Over 20 alleged members of a notorious Brooklyn gang were indicted on Wednesday, charged with crimes tied to one homicide, 12 shootings with 22 victims and 13 additional shootings that occurred mostly in Brooklyn.
Twenty-two alleged members of two subsets of the Folk Nation street gang, the Renegade Goons and the OOs (pronounced as 'Double Ohs') were variously charged in a 176-count indictment with conspiracy to commit murder, possess weapons and related charges, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced on Thursday.
Seventeen of the 22 individuals actively picked up a gun and pulled the trigger to try and kill another person, Gonzalez said. A small number of gangs are responsible for about 60% of crime in Kings County, he added.
"The type of wanton shootings alleged in this indictment will not be tolerated in Brooklyn," Gonzalez said in a statement.
According to the indictment, from October 2022 to the present, there was an alignment between Folk’s historic strongholds in Brooklyn: subsets operating out of the Ebbets Field apartment complex in Crown Heights, Newkirk Avenue in Flatbush, the Flatbush Gardens apartments (formerly the Vanderveers). The OOs are the latest generation of Folk operating out of Ebbets Field, while the RG is the newest iteration of the Flatbush/East Flatbush Folk.
The main rivals of the Folk alliance include various Bloods subsets, including the 59 Brims operating out of Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, and elsewhere. Various Crips subsets including the 8-Trey Crips, Grape Street Crips and Insane Crip Gangsters (ICG), all in Flatbush and East Flatbush; Canarsie WOO as well as the Brownsville WOOO.
The alleged alliance between RG and OO was promoted by its members on social media and was reinforced through acts of violence and attempted acts of violence, prosecutors said. The alleged gang members were attacking one another in retaliation for the killings of Folk Nation members Jamel Nicholson, a.k.a., “Melly Gzs,” and Lawrence Augustin, a.k.a., “Lo Bandz.” Nicholson was killed on October 31, 2022, in Sheepshead Bay, allegedly by 59 Brim members Tyshawn Ware and Ron Thomas, according to prosecutors.
Since then, the alleged gang members were involved in more than two dozen shooting incidents, many of which occurred around Flatbush Gardens, Gonzalez said. The crimes were committed once rival gang members would see each other around Brooklyn, including one incident in an elevator inside Brooklyn Supreme Court, and another at a Sweet 16 birthday party in East New York.
The 22 alleged gang members are aged 17- to 26-years-old and many were involved in a prolonged gang war with over 200 shots being fired, Gonzalez said.
The indictments come at a time when overall crime is decreasing in the borough.
Murders were down 30%, hate crimes down 27%, while shooting incidents dropped by 15% from the beginning of this year, Gonzalez said.
"This indictment is proof that when we give our law enforcement partners the tools they need, crime declines and New Yorkers are safer," Hochul said.
