![]() ![]() It has been raging in varying forms since 2015 and went into overdrive during the pandemic, reversing more than a decade of the city’s gains against violence. This is what Atlanta’s gang war looks like. Police described him as a member of a gang, allegedly killed by rivals in Young Slime Life as an act of reprisal. Or it can be a plain hit, like the murder of Shymel Drinks, whose body was found beneath an overpass just south of downtown in March. Sometimes that can look like the casually brutal murder of Anthony Frazier, a security guard at a seafood restaurant on Cleveland Avenue who took a bullet point-blank in the back of the head last month. ![]() A small subset of shooters want to make sure their victims aren’t just bleeding but dead. ![]() The problem, as can be gleaned from police reports, appears to be terrifyingly basic: The cops increasingly describe killings as targeted. ![]() The city is on pace for roughly 170 murders this year, compared with 99 in 2019. The homicide rate is up by about one-third year-to-date and about 60 percent over pre-pandemic levels. While official claims about gang culpability for street violence ought to be taken with a grain of salt - such figures are often pulled out of thin air - Young Slime Life, the gang Williams is alleged to lead, left a trail of very real bodies, the victims of a seven-year gang feud. But Atlanta today faces a rash of violence that distorts policies and murders good intentions. Previous Fulton County prosecutors have been reluctant to invoke the law, concerned about the abuses of mass incarceration and its power to stigmatize Black defendants. The entire city paused to take inventory on the massive gang arrest, with 27 other people - including a second superstar rapper, Sergio “Gunna” Kitchens. Atlanta’s city-contracted wrecker service diverted all its trucks to haul his many cars out of the rented property in Buckhead where police found him May 9. The jail, on Rice Street, shut down the intake of other arrestees to process him in. Jeffery Lamar Williams - the celebrated Atlanta trap recording artist better known as Young Thug - walked into Fulton County Jail in May to a standing ovation. ![]()
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