Two members of the Lucchese family connected to the prison scheme, Ms. Milgram said, were also involved in a sports gambling ring. The gambling operation took in $2.2 billion in bets over 15 months, mainly through the Internet, law enforcement officials say, and relied on violence and extortion to collect debts.
New York’s five organized crime families have long built alliances with nontraditional organized crime groups in the city. But in New Jersey, the prison scheme provided the first evidence of an organized crime family from New York working with the Bloods street gang, one of the state’s largest.
“What we have here in this case is really the realization of what we feared: connecting old-school organized crime, the Mafia, with new-school organized crime, gangs,” Ms. Milgram said.
According to law enforcement officials, the prison scheme revolved around a prisoner, Edwin B. Spears, 33, who has served time for a variety of offenses since 2002.
Officials said that Mr. Spears, who is reputed to be a “five-star general” in the Nine Trey Gangsters faction of the Bloods, cooperated with two Lucchese members—Joseph M. Perna and Michael A. Cetta—to smuggle heroin, cocaine, marijuana and prepaid cellphones into East Jersey State Prison in Woodbridge.
They enlisted the help of Michael T. Bruinton, a senior prison guard, by offering him $500 each time he allowed smuggled goods to pass through, Ms. Milgram said. Mr. Perna and Mr. Cetta are suspected of having given money to Mr. Spears’s brother, Dwayne E. Spears, to buy drugs and phones. Dwayne Spears then passed the goods to Mr. Bruinton, officials said, and they were given to inmates who had placed orders with Edwin Spears.
As of Tuesday night, Mr. Bruinton was still at large. “He wasn’t home or at work,” said Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for Ms. Milgram.
Crime Board Tells How Boy Gangs Rise in New York Slums
March 20, 1927
THE DEGRAW STREET GANG, THE SACKETT Street gang, “the Harrisons,” “the Cat’s Alleys,” the Rush Street gang and 21 other gangs of the Red Hook section of Brooklyn are the subjects of study by the New York State Crime Commission’s Subcommission on Causes, which made public its findings yesterday.
The Red Hook section was selected first for a painstaking social survey because the ratio of juvenile delinquency there is five times as great as in the rest of Brooklyn.
Most of the misdeeds of the children result from their search for play and amusement in an environment which affords very little normal, wholesome sport or entertainment for children. They steal largely to get the money for amusements or for materials for toys and games, according to the report. The ordinary checks on misbehavior are largely missing in the district, because of bad home life and bad environment, race conflicts, the confusion of many languages, bad housing and other factors.
Gang life still has its thrills. The initiation to one gang, for instance, is said to consist of “drinking 12 glasses of wine and having a revolver held over their heads while taking an oath. The members of Gang T are said to be pledged to avenge wrongs done to any of its members of their relatives. The pastimes of Gang S are reported to be “shooting pool, playing craps, playing cards and prizefighting,” while its delinquencies are “robbery and getting revenge on enemies.”
Gang life still has its thrills.
The report gives the following close-up of the Sackett Street gang:
“This gang meets on Beach Place, a vacant section on the water front. They are quite an old gang and fairly large, consisting of between 20 and 25 members between the ages of 9 and 14 years. The members are Italian and Porto Rican. Its leader is a boy of 14. One of the members of this gang showed the informant a large scar on the back of his head, received in gang warfare, and he was quite proud of this.”
Yankee Caps Pulled After Protesters See Gang Links in Symbols and Colors
By RICHARD SANDOMIR | August 25, 2007
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL’S OFFICIAL CAP manufacturer said yesterday that it would remove headwear bearing the colors and symbols of three gangs—the Bloods, the Crips and the Latin Kings—after activists protested the sale of the caps at retail stores in East Harlem.
Two white Yankee caps made by New Era Cap were wrapped with red and blue bandannas that appear to represent the Bloods and Crips, and a black Yankee cap was embroidered with a crown symbolic of the Latin Kings.
The Yankees said in a statement that they were unaware of the caps’ gang symbolism and had no approval rights on their design. The team said it learned about the caps yesterday and contacted Major League Baseball, which had already taken action with New Era to recall them. “Our concern was that parents weren’t aware of the caps and their kids could get cut,” said Stan Koehler, the executive director of Peace on the Street, a martial arts academy and meditation center that works with gang members.
Johnny Rivera, who led the rally, said he spotted the caps while shopping with his 11-year-old son a week ago, then walked around the neighborhood asking children what they thought they denoted.
“From 8 years old and up, they knew they represented violent gangs,” he said.
Brooklyn Youth Gangs Concentrating on Robbery
August 1, 1974
Some gang members use Yankee baseball caps to display gang colors and symbols.
SIX “HARD-CORE, ANTISOCIAL” YOUTH gangs are responsible for more than half of the criminal gang activity in northern Brooklyn, a Police Department gang intelligence officer said yesterday.
Lieut. Henry Murphy, who has charted youth gang movements in Brooklyn for more than two years, told the State Select Committee on Crime that in the last year the pattern of youth-gang activity in Brooklyn had “changed completely” from intergang warfare to a concentration on robbery, burglary and larceny.
This year, he said, there were 191 arrests of gang members in northern Brooklyn for robbery. The robbery arrest figure for Bronx gang members through mid-July was 429, a sharp increase over previous years.
“They’re committing the same type crimes that organized crime or adults commit,” Lieutenant Murphy said at a hearing on juvenile crime.
Lieutenant Murphy said that the largest percentage of youth gang members arrested for robbery and burglary in Brooklyn were those aged 14. Both he and Sgt. H. Craig Collins of the Bronx gang intelligence unit said that many gangs now used members under 16 to commit murders because such youths get more lenient treatment in the courts.
Sergeant Collins declared that “gang incidents are declining and gangs are declining” in the Bronx. But he also showed the committee an arsenal of .30-caliber carbine automatics, rifles, shotguns, pistols and clubs confiscated last April from one gang leader’s girlfriend’s apartment. Sergeant Collins said many Bronx gang members were Vietnam veterans well-versed in sophisticated weaponry.
The robbery arrest figure for Bronx gang members through mid-July was 429, a sharp increase over previous years.
RIOTS AND ROBBERIES
The Mob in New York—A Day of Infamy and Disgrace
August 14, 1863
THE INITIATION OF THE DRAFT ON SATURDAY in the Ninth Congressional District was characterized by so much order and good feeling as to well-nigh dispel the forebodings of tumult and violence which many entertained in connection with the enforcement of the conscription in this city. Very few, then, were prepared for the riotous demonstrations which prevailed almost unchecked in our streets.
As early as 9 o’clock, some laborers employed by two or three railroad companies, and in the iron foundries on the eastern side of the city, formed in procession in the 22nd Ward, and visited the different workshops in the upper wards, where large numbers were employed, and compelled them, by threats in some instances, to cease their work. The mob founds its way to the building where draftees’ names were being called, (corner of Third Avenue and 46th Street), attacking it with clubs, stones, brickbats and other missiles. The upper part of the building was occupied by families, who were terrified beyond measure at the smashing of the windows, doors and furniture. Follo
wing these missiles, the mob rushed furiously into the office on the first floor, where the draft was going on, seizing the books, papers, records, lists, etcc., all of which they destroyed, except those contained in a large iron safe. The drafting officers were set upon with stones and clubs, and, with the reporters for the press and others, had to make a hasty exit through the rear.
Among the most outwardly features of the riot was the causeless and inhuman treatment of the negroes of the city. It seemed to be an understood thing throughout the city that the negroes should be attacked wherever found, whether they offered any provocation or not.
The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by the mob at about 4 o’clock. When it became evident that the crowd intended to destroy it, a flag of truce appeared on the walk opposite, and the principals of the establishment made an appeal to the excited populace but in vain.
Very few were prepared for the riotous demonstrations.
Here is where the Chief Engineer Decker showed himself as one of the bravest among the brave. After the entire building had been ransacked, a fire was set on the first floor. Mr. Decker did all he could, but when he was overpowered, with his own hands he extinguished the flames. A second attempt was made, this time in the three different parts of the house. Again he succeeded in defeating the incendiaries, with the aid of half a dozen of his men.
Riots in Harlem: The Overview
March 24, 1935
LAST TUESDAY AFTERNOON A 16-YEAR-OLD Puerto Rican boy, wandering through a Harlem five-and-ten-cent store, stole a penknife, worth a dime, from a counter tray. He was caught. It was a minor case of shoplifting, but its results were major, for within a few hours the streets of Harlem were overrun by 3,000 angry Negroes, who smashed store windows, attacked whites, fought the police, looted and fired buildings. The theft of a ten-cent knife set off a race riot.
In that riot more than 100 men, black and white, were injured by bullets, knives, clubs or stones. The fighting went on for almost 12 hours. It was something new for New York, which had prided itself for years on the fact that here the two races lived in harmony.
A series of trivial events led up to the street warfare. First, there was the theft of the knife. A Negro women saw store employees search the thief; she became hysterical and shouted that the prisoner was being beaten by his captors, although he was not harmed, and soon the word got about that a Negro boy had been killed.
By coincidence, a hearse appeared. By that time there were crowds in the streets and they were convinced that the body of the thief was to be taken away. Members of the Young Liberators, a radical organization, paraded in front of the store, passing out hastily mimeographed pamphlets telling of a “brutal beating.”
Five hundred policemen were thrown into the area of disorder and high police officials went to the scene to direct them. By 4 a.m. Wednesday the streets were clear.
Mayor La Guardia expressed the belief that the riot was “instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals,” and he appointed a committee of 11 people, Negroes and whites, to get to the bottom of it.
District Attorney Dodge, who took the case before the grand jury, held that radicals were responsible. “From my information,” he said, “Communists distributed literature and took an active part in the riot.”
Thousands Riot in Harlem Area; Scores Are Hurt
By PAUL L. MONTGOMERY and FRANCIS X. CLINES | July 19, 1964
THOUSANDS OF RIOTING NEGROES RACED through the center of Harlem last night and early today, shouting at policemen and white people, pulling fire alarms, breaking windows and looting stores. At least 30 people were arrested.
There was no estimate on the number injured. Scores of people with bloodied heads were seen throughout the eight-block area between Eighth and Lenox Avenues and 123rd and 127th Streets, where most of the rioting occurred.
The riot grew out of a demonstration in front of the West 123rd Street police station protesting the slaying of a Negro youth by a white police lieutenant last Thursday. The demonstration followed a rally at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, where speakers decried the shooting of the boy, 15-year-old James Powell, by Lieut. Thomas Gilligan in Yorkville.
When the police sealed off the block in front of the station house, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, the shouting, keyed-up crowd spread out in angry groups in the surrounding neighborhood.
Shots fired into the air by policemen to disperse the milling crowds echoed through streets littered with overturned garbage cans and broken glass. More than 500 policemen, including all members of the tactical patrol force on duty in Manhattan and Brooklyn, were called out to control the mobs. But the crowds continued to grow as rumors of the rioting spread through the community.
Fire apparatus was brought in at 1 a.m. in an effort to block off streets in the riot area. Police roamed the streets with revolvers drawn.
On Lenox Avenue, between 125th and 126th Streets, police fired at people who were throwing bottles and bricks down at them from roofs. Some people milling at the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue ran as the policemen fired. Others stood their ground, laughing and applauding.
Maximum Sentences In Bensonhurst Case
By WILLIAM GLABERSON | June 12, 1990
A BROOKLYN JUDGE SENTENCED TWO WHITE men to maximum prison terms for their roles in the killing of a black teenager that inflamed racial passions and divided New York City.
One of the white men, Joseph Fama, who was convicted of murdering Yusuf K. Hawkins in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn on Aug. 23, 1989, was sentenced to a term of 32 years and 8 months to life in prison.
Keith Mondello, who once admitted being the leader of a group of about 40 whites who pursued Mr. Hawkins and three black friends in the mostly white neighborhood, was sentenced to a term of 5 years and 4 months to 16 years.
Mr. Mondello was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges but convicted of riot and other lesser charges last month in the case that has been at the center of intense emotions.
In Justice Thaddeus E. Owens’s fourth-floor courtroom, a solid line of court officers separated the two sides of the room where the relatives of the accused and the family of the victim sat yesterday, as they had through the trial in April and May. Except for a brief outburst by Mr. Fama’s family, the separate sentencing sessions were low-key.
Yusuf Hawkins’s father, Moses Stewart, emerged from State Supreme Court arm in arm with his adviser, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who led the demonstrations in Bensonhurst after the killing that many said inflamed racial passions on both sides.
As the two men came out, a crowd of supporters cheered and both men raised their fists in a salute to victory.
“It is a small joy for myself,” Mr. Stewart said, “but it is a great victory for black people all over the city.”
Mr. Sharpton said there had been much strife and battle since Mr. Hawkins’s death. But he added: “It was all worth it to make history today. I think we have made it clear to racists that they will be dealt with in New York.”
Once Again, Racism Proves Fatal
By SAM ROBERTS | September 3, 1989
Marchers protesting the killing of Yusef H. Hawkins in 1989.
EARLY THIS SUMMER, WHEN SPIKE LEE’S “DO the Right Thing” opened, some commentators, white ones, mostly, nervously predicted that the film’s portrayal of racial divisions in Brooklyn might provoke riots by blacks. It didn’t.
But, on Aug. 23, a black teenager who ventured into Bensonhurst, Yusuf K. Hawkins, was gunned down by a group of whites—perhaps as a result of mistaken identity, but targeted, nonetheless, solely because he was black.
New York was never a melting pot. Each immigrant group enforced its own geographical and cultural boundaries that, at least until the newcomers achieved economic and political power, bred an insularity that still pervades enclaves like the blocks of Bensonhurst dominated by Italian immigrant families. Some members of virtually every immigrant group sought to elevate their own self
-image by denigrating somebody else.
Blacks will always be singled out by their skin color. They are identified in some neighborhoods as outsiders.
That was true of Yusuf Hawkins, who ventured into Bensonhurst to answer an advertisement for a used car and was mistaken for a friend of a young white woman from the neighborhood, and of Michael Griffith, chased to his death in Howard Beach after the car in which he was riding had broken down.
Last week, after black demonstrators showing their discontent were taunted by some bystanders in Bensonhurst, Spike Lee talked to young residents of the white community where Yusuf Hawkins was killed.
“What you’re talking about is the way people think,” he said. “You cannot change that overnight.”
Nor can talk of change be heard over shooting and shouting.
Clashes Persist in Crown Heights
By JOHN KIFNER | August 22, 1991
BLACK YOUTHS HURLING ROCKS AND BOTTLES scuffled with the police in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn overnight, even as Mayor David N. Dinkins tried personally to calm the racially troubled neighborhood after two nights of violence.
Mayor Dinkins’s efforts turned sour as he was booed and jeered by hundreds of blacks when he tried to speak, and then was trapped inside the apartment of the family whose child died, as a black crowd outside pelted the building with rocks and bottles and pounded on the cars in the mayor’s entourage.
Wedges of police officers formed a human shield in the doorway of the brick apartment house at 1671 President Street around 7:45 p.m. as the crowd surged around them, shouting: “This is not Palestine! We want justice!”
The New York Times Book of New York Page 45