MINNEAPOLIS -- Scott Redd watched as five young men juked the basketball around defenders, putting up jump shots as music boomed and people trickled in and out. On a typical night, open gym at Sabathani Community Center draws 40-50 people from around the neighborhood.

To Redd, Sabathani’s chief executive, the scene in front of him is part of the reason he describes the nonprofit as the “heart” of south Minneapolis — not just because of its location along E. 38th Street, but also because of the range of services it offers the community, including food distribution, senior housing and career services.

As Redd described the resources that flow through Sabathani, he also spoke of a darker reality that’s long haunted the young people walking through their doors.

“This is a Bloods neighborhood,” he said, referring to the gang that’s long had a violent grip in south Minneapolis.

About a mile south of Lake Street, Sabathani falls in territory claimed by the Bloods gang that, for decades, dealt drugs and committed gun crimes against their rivals. Though their violent dealings made headlines, a series of federal racketeering trials against their members and that of other prominent Minneapolis gangs — the Highs and the Lows — have shed light on another sinister trend at the heart of their enterprise: the indoctrination of young children to do their dirty work.

For generations, Minneapolis gangs have lured vulnerable children at tender ages through promises of protection, a lucrative life or by preying on their desire for acceptance.

In actuality, prosecutors said, the children served as the gang’s “cannon fodder.”

“While the Bloods have wreaked havoc throughout the Minneapolis metro area, they have done the most damage to the community within their would-be kingdom,” read sentencing documents by Kristian Weir, the assistant U.S. Attorney for Minnesota who prosecuted a case against the south Minneapolis gang. “The impact of the Bloods gang within this community begins with their predation on its children.”

‘Putting in work’

The kingdom of Minneapolis gangs is made up of loosely associated “cliques” defined more by their enemies than rivalries over defined territory.

“This is a neighborhood and a regional gang culture that has emerged here,” said Carla Baumel, assistant U.S. Attorney for Minnesota who helped prosecute members of the north Minneapolis gang, the Highs. “Not any less dangerous or any less violent or any less significant to the community but our gangs here in Minnesota just are structured a little bit differently,”

The web of cliques, federal prosecutors told the Minnesota Star Tribune, offered its most at-risk youth a sense of belonging.

“A lot of these young guys that I’m sentencing, that is a very similar pattern,” said Albania Concepcion, a federal prosecutor also part of the Highs racketeering prosecution. “The instability in their childhood, early childhood lives that lead to them seeking belonging somewhere else, and then they conflate the violence and the crime with the protection of the family unit that they’re looking for.”

Though the gangs offered the promise of a surrogate family, their motive was exploitative.

Belonging, court records describe, is shown by “putting in work,” or committing petty crimes, such as graffiti or fighting, on behalf of the gang. The offenses later escalate into violence on behalf of the gang.

Prosecutors said the practice was evident during a fatal shooting outside Williams Pub in Uptown in 2022. Moments before gunfire erupted, a member of the Bloods handed a loaded .45 caliber pistol to a 16-year-old. The teen fired seven times at the victim outside the crowded Uptown bar.

Two juveniles were also implicated in a murder at the heart of a federal racketeering trial against the Highs this spring. In 2021, three associates of the Highs mistook an innocent bystander for a member of a rival gang outside a market in the 1800 block of Glenwood Avenue. They chased after him in a stolen car with two juveniles inside. They then let the minors out and gave clear instructions to “finish him.” The man died after suffering eight gunshot wounds.

“Watching those interviews of those two juveniles, you can tell that they were little kids,” Concepcion said. “They were scared, and they were being told to do this, and they were just following orders.”

At trial, a Bloods member testified he committed petty crimes for the group at age 14 just by “mimicking what other people was doing.” Another man described his introduction to Bloods gang members decades ago at the local Boys and Girls Club where he played basketball and did homework. Everyone liked the Bloods, he explained, and they made money, so he wanted to join their crew. He was 8 years old at the time.

“The Bloods clearly follow an age-old marketing technique: targeting impressionable children,” court filings said. “Their presence has swept up untold numbers of South Minneapolis children for generations and will continue without adequate deterrence.”

Nancy La Vigne, dean of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, said recruiting youth is a common tactic for gangs nationwide — often because the justice system doesn’t penalize youth as harshly as adults. But strategies to steer kids away from gangs, such as providing jobs to make money, is more difficult when considering kids as young as the ones being recruited by Minneapolis groups.

“It creates quite a dilemma: how you disrupt this practice without criminalizing youth,” La Vigne said. One method, she suggested, is imposing harsher penalties for adults who prey on minors to join their groups.

The enticement of young children served as the linchpin for the U.S. government’s arguments to levy stiff sentences against dozens of Minneapolis gang members following their federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) trials. But beyond the courtroom, prosecutors said, there’s a layer of difficulty in deflecting youth from things that have an innate appeal, like money and cars. The problem deepens when many of the children have relatives steeped in the gang life.

“It’s cyclical,” Weir said. “It’s very easy for someone to come in, who’s succeeded in life, and say, ‘Choose a different path.’ … It’s more complicated than, ‘Let’s give more resources.’”

Social media shift

The boy wanted companionship, some friends to hang out with and have his back.

That was the reason why — at 10 years old — he joined the Bloods despite the group handing him a beatdown after he unwittingly walked through a group of their members on his way home from football practice.

The price for acceptance, federal prosecutors described, was steep: The Bloods slowly brought him up as a violent enforcer who attacked rival members and assaulted his peers who deviated.

When asked decades later why he would return to such a crew, he offered a simple explanation: He wanted friends and “people to kick it with.”

At the time, the boy’s story was common. Gangs would recruit at parks, sporting events or neighborhood hangout spots, recalled Nigel Sharper, who leads the violence interrupters program for Sabathani Community Center.

Now, recruiting has taken a much larger platform by shifting online, he’s observed. Social media has become the tool for members to “make connections, build trust and create a sense of belonging” for impressionable youth.

The practice effectively ensures younger generations follow in their footsteps, prosecutors said.

To combat this, Sharper said Sabathani offers neighborhood youth a purpose and support network, such as mentorships, conflict mediation, paid job training, free food and recreational activities.

To him and Redd, Sabathani’s CEO, deterrence looks like robbing gang life of its false glamour by offering an environment where they can belong.

“For us, we try to offer them those same things. We can protect them in this building. We can provide them with an opportunity to have a career,” Redd said. “Get people off the street, but provide them with an opportunity once they’re through those doors.”

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