NY Gangs Use Twitter To Plan Crimes; Cross Between Gangster’s Paradise and White & Nerdy?

December 1st, 2009

Twitter can be used to disperse gangs of unruly tweens, so why shouldn’t gangs use it to plan crimes?

From the Daily News, H/T Gizomodo, Gangs in New York talk Twitter: Use tweets to trash-talk rivals, plan fights:

The city’s street gangs are becoming tweet gangs.

Manhattan’s young thugs have turned to Twitter, and the cops who track them are fast behind, the Daily News has learned.

A boy shot in the leg weeks earlier on Lenox Ave. may have been targeted because of a battle the Original Young Gangsters crew started on Twitter.

A basic search of the social-networking site for OYG or Jeff Mob, the gang based in the Jefferson Houses in East Harlem, yields shout-outs and throwdowns.

“I knoe bitches from oyg that would dead mob yah s–t in harlem,” one girl wrote in a series of tweets aimed at drawing out a rival for a fight.

But Twitter can also help the police and community organizers assist in these neighborhoods.

Harlem pastor Vernon Williams, who runs Perfect Peace Ministry Youth Outreach, said his staff uses Twitter, MySpace and instant messaging to keep track of 4,000 at-risk teens.

A week ago, Twitter helped the volunteers stop a street war after they saw the Get Money Boys, based in the St. Nicholas Houses on W. 127 St., exchanging threats with Goodfellas and The New Dons, based just a few blocks north.

“They were threatening to go and hurt two people,” said Williams, 51, who sent staff out to find the tweeters.

Gang violence & Twitter? I suppose this story is a mix between Gangster’s Paradise and Wierd Al’s White & Nerdy?

Check out my other posts on Twitter here.