“This isn’t motivation by money,” said Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney. “They were conspiring to commit violence for the sake of violence.” Mr. Vance’s office, working with the New York Police Department, has focused resources on finding the links between shootings and other crimes to take down entire gangs at one time.
Weapons seized in a two-day roundup of gang members in East Harlem were displayed by the Manhattan district attorney.
In East Harlem, a teenager who belonged to a gang based at a housing project was shot in the head. His friends blamed gangs at two nearby projects for the killing. And so erupted a shooting war lasting years, officials said, set off by nothing but revenge.
From the time of the first killing in October 2009 to this month, gunfire erupted among the gangs at least 30 times, and two more teenagers were killed, the officials said. And their plans to settle scores played out on social media sites.
“God forgives, I don’t … somebodie gotta die,” Alexander Carno, a gang member who was wounded, posted on his Facebook page.
That quotation was included in indictments unsealed on Thursday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan against 63 members of the three gangs. All males, they range in age from 16 to 25. All but eight of them are younger than 20. Forty-nine of them face up to life in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder. The top charges against the 14 others carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison.
Most of the young men were arrested on Wednesday in an operation that involved more than 300 police officers. Throughout the day on Thursday, they were brought before two judges in Manhattan, where they all pleaded not guilty.
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