4 Members Of Violent Rival Gangs Indicted In South Bronx

NEW YORK - "Fort Apache" was liberated yesterday.

Police and federal agents busted leaders and members of two violent, multimillion-dollar South Bronx drug-trafficking gangs believed to be responsible for 15 murders since the mid-1980s.

A total of 31 men who are members of the Nasty Boys, the Bryant Boys or its spinoff groups, the Beniquez Organization and the Stroud Organization, were named in two racketeering indictments unsealed yesterday, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White.

Of the 31 defendants, 14 were arrested late Monday and yesterday morning while 14 others were already in police custody on related charges, White said.

Officials are still seeking three more men at large, two of whom are believed to be in Puerto Rico.

The gangs, officials said, had instilled fear in the residents of the commercial Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx for about a decade with drug trafficking and murders.

With the federal crackdown on the crack and heroin drug dealers, the community has reclaimed its streets, said Capt. Steven Silks, the commanding officer of the 41st police precinct, which earned the name "Fort Apache" in the 1970s as an outpost against crime.

The heroin and crack dealing gangs operated in residential dwellings in a one-block radius of Seneca and Bryant avenues, with the two opposing gangs - the Nasty Boys and the Bryant Boys - operating at locations across the street from each other, White said.

"It was paralysis caused by the fear, the intimidation and the violence that occurred on the streets," she said. "People were afraid to come out."

Carlo Boccia, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office, pointed out that the arrests do not put an end to drug dealing in the neighborhood forever.

"Other organizations certainly will fill the void," Boccia said. "What you do in this instance is disrupt the traffic . . . allowing the community some breathing time."