carranza and Juan Amaya-Ramirez both flashing MS-13 hand signs
U.S. Department of Justice

MS-13 — which started as a gang to protect immigrants from El Salvador in Los Angeles in the 1980s–
spread worldwide and has a major presence in Queens, law enforcement insiders said. MS-13 whose
name is short for Mara Salvatrucha — “gang of street smart Salvadorans” — is known for chopping
victims up and sending videos of the dead to their families.

Twenty-two MS-13 members were indicted last month for a wave of “brutal violence” in the borough,
officials said.

“The murders and other crimes of violence allegedly committed by these defendants were brutal, cold-
and utterly senseless,” Brooklyn US Attorney Breon Peace said.

John Pena, alleged leader of Staten Island’s Gorilla Stone Mafia.

In 2020, MS-13 members were charged with the 2018 murder of Andy Peralta, 17, in Kissena Park in
Flushing. Three members allegedly stabbed and strangled him — before posing for photos with his body.

“We’re the beast that kills all those animals,” an M-13 member raps in the song “Quienes Somos
Nosotros.” “Machete in hand, we’re on the hunt. We kill our enemies anywhere in cold blood.”
The Cost
But even after all the takedowns, the gangs revive with younger members – and new names, Chief of
Detectives James Essig told The Post.

“We’re talking 14-year-olds and 17-year-old kids,” Essig said. “Then you know what you get? You get the
taunting on social media, the gang alliances, the accessibility to guns and nonsense happens. Stupid,
stupid.”

Dedric “Beloved” Hammond, 44, a former member of the FSU, or “F–k S–t Up” crew from Harlem who
served eight years in prison for attempted murder and robbery, said most old gangs are irrelevant and the
young crews “run themselves.”

Investigators with the Bronx Violent Crime Squad on a recent afternoon.

J.C. Rice

“The youth is the ones doing their own beefing, it’s not even about older dudes, they outgrew us, they all
on their own,” said Hammond, who works to try to prevent gang violence. “Now most of the beef is social
media, it’s rap beef, it’s drill music.”
Their brutality shocked even hardened NYPD veterans.
Essig recalled a June 19 incident where a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot in the head in a “very brutal
homicide” in a gang-infested area of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Essig said.
The teenager was on Marcus Garvey Boulevard between Willoughby Avenue and Hart Street at 5:47 p.m.
when he was confronted by two males wearing black masks.
“He put up his hands and they shot him in the head,” Essig said .

Tina Moore is The Post’s Police Bureau Chief

Additional reporting by Matthew Sedacca

Filed under exclusive gangs guns homicide rap shootings 7/22/23

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