Manhattan prosecutors indicted 30 people on Thursday in a takedown of gang members from three groups that it said were responsible for half of the shootings in Washington Heights and Inwood this year.
Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said the gangs were responsible for seven deaths and 18 shootings starting in late 2018, after one man murdered a rival.
The war that followed plagued the Upper Manhattan neighborhoods with trauma, violence and fear. The indictment came as the city was struggling with a rise in youth crime over the last seven years and authorities were continuing to dismantle gangs with sweeping indictments.
“I want to be very clear: If you traffic illegal firearms into Manhattan, or use guns to commit violence against fellow Manhattanites, you will be held accountable,” Mr. Bragg said.
Those indicted included 18 members of the 200 gang, eight members from the 6 Block crew and four others from the Own Every Dollar organization.
Charges included various conspiracy counts, gun possession and at least 11 counts of second-degree murder.
The police are still investigating the gangs, but authorities were able to put a dent in crime in the neighborhood, said Jerry O’Sullivan, an assistant chief of the Detective Bureau for the Police Department.
The conflict began six years ago after Steven Marinez, 26, of the 6 Block gang murdered Jorge Rodriguez, 19, in the rival 200 crew, prosecutors said. Mr. Marinez was charged with second-degree murder.
After Mr. Rodriguez was killed, prosecutors said the 6 Block crew armed itself in anticipation of retaliation. One member helped the gang trade in illegal guns and in the process, sold 17 firearms to an undercover police officer, the release said.
Authorities seized 31 illegal guns in all, according to the district attorney’s office.
Much of the gang warfare was enabled by the internet. On Instagram, crew members threatened each other and discussed retaliating in private messages.
Members of the 200 gang talked about attack plans on the social media site and about acquiring weapons, court documents show. In one conversation, a member told another that he had shot a rival, the documents said.
In one message, a 20-year-old man told a rival that a nearby hospital did not have a trauma unit so he should be careful, according to court records.
“You might not make it to the next hospital,” the man said.
Some of the crimes prosecutors attributed to the gangs included the nonfatal shooting of a 19-year-old pregnant woman who was sitting in a parked car, illegally trafficking guns from Ohio, engaging in shootouts over marijuana-selling territory and the killings of four bystanders.
Just this summer, a member of 200 shot at a rival, missed, killed two bystanders and injured another, prosecutors said. And last month, three people in the 200 gang shot at 6 Block members during a drive-by and killed another bystander, according to the district attorney’s office.
The indictment on Thursday is the latest in a series of gang takedowns in New York City. Last year, the Queens district attorney’s office served up a 151-count indictment against 33 gang members after a nearly three-year investigation.
In May, 18 teenagers and young men belonging to street gangs were charged in connection with a wave of gun violence in Brooklyn that resulted in the deaths of two 16-year-old boys and the injuries of 10 others during a three-year period. Most of those arrested were linked to two gangs in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights.
A few months later, authorities announced charges against more than 30 members of the Slaughtery and 1300 gangs in the Bronx for a string of about 20 shootings.
Across the city, murders were down nearly 5 percent as of Nov. 10 compared with the same period last year, according to police data. Shootings were also down about 6 percent. The Police Department recently touted an overall decline in major crimes, even though rape, robbery and felony assaults were ticking upward.
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