PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Authorities said music videos helped to identify alleged gang members and solve nearly three dozen shootings and several homicides in South and Southwest Philadelphia. Some of the victims were children, including one as young as 5-years-old.
After a lengthy grand jury investigation, 19 people will face charges, all allegedly connected to gangs, including the Young Bag Chasers (YBC), Campers Campers Klappers (CCK), Parkside Killers (PSK) gangs.
Authorities say all of the violence happened in South and Southwest Philadelphia, including a double shooting in September 2022.
One of the victims hit in this incident was only 8 years old.
Prosecutor Bill Fritze with the Gun Violence Task Force said members of a gang will shoot someone, and then the group will rap about it, posting it to social media and YouTube.
“This is arrogance. This is: I am going to go out and do a shooting and I am going to mock you. I am going to mock you and I am going to perpetrate that violence. It becomes cyclical because then the people who see, the friends of the victim who was shot, want to retaliate,” he said.
Two of the defendants, Anthony Woodson and Nasir Wells, are already in prison for the murder of 15-year-old track star Antonio Walker Jr. He was gunned down in Southwest Philly in March 2021.
“And you see time and time again the same individuals committing these violent crimes,” the prosecutor said.
Fritze credits the grand jury, which worked for two years to take violence off the streets of Philadelphia.
“Regular ordinary people sat around and they figured it out. They identified the people who were in a gang. They identified the gang. They identified the crimes they perpetuated,” he said.