The Flocc street gang had an unusual mix of members. It formed out of an alliance, law enforcement officials said, between two groups that have traditionally been rivals: the Crips and the Bloods. As the gang muscled its way into the drug trade in Far Rockaway and South Jamaica, Queens, and police officers on foot patrols started proving a nuisance to their business, at least one of their members hatched a plan to shoot them from a rooftop, the officials said.
On Friday, law enforcement authorities announced dozens of arrests as a result of a two-year investigation into the gang that they said tied it to at least 2 murders, 11 shootings, a home-invasion robbery and the distribution of cocaine and heroin.
The investigation included thousands of hours of wiretap surveillance by the Police Department’s gang squad and the Queens district attorney’s narcotics investigations bureau.
The investigation began as an examination of narcotics trafficking by Crips and Bloods gangs in the area, officials said. But last year, investigators determined that four gangs with Crips affiliations had joined forces with individual Blood members to create a gang known as Flocc, a derivation of the word “flock,” with the “k” replaced by a “c” for Crip.
The police said 104 people had been arrested and 8 were still being sought. Investigators also seized 60 guns, including AK-47s, Uzi submachine guns and dozens of semiautomatic handguns and revolvers.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, stood before a table covered with guns on Friday at 1 Police Plaza to announce the arrests. One of the guns displayed was referred to by the police as a 9-millimeter assault rifle.
That was the rifle the police say Keith Livingston, 40, of South Jamaica, planned to use to shoot officers on foot patrol in Jamaica. The police arrested him in September after hearing him discuss his plans on a wiretapped phone, they said. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal possession of a weapon and conspiracy.
The investigation also led to the arrest of Farrad Smith, 23, a former correction officer who the police say was storing weapons for high-ranking gang members. Police officers searching his Far Rockaway apartment said they found a 9-millimeter pistol that had been stolen from another correction officer, a 12-gauge shotgun and a loaded AK-47.
The police said they arrested the leaders of all four gangs tied to Flocc, including the person officials said was the leader of the entire operation, Gquan Lloyd, 23. He has been charged with criminal possession of a weapon and possession of stolen property. He was being held on $350,000 bail.
nytimes.com
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