8 NJ Bloods Arrested For Showing Guns In Video
At least eight reputed Bloods from Jersey City have been arrested after a music video showing them brandishing guns was posted on YouTube where the whole world — including the police — could watch.
The video, “D.F.G. MoneyCello,” was posted last year and came to the attention of the Jersey City Street Crimes Unit several months ago, according to police. In it, officials believe one real gun is waved around and pointed at the camera. Experts couldn’t say, though, whether a second gun is real or a replica, police said.
“While ostensibly an amateur music video, (the video) is in fact a promotion of this criminal street gang and a threat against opponents of this criminal street gang,” the police report says.
Among the more printable lines in the expletive-filled video are: “Bad boys, we make music”; “I can win every beef”; and “Shooters all around me.”
The video ends with someone fanning out cash and another person holding what police say appears to be a cup of suspected marijuana bags.
Starting at 5:46 a.m. last Wednesday, four squads from the Street Crimes Unit along with the JCPD Warrant Squad, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office and the U.S. Marshals Service fanned out to various locations in the city to make the arrests.
Arrested as members of the MoneyCello Line of the NHB set of the Bloods street gang were: Marvin Jones, 25, of Gardner Avenue; Randolph Bradley, 26, of Monticello Avenue; Cleveland Gathers, 22, of Brinkerhoff Street; Damar Bowens, 19, of Astor Place; Randolph Black, 19, of Salem-Lafayette Court; Darius Thomas, 21, of Woodlawn Avenue; Timothy Hill, 23, of Van Nostrand Avenue; and Rashida Thomas, 25, of Princeton Avenue, a police report says.
Others not said to be Bloods members were also arrested and additional arrest warrants have been issued. The arrests of some of those charged resulted in additional drug charges when officers searching for the video group found drugs and paraphernalia in their homes, officials said.
According to the police report, Jones, Hill and Bowens handle the guns in the 3-minute, 39-second video, which police believe was made between May 25 and May 31, 2014, on Monticello Avenue and Brinkerhoff Street and other locations.
During the filming, officials believe, crimes committed were unlawful possession of a handgun, possession of a handgun by a felon and possession of a handgun by a minor, the report says.
Gathers, Bowens, Hill and Jones were arrested without incident, police said, while Black was busted in his bedroom after two other people who were in his home had jumped out of and then back in a back window, police said.
The search for Thomas took two tries, but he was eventually found in bed with his girlfriend, who, police said, had a red marijuana bag sticking out of her bra.
Thompson was found at work at a warehouse where she told police, “I have mollys,” the report said, and was then allowed to remove 18 capsules and a bag with molly powder from an orifice. Molly is street term for MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug Ecstasy.
The investigation, police said, is continuing.
Those arrested face varying charges. Many made their first court appearances on the charges Wednesday and yesterday in Central Judicial Processing court in Jersey City
