31 alleged gang members indicted on Long Island.
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (PIX11) — Their goal was to be the most violent street gang in the New York metro area, according to prosecutors, who say that an offshoot of the Bloods gang was on its way to achieving the infamy that its leaders sought. That changed on Thursday, said investigators, with the indictment of 31 alleged gang members, and the seizing of a dozen guns that police say were used in 18 shootings and three armed robberies.
Detectives had 23 men in custody early Thursday morning who they said had carried out their crimes across Long Island, from Hempstead in western Nassau County, to Riverhead, near Long Island’s east end.
Raymond Tierney, the Suffolk County district attorney, said that the series of shootings were really a chain reaction within a gang subculture.
“There’s an act of violence” between gangs, he said, which starts off the streak of violence, “and then everyone goes on social media and talks about it,” he continued, at a news conference at the Suffolk County Police Academy on Thursday, “and then there’s a retaliation, and then there’s a retaliation for the retaliation.”
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District Attorney Tierney also displayed a group of 12 guns that he said were involved in crimes carried out by the men who were indicted. They’re allegedly in the Bloodhound Brims gang, which is an offshoot of the Bloods gang, the district attorney said. He was joined at the news conference by Anne Donnelly, the Nassau County district attorney.
“Bloodhound Brims Gang,” Donnelly said, “is one of the most violent we’ve ever seen.”
She and Tierney were surrounded at the news conference by investigators from both of their departments who’d worked on the case.
Donnelly said that the alleged gang members were part of a subgroup of the Brims, called the Afghan Bloodhounds. They allegedly required members to carry out shootings in order to gain status within the gang. The directives, according to investigators came from two senior leaders in the Bloodhounds, Oumar Barry, nicknamed, “Dollo,” and Jussiah Herbert, also known as “Lokko.”
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Both men are behind bars, charged with other crimes, but were indicted with the other suspects on Thursday. The two allegedly took their orders from the leader of Brims, Latique Johnson. He’s also been incarcerated, for over a year, in connection to other charges.
However, said the Suffolk district attorney, Johnson is “still able to, working through proxies, sort of get his message out, and speak to the leadership of the Blood Hound Brims across the country.”
Johnson is serving a sentence in the federal penitentiary in Victorville, California, where he’d amassed a commissary allowance of $31,000, that investigators seized as part of this latest case.
Part of it looked into the killing, last April, of Kimberly Midgette. Detectives said that
the elementary school teacher was hit by a bullet after the alleged gang leader Barry mistook the car she was in for someone else’s and opened fire.
Investigators said that Midgette was an innocent victim.
Eight alleged Brims members, including Johnson, Barry, and Herbert, were already locked up before Thursday, when 23 more men were taken into custody. All 31 faced new felony charges, ranging from conspiracy to attempted murder.
Meanwhile, on the street in Hempstead where the innocent teacher was gunned down, one resident, whose name PIX11 is withholding to protect his identity in this sensitive case, conveyed a sentiment that seemed to be shared by his neighbors. “I think it’s a very good thing for the neighborhood,” he said.