Music videos help cops link alleged gang members

After a recent round-up of alleged Bloods gang members on charges including murder, Channel 2 Action News reports that investigators used music videos to link some of the suspects to each other and with gang activity.

A Cobb County grand jury made two separate indictments against distinct Bloods gang sets, the Ape (All Profit and Extortion) Gang and the Bounty Hunter Bloods. The national Bloods gang is often broken down locally into subcategories, or sets.

Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds said Friday that both cases took between nine and 10 months to investigate and started with separate homicides.

Channel 2 reports that one of the homicide suspects, 18-yearold Je’Marquise Wright, was seen in a music video pointing a gun.

Wright is charged with shooting 19-year-old Tyon Gorman outside a Bells Ferry Road shopping center in April 2018.

According to the indictment, the name on the music video is used on other social media accounts where investigators say the suspects showed their gang affiliation.

The mother of a young man accused in one indictment said the suspects are friends who enjoy making rap videos. “All the music videos they do have props for entertainment purposes only,” Amanda Fisher told Channel 2.

When showed a music video on YouTube, she said: “It shows them with guns, smoking, what rappers do,” Fisher said. She said that the guns and cash are fake, and she said the suspects are not gang members.

There are others with Wright in the music video. According to Cobb jail records, Wright has been in jail more than 200 days.