U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said Tuesday a recent batch of drug and gun indictments have interrupted the attempted resurgence of a south Minneapolis street gang that his office first went after nearly a decade ago.
A joint federal and state initiative targeting violent crime in the Twin Cities has so far yielded charges against more than 70 alleged gang members since its launch two years ago. On Tuesday, Luger said his office has turned its focus to the 10z/20z street gang in south Minneapolis — a group that investigators said began attempts to re-emerge late last year after a period of relative dormancy prompted by an earlier round of federal prosecutions during Luger’s first term in 2015.
“It immediately became a priority of law enforcement and our office to bring charges quickly to ensure that the 10z/20z could not re-emerge and would not be in a position to increase violence in Minneapolis this summer,” Luger said at a news conference announcing the indictments, each filed separately from February up until last week.
According to an FBI agent’s affidavit filed in one case last month, the 10z/20z gang is involved in narcotics and firearms trafficking in south Minneapolis, with territory spanning the area bordered to the west and north by Interstate 35W from 18th Street E. to Lake Street. The focal point of the gang’s alleged criminal activity is the area around Peavey Park at Franklin and Chicago avenues, where it “regularly sells controlled substances.”
Luger’s office, working with the FBI and MPD, began prosecuting members of the gang in 2015, targeting “leaders, shooters, and dangerous drug traffickers within the gang, and substantially diminished the gang’s influence and standing in south Minneapolis.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Tuesday that gang investigators from his department began a joint investigation with the FBI last fall based on intelligence that the gang was attempting to re-emerge and resume drug and gun trafficking. O’Hara said officers working on the 10 cases linked to the gang recovered 13 firearms – including one outfitted with a machine gun conversion device, or “switch” – and “significant quantities of cash, crack cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.”
“They are among some of the worst of the worst,” O’Hara said.
The following alleged 10z/20z gang members have been indicted solely on illegal firearm possession charges: Don Buddie Austin, 32; Albert William Bratton, 28; Billy Ismael Hawkins, 34; and Joshua Benjamin Scott, 37. Austin Joevon Toy, 22, is being charged with possession of a machine gun.
