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BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — After two years of investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged over 40 alleged members and associates of Jamaica Plain's Heath Street Gang with racketeering conspiracy, firearms, financial fraud, wire fraud, COVID fraud and drug trafficking.
“Enough is enough,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy in a press conference at the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse in Boston Wednesday afternoon.
Federal investigators said that the Heath Street Gang mainly operates out of the Mildred C. Hailey Apartments, which is a public housing development in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. The gang was formed in the 1980s.
14 gang members were charged with RICO conspiracy, or the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, while others faced ”drug offenses, firearms offenses and financial crimes, including COVID fraud and brazen organized retail theft,” said Levy.
Gang members were also implicated in multiple shootings, including three murders. “Some of those shootings left innocent victims in crossfire, including a nine-year-old girl who was severely injured attending a family gathering.”
The federal investigators also claimed that the gang members were “using juveniles as lookouts, using juveniles to hold guns and drugs and using juveniles to engage in shootings.”
“And they bragged about their violence” on social media by posting music videos, said Levy. One lyric allegedly said, “I bought 100 guns with this PUA,” which is Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
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At the press conference, Levy explained the impacts of the Heath Street Gang’s violence on the surrounding community, despite Boston’s overall murder rate having gone down this past year.
“The statistics around shootings and murders in Boston have continued to drop, and a ton of people deserve credit for that,” said Levy, in reference to a recent report from the Suffolk County District Attorney that showed the murder rate decreased in 2023.
However, Levy pointed out that while overall data improved, people still deal with violence regularly in some neighborhoods. “If you live in a community that’s threatened with violence on a daily basis, the city-wide numbers don’t mean nearly as much.”
Levy said this is the start of the “crack down,” and just the beginning of the healing process.
WBZ NewsRadio's Madison Rogers (@MadisonWBZ) reports.
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