Did a dangerous gang strike again?
News reporter: It is a Dominican gang
that NYPD has been watching and fighting for years.
In the heatwave of June 2018,
teenage machete gangs ran riot on the streets of New York City.
After eight stabbings and two shootings
in just 14 days in the Bronx,
some in broad daylight,
the summer of violence reached its crescendo
with the brutal murder of 15-year-old Lesandro Guzman-Feliz.
News reporter: It took at least 10 seconds
to pull Junior away from the back counter,
the panicked teen knocking over a potato chip stand
as he struggled to stay inside.
CCTV and smartphone footage of the attack quickly went viral.
New York was rattled.
Gang violence had always been present
but rarely so pervasive.
Social media meant the murder rang through the digital street
as well as the real one.
This idea of a digital street
is essentially a traditional street life
transformed into the new neighborhood,
the new community in which people are also living as well,
which is social media.
The perpetrators of this attack?
A youth set of the Trinitarios,
New York’s brutal Dominican street gang,
that happened to be at war with each other.
This is a group that has a propensity to use weapons
and to be very violent.
To them, that’s their feather in their cap.
That’s sort of their trademark.
News reporter: They not only killed this kid,
but they brutally killed him.
We are alarmed by the use of social media
to really over-proliferate this violence in our communities.
This is
and in this episode, we’re exploring how social media
has completely transformed the way gangs operate
and turned a new generation of teenage Trinitarios
against each other.
[Atmospheric music playing]
Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, or Junior, as he was known,
was no gang member.
He’d dreamed of becoming an NYPD detective
since the age of five
and was even enrolled in a trainee police program.
Now his face stares down from murals painted on walls
across his old neighborhood in the Bronx.
So how did he end up dead?
News reporter: Junior’s 15 accused killers
introduced to the public,
captured on surveillance, bolting into the bodega,
demanding the release of the terrified Junior
from behind the store counter.
Junior was just categorized
as being somebody who has been seen in these communities,
hanging out with some of these kids that are involved in this lifestyle.
So, unfortunately, mistaken identity
ended a promising life.
The CCTV and smartphone video footage
is hard to watch.
Junior tries to hide behind the counter of a local bodega,
but the owner doesn’t realize what’s going on till it’s too late.
The gang drag Junior from the store
and repeatedly stab him on the pavement.
The gang has come a long way from where they started.
After being established by two Dominican prisoners
in the early ’90s,
the Trinitarios quickly forged a rep for street-level brutality.
The FBI say that they are
“the most rapidly-expanding Caribbean gang” in America.
In 2009, the NYPD launched
a huge clampdown on the activity of the Trinitarios.
A lot of the old guard is no longer,
whether they are in prison or dead.
By the time Junior was murdered in 2018,
most of the gang’s top brass were in prison.
A leadership vacuum emerged as a result,
and rival sets within the gang
had begun warring amongst themselves.
Those found guilty of murdering Junior
came from one of the many subsets
that were attempting to gain control, Los Sures.
Gangs like to ring bells, as we say.
Gangs like to let people know that they are a violent group
that is not afraid to use weapons,
not afraid to use machetes,
not afraid to take it to the extreme to make their point
and to have other people respect them
and know that they're around.
News reporter: This surveillance video
shows those innocent people running for cover.
They are caught in the middle of a gang war.
News reporter: Many of the defendants
regularly posted social media photographs.
This is the same gang responsible for
the 2018 killing of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz.
Many believe this rampant infighting was inflamed by social media.
The way in which we understand gangs today …
is no longer.
These large hierarchical structures have been disrupted,
and so what we see today are younger individuals
that are really embedded in crews and cliques
that are very much neighborhood and block-based.
And these are also young people
who spend an enormous amount of time on social media.
The videos show young men in masks
dancing on fire escapes, stoops, and dimly lit backstreets
to drill music.
Flanked by friends in gang colors,
they show off cash and mime shooting guns
down the lens of a smartphone.
Prof. Patterson: We’re seeing people who are looking for connection.
We’re seeing people that are looking for community.
Couple that with this idea that you can find community,
you can feel like a human being because if you can engage
and have lots of followers and can promote music
and promote your art,
that can make you feel better,
you can have a better experience.
These posts mythologized the gang lifestyle
as one that can bring status, wealth, girls, and excitement.
The comments overflow with lime-green gun and heart emojis,
which match the colors
the Trinitarios have worn for decades.
The internet has meant the whole landscape has changed.
It’s astronomical.
I mean, just the recruitment,
you know, just the flamboyance of these groups,
the way they make it look sexy to younger individuals.
So it’s being used in recruitment. It’s being used in intimidation.
The game is viral.
The game is to a point where you can be in one state
disrespecting another group in another state.
You could be in one country
disrespecting a group in another country.
So just the vast way that you can get things out there
to the masses these days,
and social media gangs have embraced that.
And the new generation of street gangs
have increasingly used social media to humiliate their sworn enemies.
The NYPD say Junior may have been targeted
because he was wrongly identified
as a guy who appeared in one of these videos
rapping into a smartphone camera in the foreground.
Using social media as a weapon isn't unique to New York.
Organized crime elsewhere uses similar tactics
to recruit, target, and punish.
The Italian Camorra,
one of the deadliest organizations in the world,
uses the internet to recruit
and use children as part of new gangs
that have changed the face of their criminal operation.
Experts say social media is breeding a kind of envy
that pushes people to join street gangs.
It's becoming an epidemic, to be honest with you.
And I’ll meet with the gang members,
and I ask them, “How did this come about?”
You know, nine out of ten times,
they say it was a social media platform
that was used to disrespect us or we disrespected them.
And, you know, it all happened with the use of these phones.
In the end, though, it’s a double-edged sword.
The very tool that these gangs are using
is allowing police to track their movements.
More and more turf wars, infighting, and factional disputes
starting online and bleeding onto the streets
are allowing cops to put more gang members in jail.
If you YouTube some of their videos,
you can see that they call people out directly.
There’s a saying, “The streets will never forget.”
But if that’s true, the internet has an even longer memory
because the things you post have a habit of sticking around.
Fleeting moments of bravado
may lead to spending far longer behind bars.