Anatomy of a gang war

The Star Ledger, January 6th, 2008

“This is a case study of how a seemingly benign incident can explode into a string of violence.”

Newark Police Lt. William Brady

No one is quite sure why the beating happened. Some say it was over a $70 drug debt; others blame it on an argument over a basketball game.

The details were lost in the mayhem that followed.

The attack last summer led to the shooting of the victim’s cousin. In retribution, the cousin’s brother shot someone and a war between two Newark drug crews was on.

By the time it was over, a string of shootings spanning three of the city’s four wards had left at least two dead and four injured.

Investigators are still trying to sort out how the feud unfolded, but it serves as a classic example of how petty disagreements can flare into deadly gun attacks in New Jersey’s largest city.

“This is a case study of how a seemingly benign incident can explode into a string of violence lasting several months,” said Lt. William Brady, commander of the Newark Police Department’s homicide squad.

These machismo-fueled retaliatory attacks, often sparked by arguments over matters such as cash, drugs and women, drive much of the gun violence in Newark and other U.S. cities. Police Director Garry McCarthy says the combatants are like inner-city Hatfields and McCoys: armed drug dealers and gang members who resolve conflicts, no matter how trivial, with gunfire.

“If we locked up more drug dealers with firearms, we would break up more of these chains of events,” McCarthy said.

In this case, the warring families were two chapters of the Bloods street gang.

THE SHOOTING STARTS

It all began, authorities say, on a muggy day in July when drug dealers affiliated with a Bloods set called Sex Money Murder beat someone up at Betty Shabazz Village, a low-rise Central Ward public housing complex.

Police say the victim, Man Posey, was roughed up over a drug debt. Others say it stemmed from a quarrel over a pickup basketball game.

That night, Man Posey’s cousin, Jamillah Posey, ended her shift at a local bank and stopped to see him. The recent Temple University graduate grew up at Betty Shabazz and knew many of the dealers there. After seeing her cousin, she ran into a few of them in a lot off Irvine Turner Boulevard.

Until that moment, she says, she didn’t realize the situation was so volatile.

Police say Jamillah Posey “interceded” with the dealers on her cousin’s behalf, but Posey denies that. According to her account, she approached one member of the crew, a guy she knew since childhood, and started chatting with him.

“Y’all acting crazy,” the 24-year-old woman recalls telling him.

One of the other dealers, Posey said, a boy no older than 16, then walked up to her and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at her forehead.

“Yo, are you about to shoot me?” she asked.

“That’s right,” he said.

She turned to run. He opened fire, hitting her in the back as she crawled under a parked car. Posey remembers another shot piercing her hip. After the firing stopped and the dealers scattered, she hobbled away for help.

“All I can remember is thinking not to panic,” she said.

Soon, word of the attack reached Al-Shareef Metz, whom police identify as a ranking member of another Bloods chapter called the Brick City Brims. He also happens to be Jamillah Posey’s half-brother.

Enraged by the attacks on Man and Jamillah Posey, police said, Metz showed up at Betty Shabazz Village a few days later and opened fire on two of the Sex Money Murder dealers, injuring one of them.

The war was under way.

PERSONAL, NOT BUSINESS

This bloody chain of violence is increasingly common in cities around the country, authorities say. In Newark, police say, almost a quarter of murders committed since 2002 concern “interpersonal disputes.” They usually involve drug crews or street gangs fighting not for business or turf, but for honor and vengeance.

“Almost all of this kind of violence is personal at some level,” said David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Kennedy has studied gun violence in several American cities and found that, even among drug dealers, shootings are “overwhelmingly rooted in these ideas of respect and disrespect.” Common to this scenario are “vendetta” shootings between groups of criminals, he said.

Those vendettas can include rivalries between different chapters of the same umbrella gang, like the Bloods, authorities say.

Police haven’t pieced together every detail of the conflict between Sex Money Murder and the Brick City Brims; it remains under investigation.

But they believe the feud continued into October, when members of the two factions arranged a meeting on Bergen Street to try to negotiate a truce.

Al-Shareef Metz showed up with a couple of his associates, police said. Representing Sex Money Murder was Sultan Johnson. He was accompanied by a woman whom Metz knew as the wife of an imprisoned family friend, police said. Around his neck, Johnson wore a necklace and pendant emblazoned with the number 252 — known in the gang world as a symbol of Sex Money Murder.

Metz apparently took that as an insult. He grabbed the necklace, shot Johnson to death and fled, police said.

Then, on Oct. 15, a gunman fired on a South 10th Street home frequented by one of the men who was with Al-Shareef Metz when Sultan Johnson was killed. Police believe it was Sex Money Murder sending rivals a message. No one was hurt.

Three days later, a gunman in a green Buick opened fire on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, drug turf reputedly controlled by Sex Money Murder. There were no injuries, but the incident was caught on video surveillance.

That same green Buick showed up again on Oct. 24, driven by Al-Shareef Metz, police say. The Buick came under attack from another car occupied by members of Sex Money Murder. As the cars sped into downtown Newark, the Buick was riddled with bullets from an AK-47-style assault rifle.

Metz screeched to a stop near the Essex County Historic Courthouse and fled. Left inside the car was an associate, 17-year-old Shaquan Solomon, dying from gunshot wounds, police said. Investigators found bullet holes in courthouse windows.

The final attack occurred just after noon on Nov. 6, when Al-Shareef Metz’s brother, an ex-con named Al-Rasheed Metz, walked out of a state Parole Board day-reporting center on South 17th Street. Waiting in a car outside was Narik Wilson, a longtime leader of Sex Money Murder who, despite a recent falling out with many members, still commanded a crew of loyalists.

With him in the car, police said, was an associate, Nafis Johnson — Sultan Johnson’s brother. They argued briefly with Al-Rasheed Metz, then Wilson allegedly shot him in the face.

Al-Rasheed Metz survived. By then, Newark detectives had linked many of the shootings to the two crews. They called in the FBI and the State Police, which had been investigating Wilson in an unrelated case.

They arrested Wilson the next morning at a Newark apartment. Detectives caught up to Al-Shareef Metz two weeks later and charged him with the killing of Sultan Johnson.

By then, Jamillah Posey had moved out of New Jersey. She says she knew little of how her shooting had reverberated through Newark.

She spent several months in rehabilitation and counseling. A bullet remains lodged in her neck. Posey now says she wants to “do something positive,” training to help other victims of violent crime.

“I ask myself every day why I was shot,” she said. “I wasn’t a threat. But it’s crazy out there.”