120 busted in largest gang takedown in New York City history

NYPD officers joined with other law enforcement agencies to arrest 120 alleged gang members and associates in what officials are calling the largest takedown of its kind in city history.

A large-scale overnight Bronx raid led to the arrest of 78 individuals, as part of the years-long investigation into two rival street gangs operating in the Bronx and allegedly involved in homicides, robberies, drug sales and money counterfeiting, officials said.

That investigation, involving the NYPD, U.S. Marshals, DEA, Homeland Security and ATF, netted 120 members and associates of the 2Fly YGz (“2Fly”) and the Big Money Bosses (“BMB”), authorities said. They are charged in two separate indictments with racketeering conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy, narcotics distribution, and firearms offenses.

According to NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, the members allegedly “engaged in open-air drug sales near homes and schools in the Bronx, pushing poison onto our streets. Allegedly, they also committed numerous acts of violence and at least eight murders in the course of their illicit operations.”

Those murders included innocent victims as young as 15 and old as 92, officials added.

“Today, we seek to eviscerate two violent street gangs — 2Fly and BMB—that have allegedly wreaked havoc on the streets of the Northern Bronx for years, by committing countless acts of violence against rival gang members and innocents alike,”Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

“The gangs’ alleged victims include not only a 15 year-old child stabbed and left to die in the street, as well as a 92 year-old woman shot by a stray bullet in her own home, but also extend to the thousands of residents of Eastchester Gardens and its surrounding neighborhoods terrorized for years by the gangs’ open-air drug dealing and senseless violence. We bring these charges today so that all New Yorkers, including those in or near NYCHA public housing, can live their lives as they deserve: free of drugs, free of guns, and free of gang violence,” he continued.

This violence laid out by officials took place starting in 2007, and included not only stabbings and shootings, but also slashings, beatings and robberies.

Search warrants executed with these arrests, according to authorities, additionally turned up seven guns, ammunition, crack, marijuana, counterfeit currency, and drug paraphernalia. Seized evidence during the investigation included quantities of marijuana, crack, cocaine, and oxycodone, as well as firearms, ammunition, scalpels and knives.