NEWBURGH – Authorities have charged 20 people on a federal indictment on charges of racketeering, narcotics and firearms offenses in connection with a street gang known as “Southside” in Newburgh.
View list of defendants
The investigation that led to the charges involved the Orange County
District Attorney’s Office; FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives; and Newburgh City Police, all part of the FBI Hudson Valley
Safe Streets Task Force.
Acting US Attorney Joon Kim said the Southside gang members “pumped dangerous drugs into their community and controlled their Newburgh neighborhoods with violence.” He said some of the defendants “allegedly protected their drug territory with shootings.”
Lt. Joseph Cortez, the officer in charge of the Newburgh City Police Department, said the arrests were part of the continued joint efforts of several law enforcement agencies. “We don’t just do thinks for a matter of course, we do it because we feel that it is going to make a different in the lives of the people in the City of Newburgh,” Lopez said.
One incident the authorities noted, on December 11, 2015, one suspect, Skyler Davis, also known as “S-Dot,” shot at a car in which members of a rival Newburgh gang, known as the Yellow Tape Money Gang, or “YTMG,” were driving. The shots cause the car to crash, which injured members of the YTMG gang in the vicinity of South and Liberty streets.
Other members of the Southside gang were involved in conspiracies to distribute narcotics in and around Newburgh including conspiracy to distribute more than one kilogram of heroin or more than 280 grams of crack cocaine.
Eighteen of the defendants were arrested on Wednesday. Two others, Michael Simmons and Dwight McArdle, remain at large.
