by Paul Bass | Mar 21, 2017 5:30 pm

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Posted to: Legal Writes

The Red Side Guerrilla Brims “terrorized” New Haven for two years. Now its members will sit in jail for decades.

So announced law enforcement officials at a press conference Tuesday afternoon at the 25th-floor Church Street headquarters of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The conference came the same day as the guilty plea of the 21st of 21 members of the murderous offshoot of the Bloods gang caught in a joint federal-local investigation.

Twenty of the 21 arrestees have now pleaded guilty. The other pleaded not guilty, and was convicted. The gang members face sentences up to life in federal prison for participating in seven New Haven murders, four attempted murders, distributing crack in Bangor, Maine, and running guns.

The murders took place here in 2011, the deadliest year on record (with 34 homicides), and in 2012.

“A brutal and cold-blooded gang” that sowed “a climate of fear and terror” is now history on New Haven’s streets, proclaimed U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly.

The gang’s leader, Jeffrey “Tall Man” Benton, 32, pleaded guilty in federal court last Friday to personally murdering basketball standout Donnell Allick in 2011 and Donald Bolden in 2012, attempting the murder of Carl Williams in 2011, and conspiring to murder Darrick Cooper in 2011, along with money laundering and cocaine distribution offenses. He faces up to 40 years in jail and $500,000 in fines.

Another leader of the gang, Luis Padilla, 24, faces life in prison for participating in six murders, along with other crimes.

The heyday of the gang coincided with the advent here of a program called Project Longevity, in which federal and state and local law enforcement agents work closely to identify gang members responsible for violence, give them a chance to go straight, then come down hard on them with federal charges if they don’t. (Click here to read a story detailing how the program worked in this case.) Authorities also confiscated over 100 guns in the investigation.

The investigation grew out of work New Haven detectives did on “cold case” murders. As they brought information before a federal grand jury, investigators were able to obtain crucial witness testimony and connect the dots to to other murders and to the Red Side gang, Daly said at Tuesday’s press conference.

Mike Zeppieri, resident agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), said the government’s National Integrated Ballistics Information Network also provided breakthroughs in the investigation. The network’s database enabled investigators to trace shell casings from multiple incidents to the same gun, he said.