Grand jury indicts 54 gang members
The Hamilton County Grand Jury indicted 54 Athens Park Bloods gang members on Wednesday, making that the first time a street gang in Hamilton County has been prosecuted as a criminal enterprise under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.
The defendants face a raft of charges ranging from aggravated kidnapping to first-degree premeditated murder. Seven of them face charges in five homicides.
Nearly half of the defendants were already incarcerated on previous charges, but more than 100 officers and agents from a number of law enforcement agencies began arresting the remaining suspects Wednesday morning, according to a news release.
The charges stem from a coordinated effort that began months ago between Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy and District Attorney General Neal Pinkston to use the District Attorney’s cold case unit to review a string of unsolved homicides. Roddy said he was proud of the many members of law enforcement who have, for months and years, built cases against some of those indicted on Wednesday.
“I prayed about it and gave it to the Lord, but I’m also human and it’s been a burden on us. Today, I feel like that burden has been lifted.”
– DERRICK SHAW, BROTHER OF BIANCA HORTON
“This started when acts of violence occurred in our community. This started when families were impacted by the senseless acts of violence by the individuals that we have been working to change the behavior of,” he said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
“You had law enforcement officers across this community working to find the individuals, take them into custody in the quickest and safest manner possible. It’s a large operation, but it was a well-planned operation.”
Roddy said members of his department also called the families of some of the victims in the alleged crimes to let them know charges were going to be brought against suspects in their cases.
“We felt like it was the victims’ families’ absolute right to understand what was going to happen today,” Roddy said. “They deserved to know before anyone else did because they suffered more directly than anyone else has.”
Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond echoed that, saying he hoped the indictments would help victims and their families continue to heal.
“There’s an old saying that says ‘The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they do turn.’ I think that’s evident by what we’re seeing here today,” he said. “As we move forward and we see these things fall into place, I think more than anything else, you have family members out there who’ve lost loved ones who are today going to be very happy to see some closure.
Included in the homicides connected to Wednesday’s indictment is Bianca Horton, who authorities say was murdered to prevent her from testifying at trial that she witnessed Cortez Sims, one of the men indicted, murder another woman.
Police say Sims burst into a College Hill Courts apartment early in the morning on Jan. 7, 2015, and opened fire, fatally wounding Talitha Bowman and wounding two others, one of whom was Zoey Duncan, Horton’s infant daughter.
A little over a year later, Horton was found dead on the side of a road with multiple bullet casings lining the ground beside her. Courtney High, 27, Andre Grier, 31, and Charles Shelton, 28, have all been charged with her murder and could face the death penalty.
The indictment has also added the RICO elements to High’s charge for the murder of Jerica Jackson and additionally charged him with the murder of Marquise Jackson. Both slayings occurred in the months after Horton’s death.
Horton’s brother, Derrick Shaw, spoke at the news conference and thanked the officers who worked his sister’s case.
“Now we can move on to the next phase of this process,” he said. “I prayed about it and gave it to the Lord, but I’m also human and it’s been a burden on us. Today, I feel like that burden has been lifted.”
“It was a great feeling, but at the end of the day, my family is not the only one that’s hurting. There are others hurting as well, so we want to keep those families in prayer also.”
Tennessee’s RICO act was passed in 1986 in an effort to provide for extended criminal penalties for individuals operating as part of an ongoing criminal organization. Specifically, it allows leaders or associates to be tried for crimes they ordered others to do or helped them commit.
State RICO acts mirror the Federal RICO act, enacted in 1970, in a variety of ways, but state statutes often cover a broader spectrum of criminal and civil law, according to the American Bar Association.
“Throughout the investigation, it was determined that the state law applied and most of us are state actors, so we decided to bring it to the Hamilton County Grand Jury as opposed to the Federal Grand Jury,” Pinkston said.
“We’re not going to be able to get into case facts, because it’s now a pending case, but the statute talks about an enterprise that can be a legal or illegal group, so that’s about all I can say regarding that.”
The indictments came a day before the next scheduled Violence Reduction Initiative callin — an event hosted by city officials and members of law enforcement to talk face to face with gang members. The mes- sage has always been a simple one: stop the violence or go to jail.
The call-ins serve as tentpoles to the VRI, which was launched by Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke in 2014. The initiative was and is part of a widespread effort to combat gang violence with both a stick and a carrot by coordinating law enforcement, court and community resources.
Gang members are told during the call-ins they can either put down the guns and get connected with job training, transportation and education services or keep shooting and prepare for the full weight of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
The initiative has shown mixed results since it was implemented. The city has put more than $1 million into the effort, but the number of shootings involving gang members remains largely unchanged.
At the end of 2017, public officials cheered a drop in the total number of shootings from 158 in 2016 to 147 in 2017. Shootings involving gang members declined by almost 30 percent in 2017 from the year before, but the city still weathered 64 such incidents, one more than the tally for 2014. The shooting rate jumped by more than a dozen over the next two years.
Still, authorities believe this week’s indictment underscores their commitment to ensuring community safety.
“We believe this is a clear message to the individuals that would continue to inflict damage and harm in our community that we will do everything we can to change that behavior,” Roddy said. “It is my honor to represent the countless men and women that have been working for months, years, to bring some of these individuals to justice today.”