Remember when I said be careful on what you post on social media? Some gang members learned the hard way when they were busted for brandishing guns in a music video leaving cops to see their activity.
Gang members busted
At least eight reputed Bloods from Jersey City have been arrested after a music video showing them brandishing guns was posted on YouTube.
The video, “D.F.G. MoneyCello,” was posted last year and came to the attention of the Jersey City Street Crimes Unit several months ago, according to police. In it, officials believe one real gun is waved around and pointed at the camera. Experts couldn’t say, though, whether a second gun is real or a replica, police said.
“While ostensibly an amateur music video, (the video) is in fact a promotion of this criminal street gang and a threat against opponents of this criminal street gang,” the police report says.
NJ.com reports last Wednesday, four squads from the Street Crimes Unit along with the JCPD Warrant Squad, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office and the U.S. Marshals Service fanned out to various locations in the city to make the arrests.
Arrested as members of the MoneyCello Line of the NHB set of the Bloods street gang were: Marvin Jones, 25, of Gardner Avenue; Randolph Bradley, 26, of Monticello Avenue; Cleveland Gathers, 22, of Brinkerhoff Street; Damar Bowens, 19, of Astor Place; Randolph Black, 19, of Salem-Lafayette Court; Darius Thomas, 21, of Woodlawn Avenue; Timothy Hill, 23, of Van Nostrand Avenue; and Rashida Thomas, 25, of Princeton Avenue, a police report says.
Others not said to be Bloods members were also arrested and additional arrest warrants have been issued. The arrests of some of those charged resulted in additional drug charges when officers searching for the video group found drugs and paraphernalia in their homes, officials said.
According to the police report, Jones, Hill and Bowens handle the guns in the 3-minute, 39-second video, which police believe was made between May 25 and May 31, 2014, on Monticello Avenue and Brinkerhoff Street and other locations.
During the filming, officials believe, crimes committed were unlawful possession of a handgun, possession of a handgun by a felon and possession of a handgun by a minor, the report says.
The investigation, police said, is continuing.
WARNING: The following video contains explicit language.
