Does Tampa Bay have a gang problem?

A little before 3 a.m. one Sunday in May, the sidewalks in South Tampa’s SoHo district bustled with revelers ambling between bars when gunfire erupted. An overhead camera outside MacDinton’s Irish Pub captured the scene as people screamed and scurried. Officers drew guns as they arrived at the Shops on South Howard, where two men lay dead and a third wounded.

Police said the shooting involved two “rival neighborhood groups,” which is the kind of phrase they tend to use to refer to gangs. It was at least the third high-profile shooting in the Tampa Bay area in the last nine months that authorities attributed to such groups.

At a neighborhood forum days later in SoHo, one of Tampa’s most desirable and exclusive areas, more than one person posed the question to city leaders: If these are gangs, what are they doing here?

Though police tend to be reluctant to say so publicly, the reports and arrest records they file in court make it clear: Gangs are here and play a significant role in violent crime.

At the SoHo neighborhood meeting, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw avoided specifics, telling residents only that the two groups involved had been driving around, looking for each other.

“We firmly believe that wherever they ended up,” Bercaw said, “there was going to be a gunfight between them.”

One of the two men killed, Kevon Christmas, was labeled a gang member in arrest records. The other man killed in SoHo was his brother, Kenneth Washington. Neither of them lived near SoHo. They both had prior addresses in Belmont Heights and in the Plaza Terrace area of Tampa.

Police had named Christmas as a suspect in multiple shootings in recent years. When he was arrested again last fall on a battery charge, an affidavit dubbed him a member of People Nation, which Tampa police describe as a prison gang.

Police arrested two men on gun charges after the shooting, but no one has yet been charged with the homicides. An investigation remains ongoing.

The public spasm of violence was similar to two others in recent months that drew widespread attention. As in the SoHo shooting, police were coy in attributing the violence to gangs.

The G-word

On Easter Sunday, a crowd milled about a dark parking lot a little before 10:30 p.m. outside the Sonic Sports Bar and Lounge on 49th Street in St. Petersburg. Someone shouted and a horn blared as five men stepped to a line of parked cars, raised pistols and fired. Four people were wounded. Within days, police arrested the alleged gunmen, who they said were part of a group called the “YG’s” — short for “Young Ganstas” or “Young Gunnas.”

The arrested men were friends of the rap artist Rod Wave, police said, though they downplayed his connection. The investigation spurred multiple search warrants, which turned up cash and jewelry and a BMW that police said had been linked to multiple shootings. But gang related? Police avoided the G-word.

And one morning last October, as hundreds of people gathered in Ybor City for Halloween celebrations, two groups approached each other on crowded Seventh Avenue. Cell phones and surveillance images caught snippets of a young man making hand gestures. Another donned a balaclava mask as he stepped forward and drew a Glock handgun from his waistband. Two people died in the barrage that followed, one of them a bystander who had nothing to do with the confrontation. More than a dozen went to hospitals.

Three young men were arrested in the Ybor shooting. When they appeared in court, prosecutors presented evidence of escalating online tensions between a group called NHC, or “No Hesitation Committee,” and K4K, which cops say means “Kill for Kamari.”

Again, police were reluctant to call the groups gangs.

The trouble with identifying gang activity is that not everyone agrees on who or what they are.

Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami, said there is no universal definition. What’s called a gang in Florida might not be so in Chicago.

“Some gangs also are not motivated by crime,” he said. “Some are more like clubs, joined together by a common interest.”

Young people join for a sense of belonging, to make up for a lack of good family relationships, Piquero said. Many come from poverty. Membership can also give them a way to make money.

Some of those who cops accuse of being gang members deny it.

When the G-word comes up, cops generally point to a specific state statute that defines a gang as a formal or informal organization, association or group of three or more people who share common signs, colors or symbols and commit crimes or delinquent acts.

Officers can designate individual people as gang members or associates if they meet certain criteria. Adopting a gang’s style or dress, having a gang tattoo, associating with gang members, or claiming to be part of a gang all qualify.

The trouble with that law is that it has been on the books for decades. The nature of gang-related crime has since evolved, police say.

Assistant St. Petersburg Police Chief Michael Kovacsev said when he started as an officer in the mid-1990s, gangs in the city frequently were seen as offshoots of national entities like the Bloods and the Crips. Those Los Angeles-based gangs became a force in the narcotics trade and have become mythologized in pop culture. But that faded.

What cops in St. Petersburg tend to see now are loose associations of friends who hail from the same parts of town. They often get to know each other as kids. Sometimes they commit crimes like car burglaries or thefts. They may dabble in drug activity.

“A lot of it is juvenile opportunity crime,” Kovacsev said. “They have a tight-knit group that offers them friendship or protection. And when one of them is potentially disrespected, or has a negative interaction with somebody, that’s when the violence erupts.”

It’s unclear if such violence is more common than it once was. In St. Petersburg, it’s sporadic. A noticeable spike in shootings through March and April preceded a relatively calm May and June.

“It ebbs and flows,” Kovacsev said. He noted that the violence tends to dissipate after arrests are made.

It’s a similar situation in Tampa.

“They’re not fighting over territory or engaging in other kinds of criminal enterprises,” said Tampa police Major Patrick Messmer, who oversees criminal investigations. “They basically call each other out on social media. They don’t like each other. They get into these feuds back and forth. And that’s what leads to the violence.”

Gangs, though, run a range. Well-organized groups draw significant law enforcement attention.

Years ago, senior members of a Tampa gang known as the Manche Boy Mafia were indicted in federal court for financial crimes, including tax fraud. Five years ago, Tampa police arrested nine members of the Skudda Gang, whose name is a slang term meaning “Let’s get it.” They were accused of everything from credit card fraud to murder.

In 2019, Hillsborough sheriff’s deputies probed a violent feud in the Ruskin area between the Latin Kings and the 31 Lockblock Boys. Cops around town are also aware of the presence of outlaw motorcycle gangs, whose criminal activities tend to be low profile.

Police records are full of recent gang-related tales.

• March 2022. Surveillance cameras outside Pin Chasers captured patrons hustling away from the bowling alley on N Armenia Avenue as a group exchanged gunfire in the parking lot. Officers minutes later stopped a black sedan with two wounded men inside. The driver, Cedric Durham, said the person who shot him was from Belmont Heights. He rambled about a “war” between “the east and west.” One of the other gunmen, police said, was Kevon Christmas.

• May 2022. A search warrant described cops watching from an unmarked car as people shuffled into a home in Tampa’s College Hill neighborhood. A police informant went to the house and traded $20 for cocaine. Cops knew some of the people there. They called themselves NGS, or “None Get Spared.”

• January 2024. A St. Petersburg woman called police after someone fired gunshots into her house. She said the shooting might have something to do with her son, whose sister said was “trolling” on Instagram Live. Words were exchanged about the death of 15-year-old Zy’Kiquiro Lofton, who was shot a year earlier. Ever since, the cops have worked shootings between a group based in the Childs Park neighborhood and another known as P4K, said to mean “Play for Keeps.”

• Last week. Federal prosecutors announced the arrest of six members of the Alexander Park gang. A 40-page indictment described a hodgepodge of criminal activity with charges ranging from bank fraud to racketeering and murder. Their crimes, prosecutors said, included an April 2022 shooting outside Scores Gentleman’s Club, where a Latin Kings gang member was killed. Six days after the Scores shooting, prosecutors said, Alexander Park killed one of the Latin Kings at a strip mall parking lot on Hillsborough Avenue.

‘Kindness for Kamari’

Long before prosecutors implicated them in the deadly October shooting in Ybor City, the group known as K4K was little more than a collection of friends in Town ‘N Country. They say it started as a way to honor a child. His name was Kamari Kerr. He was a popular kid in his neighborhood, where he and his friends liked to play basketball and ride bikes along the Upper Tampa Bay Trail. Four years ago, he died from complications of an asthma attack. He was 15.

Christian Cruz-Cordova knew him and his older brother, Kymani. After Kamari’s death, his friends started calling themselves K4K as a sort of living tribute. He says the police have it wrong when they say the group’s initials stand for “Kill for Kamari.”

He said the name actually means “Kindness for Kamari.”

Members knew each other from Alonso and Leto high schools. Cruz-Cordova said they organized charitable events, like school supply drives.

He denied that the group was a gang. But he said cops think it is. Why? “Probably the videos,” he said.

Videos featured on his YouTube page show members reciting rhymes over energetic beats as they brandish guns. He insists the images are simply a marketing strategy for budding rap artists.

He thinks the easy availability of weapons has something to do with the prevalence of gun violence. That puts him in agreement with police, who blame guns stolen from cars in particular. Everyone seems to carry. And what once might have been settled with a quick scuffle nowadays escalates to gunfire.

“What I would say is leading to violence in the city isn’t necessarily gangs,” Cruz-Cordova told the Tampa Bay Times. “I would say it’s the image and Instagram and social media. People can get to you without being near you.”

Court and police records depict a snapshot of an escalating feud between K4K and another group, known as OTG, which is said to mean “Only Trust God.” In one incident, a young man alleged to be part of OTG was seen on social media posing at Kamari’s gravesite, pointing a gun at the stone that bears his name, kicking a basketball and knocking over decorations left by mourners.

Kamari’s older brother, Kymani, is in jail awaiting trial on charges that he participated in what cops described as a retaliatory shooting.

Kamari’s mother, Cynthia Feliciano, is horrified at what the group honoring her late son has turned into. She also denies that K4K is a gang.

“This is not how we wanted my son to be remembered,” Feliciano said.

The violence has burdened her family, she said. She is baffled at the regularity with which young people carry guns, pointing to lax gun laws as a factor. As for the Ybor City shooting, she doesn’t know who provoked who. But she shudders at the thought of other parents losing their child “because of ignorance,” she said.