Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll get details on a Venezuelan gang that has emerged in New York City. We’ll also find out why the final screenings of the film “La Chimera” last week were packed.
The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — a feared criminal organization that concentrates on sex trafficking, human smuggling and drug dealing — has emerged in New York City amid the surge of migrants in the last two years. I asked my colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní, who, with Chelsia Rose Marcius, wrote about Tren de Aragua’s arrival in New York, to explain what officials are doing about the gang’s widening presence.
What do officials in New York blame Tren de Aragua for? Have the gang’s activities affected the crime statistics the police compile and release?
The Police Department has said that the gang is behind a string of thefts in retail stores, and that it has especially targeted high-end merchandise in department stores. The police have also connected Tren de Aragua to ride-by robberies that officials say gang members pull off on scooters, snatching cellphones and expensive watches from people on the street.
Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has said there has been an increase in scooter-related robbery patterns since more migrants began arriving in the city two years ago. The police reported 415 incidents at the beginning of June. As of Sept. 10, that number has doubled, according to Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives.
Not all of those incidents are related to Tren de Aragua, Chief Kenny said. The gang has also been linked to a handful of high-profile crimes. In June, a 19-year-old Venezuelan migrant who the police said admitted he was a member of Tren de Aragua was accused of shooting two police officers when they tried to pull him over while he was riding a scooter.
But it’s important to note that overall crime in New York City has gone down as the number of migrants in the city has gone up. Most major categories of crime — including murder and shootings — have decreased in the last year.
Where are the Tren de Aragua members who are in New York?
Informants the police have interviewed, including gang members jailed on Rikers Island, have told the police that its members live, or have lived, in the city’s migrant shelters. Some have probably moved out of the migrant shelters, where no one is supposed to stay more than 30 or 60 days, although extensions are often granted.
How many Tren de Aragua members are here?
The police are working on that.
So far, they’ve registered 24 members in the city’s criminal gang database, which the police say has 14,000 identified members from 496 gangs in the city.
But they believe the number of Tren de Aragua members is much higher than 24, in part because the criteria to label someone a gang member are very strict.
Let’s take a step back. When did Tren de Aragua members turn up in New York?
Chief Kenny told us that federal law enforcement officials alerted the New York police about the gang’s emerging presence in the Northeast earlier this year.
Criminal cases and arrests from across the country suggest that members began arriving over the past few years as the number of people crossing the southern border, especially Venezuelans, surged during the Biden administration.
Why are law enforcement officials — at the local level in places like New York, and at the federal level — concerned about Tren de Aragua?
It’s a new threat that did not exist in the United States until recently, and officials are hoping to prevent it from becoming entrenched.
The gang became notorious in some Latin American countries, disconcerting the region’s police forces as it expanded its illicit businesses of sex trafficking and drug dealing through extortion, kidnappings and murders. The Biden administration recently designated it a transcontinental criminal organization.
Indeed, the gang has already become a political flashpoint in the United States, a go-to target for Republicans raising fears about a so-called migrant crime wave ahead of the presidential election.
What have informants told the police in New York about how the gang operates?
The police say the gang’s members have been quick to blend in.
The gang is believed to recruit Tren de Aragua members arriving in the United States from inside the city’s migrant shelters.
According to an internal police document we obtained, informants told the police they communicated through invitation-only WhatsApp groups, and had also focused on dealing Tusi — a pink, powdery synthetic drug sometimes called “pink cocaine.” It’s often laced with ketamine, MDMA or fentanyl.
Tren de Aragua members in Latin America have not been known to have conspicuous tattoos. But informants the police have interviewed here said some members of the gang had tattoos of crowns, anchors and clocks, among other symbols.
The New York Police Department opened a post in Bogotá last month. What did that have to do with Tren de Aragua?
The New York police have conducted “fact finding” missions this year in Colombia, where Tren de Aragua has a presence, to learn about the gang from the Colombian authorities. Police officials say their new liaison post in Bogotá will be focused on drug trafficking and migration.
Weather
Expect partly sunny skies, with a high near 71. It will be mostly cloudy in the evening, with temperatures in the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
The latest New York news
Interim police commissioner’s home is searched: Thomas Donlon, above, whom Mayor Eric Adams chose this month to lead the Police Department, said that federal agents had searched his homes and seized materials.
N.Y.P.D. is accused of minimizing bystander’s wound: A lawyer for a 26-year-old woman who was hit when police officers shot at a knife-wielding man at a Brooklyn subway station said that officials had understated the severity of her injury.
Saving the city’s diners: A younger generation of chefs is tweaking the menus, overhauling the interiors and agonizing about raising prices at diners on the brink.
New York Philharmonic players reach contract deal: Musicians will get a 30 percent raise over three years, making them among the highest paid in the country.
A new director for the Frick: Axel Rüger, the head of the Royal Academy of Arts, will replace Ian Wardropper in the spring as the museum’s director.
The last night of ‘La Chimera’
Broadway has its first-nighters. My colleague Alyce McFadden discovered that the film “La Chimera” had last-nighters, people who packed a theater in Greenwich Village for the final showings. Here is what she learned from fans who stood in long lines for hours before the screenings:
“La Chimera” had been playing every day for almost six months at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village. No film had enjoyed a longer run there since the Richard Linklater coming-of-age movie “Boyhood,” which ran for 37 weeks in 2014 and 2015.
But Harris Dew, the theater’s general manager, said New Yorkers had connected with “La Chimera.” Something about the movie, which is set in Tuscany and stars Josh O’Connor as a gruff and melancholic tomb raider, kept audiences coming back. After a strong opening in March, Dew said, interest in the movie picked up after a couple of months, and then ebbed and resurged.
Some showings sold out during the summer — and the last-night crowd knew it. Luis Banuelos, 28, a doctoral student at New York University, said he had tried to see “La Chimera” months earlier but hadn’t been able to get a ticket. “It was 9 p.m. on a Thursday, and I cannot watch this film that’s been here for three months?” he said. “That’s notable.”
It did not matter that “La Chimera” had been available on streaming platforms for months. “It’s just so beautiful on a big screen,” Cam Kosnoff, 26, who lives in Brooklyn and works in a wine store, said of the film. “It’s nice to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers and then you all kind of walk out in a stunned silence.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Lip Balmed
Dear Diary:
It was rush hour, and I had just boarded a packed E train at Penn Station.
I noticed an empty seat next to an extremely large and intimidating-looking man. He was wearing a weathered motorcycle-type jacket, and his hair was rather wild, matching the expression on his face.
I told myself not to judge a book by its cover and sat down next to him. I did my best not to brush up against him and kept my eyes straight ahead.
After a few moments, I felt my mouth getting dry. I pulled out my ChapStick and applied it to my lips.
A moment later, the giant of a man next to me reached into his pocket and pulled out his own ChapStick.
“I prefer cherry myself,” he said.
— Mitchell Chwatt
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
The post A Venezuelan Gang Reaches New York appeared first on New York Times.
