Gangbusters: How a Street Tough, Elite Homicide Unit Took Down New York's Most Dangerous Gang

How do you rid a city of a brutal crack-trafficking gang whose members have held a seven-year reign of terror and murdered at least 60 people, many of them in public, without threatening the lives of your witnesses? Pull them up by the roots. In the early 1990s in New York City, a 19-year-old college student was shot to death while driving down a highway when the leader of the Red-Tops (also known as the Wild Cowboys) decided to test fire his new Uzi. What began as one policeman's search for an answer to this senseless murder eventually turned into an investigation into a vast conspiracy of crime, an investigation that involved police from Manhattan and the South Bronx and New York's only dedicated drug gang unit, the Homicide Investigations Unit (HIU). It turned out to be the biggest and one of the longest investigations ever conducted by the HIU (four years to bring the gang's leaders to prosecution, six months of trial), and was unusual in that it involved so many agencies.

Michael Stone details their investigation almost moment by moment. In the process, he reveals both the layered conspiracies in the world of the illicit drug trade and the twin issues of turf and credit that lead to fiefdoms and strife in law enforcement circles. His portrayal of the drug trade infrastructure--with its layers of managers, enforcers, runners, pitchers, and lookouts--and its tinderbox world of threats and counterthreats is eye opening and frightening. The same is true for the inner workings of the halls of justice. While there are certainly heroes in this story (a number of cops and attorneys literally dedicated their lives to bringing down the Cowboys), it becomes clear why the law is often unsuccessful in defeating gangs. Resistance to working with other offices, lack of communication, strong personalities, and intense possessiveness are but a few factors. At times the story is almost too complex to follow, with a huge cast of characters and a horrifying trail of crimes. But hang on: the trial near the end of the book ties it all together. --Lesley Reed