Feds indict Mpls. gang members on revenge, drug charges
Updated 5:15 p.m. | Posted 12:54 p.m.
Federal authorities allege seven members of two allied south Minneapolis gangs conspired to sell drugs and commit violence against their rivals as part of a gang war.
The criminal indictment unsealed Tuesday includes instances where members of the 10z and 20z gangs were either the trigger-pullers or the targets in several shootings in public spaces.
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Minneapolis police officials say more than two dozen guns linked to 10z and 20z members have been used in 50 different shootings in the past year.
Some of those shootings occurred in very public places.
In August of last year, prosecutors say 24-year-old Clarence James Dickens Jr. allegedly shot at a rival gang member from a vehicle outside a McDonald's restaurant on Lake Street.
The indictment says several days later, 25-year-old Andrew Indelicato Peterson tried to lure rival members of the Bloods outside the Hennepin County Medical Center where 22-year-old Percy Minifer Lacy Jr. waited in ambush with a gun.
Prosecutors say Lacy fired at them from a parked car.
The HCMC shooting was particularly dangerous because it occurred in the daytime in the middle of downtown, U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andy Luger said.
"This is the kind of thing we need to address. We need to address it aggressively," Luger said. "We need to make sure that gang leaders know that we're watching them, that we're focused on them and that we're going to be charging them with harsh crimes."
Federal officials say all the men are in custody. Luger says this indictment marks the sixth violent street gang charged by his office since 2014.
Minneapolis police officials say the violence between the 10z, 20z and their rivals goes back to at least 2013.
According to a search warrant filed by a Minneapolis police department investigator in May of that year, there were five shootings between members of the Bloods and the 10z in a one month period that spring.
Police say during that period, at least two people were wounded and one member of the Bloods was killed.
The gunfire has continued this year.
In June, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office charged 24-year-old Dontae Peterson in connection with a shooting near Peavey Park.
Peterson is affiliated with the 10z, but wasn't named in the federal indictment, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said.
"He went to shoot at what he thought was a rival gang and hit a mother and kid just walking through Peavey Park," Freeman added.
The woman and her 15-month old baby survived the shooting. But the child sustained serious internal injuries.
Freeman said his office is also reviewing probable cause murder charges against a 23-year-old man suspected of killing two people near Peavey Park last month.
According to Minneapolis police investigators, that man is a member of the Bloods. However, it is not known if the victims were rival gang members.
Arresting and prosecuting violent gang members has an impact on the communities where they used to commit their crimes, Freeman said.
"Particularly if we get a kind of a regional or a local thug who has committed a lot of crimes in a particular neighborhood and we take him off the street, things quiet down for a while," he added.