From initiation beatings to ‘cliquing up’: The culture of gangs on S.I., as told by a man who lived it (2024)

GANGS OF STATEN ISLAND: This is the second of a five-part series examining the culture, inner workings and tragic fallout of gang-related activity in our borough, and the efforts of law enforcement and community leaders to contain it.

Part One: Gangs of Staten Island: From Gorilla Stone Mafia to OTA, a look at the crews operating in our borough (interactive map)

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Gang culture on Staten Island’s North Shore is a world within itself.

There’s a “drill” music scene that’s violent and influential, disputes on social media that sometimes end in bloodshed, and a loose set of rules that young gangsters live by.

A Staten Island man in his mid-20s who first pledged loyalty to a crew on the North Shore as a teenager sat down with the Advance/SILive.com recently to discuss the motivation for “cliquing up” and the chaos that followed. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid any risks of discussing his experiences.

LOYALTY WEIGHS HEAVY

Recalling his acceptance into a crew as a teenager, he said a friend told him: “Come to the block, I want you to meet the homies.”

Growing up in a neighborhood scourged by generational poverty and criminal activity, he said his parents provided for he and his siblings but had to work day and night. “They were around, but they weren’t around to stop me from doing the things I wanted to do… so I made friends who were into certain things and I followed suit.”

In the beginning, they “cliqued up” to fight teens from other areas. Then, over time it escalated to some members of the crew selling street-level dope and co*ke, while carrying out armed robberies on civilians and rival drug dealers. Those who become good at it earn the status “jackboys.”

He said a lot of the teenagers and young men were robbing to provide for themselves and in some cases their families. Experts say that in general, issues at home in historically low-income, high-crime areas include physical and mental health issues, often unaddressed due to a lack of equity and/or insurance passed down through generations; atop close-quartered and too often dilapidated living conditions.

As the crew gained in numbers, some were “jumped-in,” in other words assaulted by several members to prove their toughness and earn their stripes. Others earn a place by carrying out a criminal act to benefit the crew, he said.

A street-level crew typically operates on a block where a stash house is used for drugs, credit-card scammers and/or guns. A credit-card scammer is referred to as a “Zoe God.” A person profiting from an illegal cash business is a “stackboy.”

“It’s about the protection and the notoriety. It’s the feeling of brotherhood,” he said. “And just, you know, there’s a certain rush associated with it.”

But too often the end game — some level of financial success and recognition outside of the neighborhood where they grow up — is cut short in a hail of gunfire, on a sidewalk near their home in front of multiple witnesses.

BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN

By high school, he said the “battle lines” between neighborhoods were drawn.

“There would be people who I grew up with all my life, but the moment we realized we were from two rival neighborhoods, that kind of deteriorated the friendship,” he said. “Or it was like, ‘I’m cool with you, but my friends want to kill you.”

Experts say that for many who enter the lifestyle, a transition happens by the end of high school.

Stickups on the street escalate to home invasions of drug-dealers with families. Some graduate from selling stamp-bags of heroin on the block to purchasing serious weight from regional players. And those who do time often make connections with heavy hitters in prison, their anger and jealousy toward adversaries festering as they sharpen their skills as a criminal.

The man who spoke with the Advance/SILive.com explained how he watched one of his friends progress into a different person over the course of three prison stints, each conviction lessening the opportunities for non-criminal work outside of a minimum-wage job.

“He came out a different person,” he said. “He was all into the persona and everything about the gangster image.”

Even for those on the outside, once a friend is fatally stabbed or shot it sets off a chain reaction, he said.

“A lot of these situations get to the point of no return,” he said. “Once your friend gets cut, or once your friend gets shot and killed, no amount of sorrys can rectify that.”

VYING FOR RESPECT

Typically there are older members of crews calling shots to some degree and overseeing criminal activity. Law enforcement experts say they’ll often use younger members to transport guns and weapons; teenagers who sometimes go to deadly extremes to prove their worth in the group.

“The perception of respect is something held in high esteem in our community and is the motivation for a lot of unfortunate things that happen,” said the man who spoke with the Advance. “It’s very unfortunate because a lot of the people who you’re trying to impress, they can’t do nothing for you… people who will lead you down a path of destruction.”

In 2020, authorities noted an unusual rise in intergenerational violence involving individuals separated in age by about two decades, in what they speculated was tied to ongoing feuds between crews, domestic situations and the drug game.

The man recalled being around 13 or 14 years old when he was threatened by an older teenager in the parking lot of a fast food chain. It was his first lesson in gang politics on the North Shore.

“He was significantly older than me, so he probably was atoning for a beef that he experienced years ago, and he just brought it to me.”

LOOSE SET OF RULES

There’s a set of unwritten rules adopted by young people involved in gang activity on Staten Island that’s passed down from one generation to the next, followed more loosely now than in past generations, experts say.

• No one snitches on the group. Those who do are subject to violence. A legal expert on Staten Island recalled the infraction in one case carried over to a man’s child, who was harassed by a group for his infraction.
• The crew is your family, so any friends or acquaintances — regardless of past history or relationship — come second. The “opps” is the enemy. Anyone seen having dealings with the “opps” is in violation of the code. An “opps out of bounds” in a rival neighborhood is liable to be assaulted or killed.
• Dope and co*ke are OK to sell, but not to get high. Weed, alcohol and sometimes Molly are typically the drugs of choice, though some have been known to occasionally cheat with cocaine. There’s also “lean”— a co*cktail of prescription strength cough syrup, soda and candy.
• Though it’s rare for a woman or teenage girl to be targeted by a man in a gang-related assault, they often participate in gang-related activities. In part by helping to transport guns, drugs and gang members. Younger members of a crew sometimes are tasked by older members with the same responsibility, based on the understanding that because of a clean record a judge would go easier on them.

THE DRILL SCENE

Several rap groups throughout New York City are comprised of members who also rep local crews and/or larger gangs.

In 2018, a rapper out of Brooklyn named Pop Smoke helped establish the “drill scene,” a style of music defined by its dark and violent lyrical content. Smoke, who inspired a stream of New York City rappers to follow, was fatally shot inside his rented Hollywood Hills home on Feb. 19, 2020.

On Staten Island, artists who associate with a gang typically record at a neighborhood studio as not to cross into enemy territory.

The lyrics refer to shootings, drug dealing, credit-card scamming and women. The videos typically are well-produced, some featuring crews repping their housing projects, others in luxury cars and featuring professional dancers.

In one song, a West Brighton rapper spits: “I strap my Timberlands up, my niece I kiss on the head, I give my nephew a hug these [people] want me dead.”

In another, a Stapleton rapper says: “Its gonna be a scary night, I ain’t really trying to fight, I’m gonna shoot him on sight.”

In 2018, an Instagram show that chronicled rap groups and gang life across New York City featured an interview with a group of reputed “goons” in Stapleton, a term used for street-level members of a gang.

“This s--- is real,” said one of the men, who claimed loyalty in the video to the Island’s Gorilla Stone Mafia. “N----- got caught over there this morning.”

Translation: A rival crew member was assaulted for crossing into enemy territory.

One of the young men in the video was shot and killed two years later on the same commercial block where the group was interviewed.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Local law-enforcement sources and community leaders say social media disputes have helped fuel the violence.

A school administrator on the North Shore explained that a recent fist fight between two female students involved a dispute dating back nearly three years, but was kept alive by disparaging posts and comments online.

“So much of the violence now is around social media posts during the time of COVID,” said the administrator, who asked his name not be printed. “I get the positives of social media, but in the schools it’s killing us.”

In a recent Facebook exchange that garnered dozens of comments, a New Brighton man bragged about slapping a West Brighton man, taking the man’s phone, then using it to call and insult his enemy’s mother.

On Instagram, a Stapleton rapper insinuated a rival artist was a “snitch” during an interview for an underground music channel that’s popular within local street culture. He was referencing a shooting months prior to the interview.

Young people also use the online platforms to flaunt stacks of cash, pose with firearms, show off tattoos and pay tribute to friends and family lost to death or incarceration. Online threats sometimes are just “flexing,” and other times there’s real consequences.

A recent study out of Stanford University that examined gangs on Chicago’s notorious South Side found subjects would sometimes shoot selfies holding firearms that were borrowed and/or inoperable as a way to show their loyalty toward allies and ward off threats from enemies.

In one example, a gang-affiliated youth changed outfits and locations for a series of photos to give the perception he always was armed, noted the study’s author, Forrest Stuart, a professor of sociology at the university.

“Emerging research, along with a growing list of wrongful convictions, demonstrates that even non-gang-associated youths routinely exaggerate their violent behaviors and even take credit for crimes that they did not actually commit,” Stuart wrote.

THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND IT

Experts say young people who align themselves with a gang or a crew on Staten Island are often otherwise anti-social. Hardened by layers of trauma experienced from a young age, they are seeking power and money in what typically is a powerless economic situation, and a sense of self-worth clouded by chaotic conditions and adolescence.

Among the several city-funded, community advocacy groups in New York City striving for peace is the Queens-based Life Camp.

“We work to save young people from the trauma that makes them create acts of violence among themselves, and we give them the tools they need to turn their lives around,” explained LifeCamp CEO Erica Ford in a recent promotional video on YouTube.

The Staten Island district attorney’s office echoed that assessment in an interview last year regarding a spike in street violence.

“In a lot of the neighborhoods where we’re seeing reoccurring violence, children and adults and young adults are experiencing multiple layers of trauma from a very young age, and it’s never being adequately addressed,” said Ashleigh Owens, chief of staff to Richmond County District Attorney Michael E. McMahon.

Looking ahead in this series, the Advance/SILive.com will examine the tragic fallout of street-violence within local communities, the measures to which police and community-based advocacy groups are taking to prevent it, and an ongoing debate over criminal justice between borough leaders on both sides of the issue.