The problem, as can be gleaned from police reports, appears to be terrifyingly basic: The cops increasingly describe killings as targeted. A small subset of shooters want to make sure their victims aren\u2019t just bleeding but dead.<\/p>\n
Sometimes that can look like the casually brutal murder of Anthony Frazier, a security guard at a seafood restaurant on Cleveland Avenue who took a bullet point-blank in the back of the head last month. Or it can be a plain hit, like the murder of Shymel Drinks, whose body was found beneath an\u00a0overpass just south of downtown in March. Police described him as a member of a gang, allegedly killed by rivals in Young Slime Life as an act of reprisal.<\/p>\n
This is what Atlanta\u2019s gang war looks like. It has been raging in varying forms since 2015 and went into overdrive during the pandemic, reversing more than a decade of the city\u2019s gains against violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe murder rate in Atlanta is over the murder rate in Chicago!\u201d bellowed Republican former Sen. David Perdue in a gubernatorial candidates\u2019 debate in April. \u201cWhat we have in Georgia is a runaway crime situation that the governor is burying his head about. … We have the highest murder rate in the country!\u201d<\/p>\n
Atlanta\u2019s murder rate over the last 12 months is higher than Chicago\u2019s: 36 per 100,000 people killed to Chicago\u2019s 27 per 100,000. None of the rest of what Perdue said is true. Atlanta doesn\u2019t crack the top 20 cities over 100,000 residents for murders. Georgia isn\u2019t in the top\u00a010 states for murder rates. Kemp still engaged in a bidding war for \u201ctough-on-crime\u201d credentials.<\/p>\n
The rhetoric from white conservatives has had one of its intended effects: blunting reform efforts. Atlanta\u2019s relatively progressive, Black political leadership has incrementally turned away from talk about reform and toward whatever can get the body count down, now.
\n
\n
\n
Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in her office on Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022.<\/p>\n
\nPhoto: Ben Gray\/AP<\/p><\/div>
\nFani Willis,<\/u> the Fulton County district attorney, sees gang prosecutions and state RICO charges as the answer to the uptick in violence. RICO\u00a0\u2014 short for the\u00a0<\/strong>Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act \u2014 is a law meant to take down drug cartels and mafia syndicates by piecing together individual crimes to argue that they\u2019re part of a larger criminal enterprise. RICO cases\u00a0\u2014 state or federal \u2014 are hard to beat.<\/p>\nThe Young Slime Life, or YSL, indictment has 28 defendants, only a handful of whom can pay for a robust defense out of pocket. The wide net of the charges is designed to get people to fold and offer testimony to save their own skin.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is convinced that it\u2019s a good tactic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis sweeping indictment will come at a great expense to taxpayers and all Atlantans who would prefer violence intervention and thoughtful investment in solutions proven to be effective,\u201d said Devin Franklin, an attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights. \u201cThe Fulton County District Attorney\u2019s Office has invested tremendously in crafting a narrative of dangerousness in Atlanta without providing data to the public substantiating the contention that so-called repeat offenders are primarily to blame for harm in Atlanta.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some critics hold that the targets in this case are Black people who have risen from poverty, that perhaps the charges are a prosecutorial overreach in the face of political pressure to act. These critics would\u00a0argue that RICO cases should be reserved for people with institutional power, like transnational criminal cartels, mafia crews, and corporate malefactors.<\/p>\n
Should Black criminal enterprises be immune to drawing a RICO charge? The idea is fundamentally insulting.<\/blockquote>\nThere might be something to it, but to make that argument one must overlook the role of the music industry in Atlanta \u2014 an institution, one might say \u2014 and its intertwined relationship\u00a0with the gang violence. Should Black criminal enterprises be immune to drawing a RICO charge? The idea is fundamentally insulting. Poor Black people\u2019s lives lost in street warfare deserve the protection of the law.<\/p>\n
When looking at the problem of street violence and its connection to Atlanta\u2019s music industry as a question of racism, consider the corporate parentage of Young Thug\u2019s label. Len Blavatnik is the\u00a0owner of Warner Music Group, which owns the 300 Entertainment label\u00a0that distributes the music of Young Thug on his YSL label. Blavatnik is a Russian oligarch who helped other oligarchs under sanctions divest their holdings. He donated $1 million to former President Donald Trump’s slush fund\/inaugural committee.<\/p>\n
If Atlanta\u2019s musical infrastructure is cancerous because of the way street gangs are using their connection to music studios and recording executives to recruit new members into acts of violence, a RICO prosecution is an attack on structural power.<\/p>\n
Young Thug\u2019s rise<\/u> to stardom ran in parallel with a gang war between feuding sets of Bloods. The conflict erupted in 2015, following the assassination of Bloods gang leader Donovan \u201cPeanut\u201d Thomas. Prosecutors allege that Williams \u2014 Young Thug \u2014 rented the car used by five gang members, including rising rap star Yak Gotti, to conduct\u00a0the drive-by shooting that killed Thomas.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment, Williams spoke with Kyle Oree, the leader of the cultlike gang Sex Money Murda, shortly after Thomas\u2019s death. Prosecutors appear to have captured a call to Oree in jail,\u00a0in which the hit is purportedly discussed. A few days after talking to Oree, Young Thug went on social media to argue that people who \u201cget right into the courtroom and tell the God\u2019s honest truth don\u2019t get it, y\u2019all n****s\u00a0need to get fucking killed, bro, from me and YSL.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bringing charges against a group like the Young Slime Life gang proved challenging. Prosecutors had to disentangle YSL the music label, which is an imprint of Warner Music, from YSL the street gang, an outgrowth of South Atlanta organized crime around Cleveland Avenue, the latest iteration of previous gangs like Raised on Cleveland and 30 Deep.<\/p>\n
Thomas\u2019s murder divided Atlanta into two warring camps: YSL and YFN,\u00a0another Blood gang in Atlanta loyal to Thomas. YFN is fronted by another popular rapper, Rayshawn Bennett, known as YFN Lucci.<\/p>\n
The conflict only accelerated during the pandemic, though violence appears to have slowed down since the May 9 indictment and arrests.<\/p>\n
Lucci is in Fulton County Jail \u2014 somewhere carefully isolated from Young Thug \u2014 awaiting trial on gang charges and a felony murder charge from a botched 2021 drive-by shooting on YSL gang members. Lucci allegedly drove the car. When their targets killed the triggerman in return fire, Lucci ditched the body in the middle of the street and sped away, the YFN gang indictment said.
\n
\n
\n
Rapper YFN Lucci performs on Jan.\u00a05, 2021, in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\nPhoto: Paras Griffin\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>
\nThe arrest of alleged YSL gang member Christian \u201cBig Bhris\u201d Eppinger on February 7 ended in a bloody affair, with Eppinger allegedly firing six shots into an Atlanta cop during the arrest. Eppinger\u2019s arrest started a 90-day clock ticking, with court rules demanding an indictment before then to continue to hold him. Willis, the district attorney, used it to build the broader YSL gang case.<\/p>\n
The cases are sure to leverage Georgia\u2019s unique gang law. Normally, prosecutors can\u2019t use rap lyrics or Instagram photos of men holding guns while throwing up gang signs as evidence of a crime in an armed robbery case or an assault, because alone these things have nothing to do with those crimes. A judge would consider it improperly prejudicial.<\/p>\n
But in a gang terrorism case under Georgia law, the prosecution has to prove that other crimes were committed as part of gang activity. So all evidence of gang activity becomes admissible, and that evidence can be used in the trials of all the other alleged gang members charged under the same statute. The Georgia law can be devastating for the defense: Juries see mountains of evidence from a wide array of crimes, along with testimony about gang signs and initiations.<\/p>\n
Police and civic<\/u> leaders began 2022 with calls for Atlantans to engage in nonviolent conflict resolution, because the city\u2019s murders appeared to be driven by inexplicable spontaneous rage and not, say, the more statistically predictable drug deal gone bad or robbery attempt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, folks are going to the finality of any argument, like the end of the argument is to end you, to end your life,\u201d said Andre Dickens, Atlanta\u2019s newly elected mayor, at a \u201cClippers and Cops\u201d barbershop forum in January. \u201cWe\u2019re finding that the person that\u2019s dead also had a gun. So the person that shot was thinking, \u2018I\u2019ve got to shoot you before you shoot me,\u2019 because so many people have guns right now.\u201d He added, \u201cA lot of times I\u2019m seeing these things happening because people just don\u2019t know how to settle a dispute \u2014 without going to a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historically, Atlanta voters have picked their mayors based on issues of housing, transportation, and city service problems. A poll ahead of the Atlanta mayor\u2019s race last year, though, showed that 48 percent of people considered crime to be the most important problem in the city, with about 61 percent of respondents saying they live within a mile of an area where they\u2019d be afraid to walk alone at night.<\/p>\n