Latin Kings

William "King Homicide" Sosa, charged with heading a Latin Kings street gang that engaged in drug dealing, murder, kidnapping and rape, told a federal jury yesterday that violence and narcotics trafficking are "against the rules" of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation. Taking the witness stand in his defense, Sosa, 27, acknowledged that some "rotten apples" had given the Latin Kings a bad reputation, but said that he neither took part in nor condoned criminality during the four-year period that federal prosecutors say he headed the Philadelphia branch of the national organization.

The prosecution concluded its case yesterday in the federal racketeering-murder trial of reputed Latin Kings leader William "King Homicide" Sosa and seven codefendants. During five weeks of testimony, Sosa, 27, has been described as the volatile leader of a criminal enterprise who ordered killings, kidnappings and beatings while heading up the North Philadelphia-based street gang. The case, which could go to the jury next week, includes charges of murder, murder conspiracy, kidnapping, rape, assault and drug dealing.

He called himself "King Homicide," and, according to federal authorities, he oversaw an underworld reign of terror that included murder, kidnappings, brutal beatings, torture and rape. This week, William "Homi" Sosa and seven top associates will go on trial in U.S. District Court in a racketeering case aimed at the fledgling Philadelphia chapter of the Almighty Latin King Nation. Sosa, 27, was described as the "Inca," or leader, of the local Latino mob family in a 26-count indictment handed up last year.

Gangs and gang populations, and their attending violence, appear to be on the rise in New Jersey, according to a state police survey released yesterday. The 2004 survey showed an estimated 700 gangs and nearly 17,000 members. About one in five homicides in the state is gang-related, according to state police statistics. The home turf of 70 percent of the gangs is in the state's urban centers, according to the survey. And almost 60 percent of them are home-grown cells of national "supergangs," such as the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings.

William Sosa, the alleged leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the Latin Kings street gang, was arrested without incident Thursday in Brick Township in Ocean County, N.J. FBI agents, assisted by the Brick Township Police Department, arrested Sosa, 25, who is known as "King Homicide. " Two other males and a female were also taken into custody. During the arrest, authorities locked down a nearby elementary school and diverted traffic, FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams said yesterday.

Federal authorities yesterday charged 17 alleged members of the Latin Kings gang with racketeering related to murder, kidnapping, assault and heroin distribution. U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan alleged that the local chapter of the Latin Kings, known as the Philadelphia Lion Tribe, "sought to maintain their territory, power and profits through intimidation and violence. " "This organization represents itself as a law-abiding, benevolent group," Meehan said at a news conference.

He is the new face of organized crime in New Jersey, but he wore a hood, dark sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead yesterday when he testified before the State Commission of Investigation. Identified only as "Rey," the admitted drug dealer and "warlord" for a chapter of the Latin Kings was the final witness at the first of two days of hearings into underworld activity in the Garden State. His story supported the themes touched on by nearly a dozen law enforcement officials who also appeared before the panel - "super gangs," particularly the Latin Kings and the Bloods, are emerging as dominant players in the underworld, spreading from urban centers to the surrounding suburbs.

In what they called a crippling blow to a major criminal syndicate, New Jersey law enforcement officials announced the arrest yesterday of 41 members of the Latin Kings street gang. The indictments on drug, weapons and racketeering charges mark the end of "Operation Catapult," a 14-month investigation targeting the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, as it refers to itself. "The Kings' home is their castle," Keith Bevacqui, a detective in the state police Street Gang Unit, said after a news conference in Newark.

When federal agents broke up the drug ring allegedly run by Enrique "Rick" Perez last month, it was a major victory for Camden. Members of the Perez Organization, as it was called on the street, made millions peddling narcotics, authorities said, and have been charged in the shooting death of a Rutgers student. Their headquarters, authorities said, was a barbershop at Fifth and Vine Streets, less than a mile from the federal courthouse downtown. But the indictments of Perez and 10 of his associates have created an underworld power vacuum in North Camden.

When Delaware state troopers this summer arrested a suspect in a string of armed carjackings in New Castle and Chester Counties, they found the tattoo Sur 13 etched all over his left arm and hand. The police knew immediately whom they had nabbed: a member of one of the increasingly violent Mexican street gangs that have staked their bases in the suburbs' bucolic reaches. For the last five years, Sur 13 has been scrawled in graffiti throughout migrant-labor communities on the Philadelphia region's rural rim, from the mushroom houses of southern Chester County and northern Delaware to the vegetable farms and greenhouse nurseries of Cumberland County in South Jersey.