In search of a better life, these new migrants arrived in New York City from the poverty-stricken and violent ghetto of Western Kingston, Jamaica. Predisposed to violence and experienced in the life of the street, they aged between twenty and thirty-five. They were different from all those that came before them from this exotic island. With the potential for a drug sale at any time, these new arrivals squared-off against one another in the streets of New York City, fighting for control of the illicit yet lucrative cocaine and crack market. From Brooklyn to Queens, Manhattan to the Bronx, the city was divided into three gang strongholds, basically no-go areas. Joe Dog and the Loyalist posse took control of South Jamaica, Queens; Blacka and the Raiders posse control Brooklyn; and Fowl and the Centralist posse controlled the Bronx. In addition to the Jamaicans, there were two black American gangs, one came out of Brooklyn and the other from Queens. When they crossed paths with the Jamaicans, it was war. Then there was the Gem Girls. This was a gang of girls from western Kingston led by a light-skinned lesbian named Patsy. These girls were as ruthless as their male Jamaican counterpart. The desire for instant gratification and material satisfaction was impetus for the violence and killings that followed. None dared to stand in their way. This violence caught the attention of the newly elected mayor Jack Jackson, who established a gang task force, headed up by a no-nonsense former Vietnam veteran named Todd Sullivan. On Todds first day on the job, he shook his head and swore. These fucking Jamaican posses are turning our city into a fucking killing zone. We are going to send every fucking one of them to prison.

JAMAICA-1,600 murders a year-200 gangs in activity-the third most dangerous country in the world in 2012! Crime down there is closely linked to political corruption, that's why it is so hard to fight it. The author was granted the rare authorization to follow some police patrols in the most volatile areas; he also met several gang leaders (Dons), including one who was murdered a few weeks later, and he gives a dreadful insight into the Jamaican society at large. Thibault Ehrengardt is the former chief editor of Natty Dread Magazine, and the current head of DREAD Editions; he's written several books about Jamaica. www.jamaica-insula.com

★★★ Is true better than fiction? ★★★ The subject of a classic history by Herbert Asbury and an Academy Award-nominated film by Martin Scorsese, the gangs of The Five Points in New York have become the stuff of legend. But how much is legend and how much is fact? In this short book, we examine the original gangs of the Five Points in New York and see how accurate the film was (spoiler alert: not very) and what Asbury may have gotten wrong in his original research on this era. From the Bowery Boys to the Dead Rabbits, we look at the gangs that operated not just in the Five Points, but also those who wanted a piece of the action there and engaged in gang wars that would leave even modern thugs quivering in their boots!

Life in mid-19 century New York was tough, and violence and corruption were rife. Nowhere was tougher or more violent than the Bowery and the Five Points area. Two gangs, the Dead Rabbits and the Native Americans, were locked in a seemingly endless battle for supremacy. Amsterdam Vallon, son of the Rabbits' murdered leader, is seeking vengeance for his father's death at the hands of Bill 'The Butcher', head of the Native Americans who are in cahoots with a deeply corrupt Tammany Hall... Gangs of New York has long been a cult book. It is now the latest major film from Martin Scorsese.

In the bestselling tradition of Nicholas Pileggi, Joseph Wambaugh, and Robert Daley's Prince of the City, a thoroughly enthralling story of how the seasoned veterans of New York's elite Homicide Investigation Unit took down the city's most dangerous drug gang, and in the process rewrote the book on tackling gang crime. Gangbusters is a riveting narrative about the secretive, elite Homicide Investigation Unit and its successful investigation and prosecution of the notorious upper Manhattan Wild Cowboys, one of the bloodiest and most violent drug gangs in New York's long history. For two years, veteran reporter Michael Stone was granted exclusive access to the inner workings of HIU, its brilliant and iconoclastic chief, Walter Arsenault, and the seasoned, street-smart detectives and prosecutors who helped to put the Wild Cowboys behind bars. The book opens with the shocking and senseless execution of a Tarrytown college boy on the West Side Highway. Over time, the case leads detectives to the Wild Cowboys, a drug gang whose size and penchant for violence and intimidation have terrorized the South Bronx and upper Manhattan for years. HIU's attempts to bring down the Wild Cowboys' ruthless leader, Lenny, and feared enforcers, Platano and Pasqualito, triggermen for scores of the gang's murders, posed challenges that would test the unit's very survival. But HIU's dedicated collaboration of prosecutors and detectives and the strategies Arsenault employed in the unit's investigation have since become a model for gang enforcement in cities around the world. In the end, the Wild Cowboys and their allies were responsible for more than sixty murders. A rich roller-coaster ride of anarrative with a colorful and, at times, heroic cast of characters, Gangbusters is true crime at its page-turning best.