Gang violence has killed Staten Islanders from all walks of life. What is the best way to stop it? (2024)

GANGS OF STATEN ISLAND: This is the fourth 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: From the Gorilla Stone Mafia to OTA, a look at the crews operating in our borough (interactive map) | Part Two: The culture of gangs on Staten Island, as told by a man who lived it. | Part Three: The tragic fallout of S.I. gangs is felt by innocent residents, families of the fallen.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — After more than three decades of responding to crime scenes riddled with shell casings and watching mothers sob over caskets, law enforcement and community leaders on Staten Island have had enough.

A recent surge in violence at the height of the pandemic was attributed to several factors including familial deaths and citywide shut downs that, according to community leaders, made it harder to live in high-crime areas. Law-enforcement reforms which, according to police unions, have made it more complicated to remove guns from the streets. And societal upheaval that, according to everyone involved, has increased tensions between civilians and police.

Now, moving forward, each party tasked with breaking the cycle of gang culture on the Island is faced with a dilemma.

How do police keep guns off the streets amid shakeups within the NYPD and legislative changes to search laws?

How do community empowerment groups break the cycle of violence amid decades of generational poverty?

How do politicians write laws to help communities heal, while maintaining safe streets on a day-to-day basis?

AT THE HEIGHT OF IT

At one point in 2020, three men were shot to death over the course of 28 hours on the borough’s North Shore.

One of the victims was 21-year-old Prince Edmonds, of New Brighton, who in regard to gang culture was beloved by his crew — OS (Original Stackboys) — for his leadership skills as “CEO” of the OS record label, and his loyalty on the streets. It was Edmonds who, while taking fire, drove into a West Brighton man in 2018 outside the Staten Island Courthouse in St. George, resulting in the man’s death.

The day after Edmonds was killed, an informal memorial gathering was held outside his family’s row house on Jersey Street. A neighbor recalled him organizing basketball games for the neighborhood kids, and hearing him “singing and dancing down the street.”

A group of young males huddled in the front yard. They scoffed at the idea of an interview. A police car was stationed a block away. The smell of burnt marijuana wafted in the air, along with the sound of rap and classic R&B. An arrangement of candles, and an empty Hennessy bottle, spelled out the moniker “WUDA.” A dark sedan with tinted windows and base thumping slowly rolled past.

The gathering was broken up about an hour later when a 34-year-old man from the neighborhood — recently paroled and paying his respects to Edmonds — was shot in the chest. Family of the victim said the shooting was not gang-related.

POLICING THE STREETS

Borough officials say gun arrests were up more than 100%, as of October, when compared to the same time last year.

And while law enforcement authorities credit key arrests by way of “precision” policing and prosecuting as a contributing factor, experts say the data also is largely a result of the pandemic and citywide protests.

“[The increase] is tied to the number of search warrants that are being executed,” said Ashleigh Owens, chief of staff for District Attorney Michael E. McMahon. “So similarly, the number of search warrants last year were down, but that’s because cops were either out sick because of COVID or re-deployed due to protests.”

Moving forward, Mayor-elect Eric Adams said he plans to create an NYPD plainclothes unit tasked with removing guns from the street by means of intelligence and enforcement. The proposal has drawn the ire of some activists who compare it to the former anti-crime unit, which had amassed a disproportionate number of substantiated civilian complaints over the years and was disbanded in the wake of large social justice protests and riots sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Despite the controversy surrounding the unit, McMahon said he agrees with Adams that it could be effective if run correctly.

“I think that was an effective strategy as long as it’s done, you know appropriately and with sensitivity,” McMahon said. “I think we’d be better served going in that direction.”

TRACKING FIREARMS

Just before the pandemic, local authorities at the Goethals Bridge intercepted a man transporting a shipment of illegal firearms from Georgia after allegedly making his way along what’s referred to as the Iron Turnpike, aka I-95, officials said.

Sources say that when a shipment of guns are brought to Staten Island, they’re often coming from Virginia, Georgia or Pennsylvania, where it’s easier to purchase and possess them, legally speaking.

The more recent threat to the community, however, are ghost guns.

Essentially, they are firearms purchased online in pieces or kits, which based on a loophole in the law makes it so they don’t need a serial number and therefore are untraceable. Often they can be assembled at home.

“They are being sold across this country in kits — not subject to any background checks, not subject to serialization,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady United, in a recent NPR interview. “They are being used in crimes across this country. They are being purchased and used in crimes in record numbers.”

In April, President Biden announced the Justice Department would pursue policies to reduce the proliferation of “ghost guns.”

THE DRUG TRADE

While marijuana now is legal to possess in New York — as long as it is less than three ounces — regulations for vendors to sell the drug haven’t yet been established. So in the interim, it has made life easier for black market dealers stocked with flower, edibles and the extremely potent wax.

In 2020, McMahon noted disputes within the local marijuana trade “between new actors in the neighborhood coming into conflict with people who maybe feel that they’re infringing on their turf.” Then, earlier this year, he was among several leaders within law enforcement who cautioned against the NYPD’s new guideline prohibiting full vehicle searches based solely on the smell of weed.

Gang associates also have been known to deal in street-level cocaine and heroin sales, which typically are traced up the distribution ladder to older traffickers who survived the game and established the right connections.

SWEATING IT OUT

The most aggressive gangsters, experts say, often have been altered mentally and emotionally by layers of untreated trauma. Then, there’s others tied to the lifestyle who are more mentally stable and laid-back, but fighting to defend themselves.

Over the past year, the NYPD and district attorney’s office have either rolled out or continued initiatives aimed at keeping at-risk youth competing and releasing stress in activities other than gang activity. Officer-coached football and basketball teams, new basketball courts funded by a significant drug bust, a chess tournament in the park, and free sports, dance and fitness programs held Saturday nights in several neighborhoods.

McMahon said the district attorney’s office also has worked closely with community-based empowerment groups including True2Life, Occupy the Block, Mothers Against Senseless Killings, Health for Youth, Central Family Life Center and Fatherhood Matters. In addition to neighborhood cleanup efforts.

‘CREDIBLE MESSENGERS’

From the summer of 2020 to the passing of the 2022 city budget, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration added more than $44 million to expand a network of non-profit, anti-violence and community empowerment providers located in more than 20 of the city’s police precincts.

One of those providers on Staten Island is True2Life, which tracks disputes on social media and in the streets in an attempt to intervene before another young person is killed, while helping to guide families toward counseling, physical healthcare, job training and legal assistance. The group is led by Mike Perry, a former gangster with a tragic past who has redirected his energy toward peace and empowerment.

“We’re dealing with economic violence in our neighborhood,” Perry said. “We live on top of each other, we’re poor, we’re under-resourced. Of course there’s domestic violence, drugs and conflicts.”

The city’s 2022 budget lines to further support community-based violence intervention include:

• $5M toward peer mentorship for incarcerated individuals, and those reentering the community under the guidance of “credible messengers.”
• $6.6M to expand “Jails to Jobs” as a way to provide more ex-cons transitional employment.
• $57M for reentry housing, with healthcare and employment counseling, for arrested New Yorkers returning to the community.

Prior to the nationwide spike in gun violence last year, True2Life had reported 1,065 days without a homicide in their coverage areas, which include sections of Clifton, Stapleton and Mariners Harbor.

Citywide, from 2010 to 2019, data showed the Crisis Management System and Cure Violence Movement contributed to an average 40% reduction in shootings across program areas compared to a 31% decline in shootings in the 17 highest violence precincts in New York City, according to the city’s Office to Prevent Gun Violence.

Last summer, True2Life participated in a citywide initiative to educate police officers on the North Shore about the culture and history of the neighborhoods they patrol, which included a bus tour for new recruits and veteran officers.

“We showed them the conditions we live in to give them an understanding of what we go through on an everyday basis, and why things are the way they are,” Perry said.

Some cops on the North Shore have said they’re skeptical of the idea.

One veteran officer who works regularly with at-risk youth told the Advance/SILive.com he’s “not completely sold if the Q&A will bring a balance.”

‘WHAT WE NEED IS COPS’

While the NYPD this year re-deployed an additional 200 officers performing administrative functions to the streets, police unions and some politicians have argued it’s not enough, while casting doubt on the effectiveness of community-based solutions.

At a press conference earlier this year, Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch railed that what’s not going to solve the violence is “millions of dollars on violence interrupters,” saying, “what we need is cops.”

Councilman Joe Borelli (R-South Shore) concurs.

“The hard truth is that the police prevent and solve crimes and nothing the radical left can say will change that,” Borelli said.

SUCCESS IN PORT RICHMOND

In 2005, authorities said they arrested more than 20 Port Richmond-based gang members who used the moniker “Mexican Mafia,” in what some experts cited as a way to disguise their affiliation with “Mara Salvatrucha”— aka the notoriously violent MS-13. Sources at the time described how members would approach day laborers waiting for work on the street and force them to pay the gang for the spot.

It was that same year that a brawl involving knives and belts on Port Richmond Avenue ended with a 22-year-old man, who had immigrated to Staten Island from Mexico, fatally stabbed six times in the back and neck. One or more of the young people charged were believed to have ties to the Latin Kings.

But that was the past.

Gang recruitment and activity involving Latino immigrants in the Port Richmond area has dropped significantly in recent years, attributable in part to youth programming including team sports, a robotics team at the high school and an expansion of youth programming at Our Lady of Mount Carmel R.C. Church, explained Rev. Terry Troia, CEO of Project Hospitality.

“It creates an identity for people so they feel included,” Rev. Troia said. “The kids get self-esteem from the camaraderie and teamwork offered to replace gang-involvement.”

She explained how the issues some young immigrants face are both similar and unique to gang-activity in other neighborhoods.

“There’s language barriers, economic barriers and a lack of expectation for them in an education system that’s not created to meet their needs,” Rev. Troia said. “And wanting to be like all other Americans, they sometimes fall into the materialistic lifestyle.”

She said it’s important to note two factors that made for an easier time in Port Richmond as opposed to other high-crime neighborhoods. The quality of living in single or multi-family houses as opposed to massive apartment complexes; and a smaller, typically tight-knit immigrant community without as many ties and historical rivalries with other gangs and crews across the Island.

THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS

Perry said that when he first joined True2Life, he was driving on Staten Island when he spotted a man he had robbed in the past. Shedding concerns the man might be holding a grudge, he got out of his car and approached him.

“He was startled,” said Perry, “but I told him, ‘I’m sorry for that s---, and I hope you can forgive me.’”

The man said he already had, and appreciated what the group was doing for the community.

Perry returned to his car with tears in his eyes.

“That f----- me up,” he said. “I wasn’t ready for that.”

Last summer, Perry and fellow True2Life manager Malcom Penn — founders of Penn and Perry Inc. — emceed the Peace and Unity concert in Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden in Livingston. The show was headlined by local rap icons Method Man and Ghostface Killa.

Joining Perry and Penn at one point on stage was a violence interrupter group out of Brooklyn called Gangsters Making Astronomical Community Changes (GMACC). The group’s leader, a former member of the Nine Trey Gangsters, spoke his peace to the hundreds in attendance:

“Tell someone you love who’s angry that they don’t have to move like that.”