Shanduke McPhatter led the Gangsta Killer Bloods, also known as G-Shine, in Brooklyn, New York, for over 10 years. In 1994, the United Blood Nation recruited him to the Nine Trey Gangsters faction at the Rikers Island jail complex, and he became one of the first East Coast Blood gang members.
He speaks with Business Insider about New York City gang culture, including the formation of new gangs like the Woos and Choos, which emerged as collaborations between Bloods, Crips, and Gangster Disciples sets in New York. He also examines the entertainment industry's role in promoting gang violence, particularly through drill music, and its global impact on spreading gang culture and contributing to homicides. Additionally, he discusses recent Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO, cases against New York gangsters, including Tekashi 6ix9ine and the Treyway music label. He discusses his involvement in drug dealing, gang activities, and prison violence.
McPhatter is the founder of G-MACC, or Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes, an organization dedicated to violence prevention and intervention. He is the author of "Two Way Mirror: Trife Gangsta vs Shanduke McPhatter."
Find McPhatter's book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Way-Mirror-Shanduke-McPhatter/dp/1735552615
He speaks with Business Insider about New York City gang culture, including the formation of new gangs like the Woos and Choos, which emerged as collaborations between Bloods, Crips, and Gangster Disciples sets in New York. He also examines the entertainment industry's role in promoting gang violence, particularly through drill music, and its global impact on spreading gang culture and contributing to homicides. Additionally, he discusses recent Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO, cases against New York gangsters, including Tekashi 6ix9ine and the Treyway music label. He discusses his involvement in drug dealing, gang activities, and prison violence.
McPhatter is the founder of G-MACC, or Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes, an organization dedicated to violence prevention and intervention. He is the author of "Two Way Mirror: Trife Gangsta vs Shanduke McPhatter."
Find McPhatter's book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Way-Mirror-Shanduke-McPhatter/dp/1735552615
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FunTranscript
00:00My name is Chandwick McFadden, also known as Trife Gangsta.
00:03I'm one of the first generation leaders of the Gangsta Killer Bloods.
00:08This is how crime works.
00:14New York is just broken up into pockets and it's diverse.
00:17If you're wearing certain colors in certain neighborhoods, it will bring attention to you.
00:22Especially if you are young, black and brown male.
00:26Some of them don't care.
00:27They're going to run down.
00:28They're going to shoot your block up.
00:29They're going to shoot up a party, a barbecue.
00:31I've been able to stop people from shooting people
00:33because of my life experience, my incarceration experience.
00:43The United Blood Nation is a culmination of several different New York founded sets
00:50that came together to create the United Blood Nation.
00:54And I was recruited by the UBN on Rikers Island.
00:57Rikers Island is one of the biggest county jails in the world.
01:02It's not a prison, it's a jail that holds detainees.
01:05And Rikers have always had a mixture of New York City.
01:11New York Bloods started on Rikers Island and it trickled down to the streets
01:16versus some places where it started in the streets into the jails.
01:21I was 16 when I first got involved.
01:23When I was recruited, it was in the beginning stages.
01:27I became one of the people who actually were recruiting in the streets from 94 in and out,
01:33where I would be on Rikers, get involved with what was happening in Rikers, and then come home.
01:38So I was known as one of the first Bloods in the streets of New York as well.
01:42New York recruitment, I've never known personally, from my experience,
01:48where a recruitment would call for you to get in the car
01:52and do a drive-by and just shoot up a block.
01:54Recruitment in New York City is definitely different from recruitment in LA and other states.
02:00You definitely have to have witnesses there.
02:03That's your oath being said in front of leadership.
02:08And you have to recite it in front of whoever the witnesses are.
02:11When G-Shine came about, GKB came about, it had a reason under the United Blood Nation.
02:19And the reason was the cleanup set.
02:22And the cleanup set job was to make sure that any set under United Blood Nation
02:29was following the rules, regulations, and protocol.
02:32So G-Shine and D-Shine stands for Soldiers Honored and Networking Toward Elevation.
02:38It trickled down into other states, Georgia, Florida, you know, it went worldwide.
02:45The main projects in Brooklyn, New York, that G-Shine operated out of is Albany projects.
02:53We used to have mass meetings in St. John's Park,
02:57hundreds of Bloods just coming out there daily, weekly, building, meeting, relaxing.
03:03New York, the boroughs have different energies.
03:06Brooklyn is known for something, Queens, Bronx, Harlem.
03:09And then you had a lot of people from Brooklyn, New York,
03:12Queens, Bronx, Harlem.
03:14And then you had a lot of West Indians that were living in East Flatbush and were known
03:19for being Crips.
03:20It really also had to do with the individuals that were the original leaders that actually
03:27came out of jail, that went into those boroughs, that really grew those sets in those boroughs.
03:33So you got sets like 183rd, which people know is in a certain neighborhood, right?
03:37When I speak about Soundview, right?
03:39You know Soundview Bloods had it where a different type of Bloods.
03:42So that's how New York is around gangs and our sets.
03:47I believe the projects in New York definitely are leads to gun violence, leads to gang violence,
03:51leads to gang recruitment, lack of resources, broken families, fatherless families because
03:57of welfare and over-policing.
04:00There's a lot of historical issues when you growing up in Niger developments in New York.
04:06Young people today don't understand why this neighborhood, this project got beef with this
04:11project.
04:11I'm from Wyckoff, Gowanus is down the block and there was a time where they had beef and
04:17it was a block that separated them.
04:19I was the catalyst to be able to stop Wyckoff and Gowanus from beefing.
04:24That's one of the main things about Niger developments is that the generational beef
04:29then trickled into the gangs.
04:32And then you're talking about the drugs, right?
04:34So now if I'm on this block and I'm selling drugs and your project is right there, I might
04:39feel like you're taking money from me and that might create a problem as well.
04:49If you are affiliated and somebody in your gang is selling drugs and you happen to be
04:56outside with them and they happen to be watching and they take a picture of y'all outside,
05:01that's how they get a lot of gang members in legal cases, just off of conspiracy.
05:06You had a conversation with this person about drugs, you're affiliated, you're guilty of
05:10conspiracy.
05:12A lot of people who are affiliated that have never committed a crime, affiliated and respected,
05:18but they're straight businessmen and or women.
05:21So yeah, they definitely invested in a legal business.
05:24Before I touched a drug, I was a stick-up kid.
05:27No father, grew up in the projects, moms getting food stamps, after coming from foster
05:32care, I became a product of my environment and it was easier just to take the gun and
05:37go rob somebody.
05:38Before the gun, it was strong armed robbery.
05:39I'm a 78 baby, so I grew up in the 80s, 90s and that's when you really had an overrun
05:44of crack cocaine in our neighborhoods and I feel like that attributes to a lot of mental
05:49health issues as well, right?
05:51Nobody really talks about the fatherless crack baby and what they've experienced in life
05:56and where they at and what decisions they're making in life.
05:59I came out of prison and there wasn't no job opportunities.
06:02I worked and I sold drugs.
06:04I mean, I preferably chose to make sure that I didn't do any federal crimes, especially
06:10being a known gang member at that time.
06:13So I made sure that if anybody was part of my direct set, that we never got any illegal
06:20money together.
06:22From dark to sun up and there was two, three days straight I ain't get no sleep because
06:27I wanted every dime that came through.
06:29I don't care if I sold $200 to $2,000 and I'm going, I'm calling my weight man, my
06:35rear man and I'm flipping that immediately.
06:38That was my mind, flip it.
06:40Once you flip it, you doubling your money.
06:42I remember I was selling crack one time and a friend of mine that I grew up with came
06:46to me.
06:47She was pregnant and she said, can I get two dimes?
06:52And I was like, you pregnant?
06:54She was like, so?
06:55I was like, yeah, I can't do that.
06:56She's like, well, somebody going to sell it to me.
06:59It ain't going to be me, right?
07:02And that's when I really kind of understood myself.
07:05It made me feel like a bad person.
07:08It just wasn't, it just didn't sit right with me, right?
07:10There's some people who don't care.
07:11They don't care what you look like.
07:12They just want that dollar.
07:14I've never been that person that's just willing to take a dollar no matter the morals and
07:18the principles that came behind it.
07:22You got a gentleman by the name of O.G. Mack who allegedly went to the West Coast, learned
07:31about the bloods in the West Coast, and came back and introduced it 31 years ago, July
07:3716, 1993.
07:39That's why you got nine tray, because it was created in 93.
07:43It wasn't, we're going to kill quips, like what y'all was doing in the West Coast.
07:49We're going to protect blacks from being oppressed.
07:51We're going to stop oppression on Rikers.
07:53Originally, when you first became Blood, there was the way of identification.
07:59All the Bloods used to get dog paws burnt onto your arms.
08:03You could identify a Blood by just seeing that they had their burns, their dog paws
08:08in their arm.
08:09So that's an example of something that hasn't happened in many, many years.
08:12There's a saying that people hear today.
08:14They say it all the time.
08:16They make music about it.
08:17It's like, you have a dub, right?
08:19That's a dub.
08:20That's East Coast Blood lingo.
08:22Gangsta killer Blood lingo.
08:25That started from a code that said double O banger, right?
08:30And that code meant no, no good.
08:33So that's an example of some of the lingo that has become part of urban music, urban
08:38society right there.
08:40We had a thing called Gangsta Mack and G Mack.
08:42That's actually one of the first codes that Bloods used in state prison.
08:47And it was a term of relax, chill, be easy.
08:51Today, people say, you hear the music a lot.
08:53They're like, yo, I'm Mackin', I'm G Mackin'.
08:55People don't know where it derived from, but it derived from the Gangsta Killer Bloods
09:00original codes.
09:00Because in state prison, codes were created to communicate.
09:05Because at that time, Bloods were the minority in New York state prison.
09:09So with so much opposition, the only way to communicate was through codes on a gate,
09:14especially in a maximum facility prisons.
09:16Everything definitely has a concept.
09:18O31, it's 31 rules under the United Blood Nation.
09:23And that was agreed in O31 Blood.
09:25That was one of the first revision of greetings that came by the way of East Coast Bloods.
09:31Gang culture definitely became more popular through music.
09:35Like, Boys in the Hood, that was actually gang culture.
09:40You know and you pay attention, you see Ricky getting shot, and you see the homies in the
09:44red car, and that was gang culture.
09:47Snoop promoted the heck out of gang culture.
09:49He was at the Super Bowl, quit walking.
09:52He's accepted, right?
09:54Gang culture.
09:56For the New York level of notoriety on a music level.
10:00Nobody did it like him in Dipset.
10:02Everybody knew Dipset was Blood.
10:04And Dipset was one of the major labels out of New York City, puts great music that everybody
10:11was rocking to.
10:12And it's stuff like that that made a lot of people want to become non-trade.
10:17When you understand the cooks, the crews, and everything else, it's a lot of people
10:20that wanted to become non-trade.
10:23When you understand the cooks, the crews, and everything else that's happening, you
10:27understand the music, you understand what's causing, you understand drill music.
10:32That's one of the main catalysts for the driving of violence in New York City right now.
10:38The music is something that they're now starting to utilize to talk about opposition, because
10:42now people want views based off of YouTube and everything else.
10:46So the violence definitely has went up based on the last few years of what music has been
10:51offering to our community.
10:52When we were coming up, first generation, we weren't talking about what we represent
10:58in music, we weren't talking about it on the internet.
11:00We were always low-key about what we represented.
11:03If you're somebody who's looking to just live your life and protect yourself, you're not
11:08out there living that lifestyle of, hey, I'm a gangster, I'll shoot you, I shot your friend.
11:14We didn't come from that.
11:15We've always had a fear of dealing with law enforcement, dealing with the FBI.
11:18As you look at the young generation today, you look at the transition of the internet
11:24and the notoriety from views, you might get on this track, you feel like you can get on
11:29by talking about your opposition and who you shot, and now they have no choice but to respond
11:34because you done told them, hey, listen to this song, your man got shot, I'm telling
11:40you in this song that it was me.
11:42So now your opposition know who they gunning for, and that's what I see was happening today.
11:47My younger brother was killed because of music and internet stuff.
11:50It was all over the news.
11:51It's a rapper by the name of Troy Ave got into a beef with a podcaster by the name of
11:57Tack Stone, and Tack Stone brung a gun into Urban Plaza 2016, and my brother was the friend
12:05and security of Troy Ave.
12:07Four people were shot, my brother died.
12:10That really challenged me.
12:11So I always mention my younger brother who's no longer with us.
12:17Gang violence in the recent years have definitely increased in New York.
12:24Gang wars are different for us in New York.
12:26Our wars started inside of jail.
12:30When you look at the California gang-banging mindset, New York didn't have a gang-banging
12:36concept, so we didn't just come outside and have to worry about a group just coming down
12:41and just shooting at us.
12:43It started in jail, and it was about stopping oppression.
12:47So now, what triggered it in the streets came because you had crips that came to New
12:52York, and then there was a misunderstanding of what bloods were represented in New York
12:57when the crips came to New York, and that started blood and crip wars, but it wasn't
13:01something that New York has focused on, just territorial wars and stuff like that.
13:05I wasn't somebody who automatically just went into gang wars or shooting up blocks because
13:11somebody was a crip or another gang.
13:13You might have heard of Wools and Cho's, and rest in peace to Pop Smoke.
13:18He's one of the most famous Wools.
13:21The Wools and Cho's operate within different areas of East Flatbush, Brooklyn in general.
13:26Different cliques or crews or gangs that were either bloods and crips, gangsters, disciples.
13:32Based on whoever had a relationship in those neighborhoods that sat down and said, yo,
13:36we got beef with the same individuals, we might as well strengthen ourselves and come
13:40together, get money together, and deal with whatever opposition that comes our way.
13:46These are home-grown, these were not prison-grown affiliations, these are street-created cliques
13:54and crews.
13:55As far as weapons, we've never been a switch type of assault rifle type of community.
14:01You got 9mm, .40s, .357s, dudes will put in work on you with a .22.
14:08It's accessibility.
14:10You had to be that person to have one, to have connections to it.
14:13It's always predominantly been concealable weapons.
14:17You run around in a car with an assault rifle, you might shoot up a neighborhood, but that's
14:24not something that's happening on a regular basis in New York.
14:27My first legit gun was a MAC-10.
14:31I don't know how I got there, but I know that it was nothing for me to be able to have access
14:34to that MAC-10.
14:41There's always been a structure in New York Bloods, the United Blood Nation, and even
14:49the sets that have branched off to create their own banners, that also always has structure,
14:55high respect for leadership, and following rules, regulations, and protocol.
15:02You got soldiers, you got generals, you got a one, two, three, four, five-star general,
15:07you got your low or original gangster, you got your high gangster OGs, you got your godfathers
15:12of the sets.
15:13I never was the leader of any of those sets.
15:18My rank was a OG, high OG, double OG.
15:22I was at that level of position inside, and I had to put the necessary work in and leadership
15:27in to hold that.
15:29From my personal experience, NYPD is very biased about how they deal with gangs.
15:40I don't believe that they have a real understanding of the gangs.
15:46I believe that they think that it's just about murder and killing.
15:50From my perspective, they just look to just figure out how they can just run down in those
15:55neighborhoods and make gang arrests as their way of dealing with the violence.
16:00It's all about arrest and conviction.
16:02It's not about change and changing the narrative of the community.
16:07Half the time, they're not reporting all these stops and frisks unless they find a weapon.
16:13That's how they play with the numbers.
16:15In New York, they got a gang database, and we're fighting right now to shut down that
16:21New York gang database.
16:24They can put a nine-year-old, 10-year-old child in the NYPD gang database solely based
16:32off of wearing a certain color in a certain neighborhood.
16:37It affects those communities wholeheartedly.
16:40Just because they're affiliated and somebody in they set does a crime, and you sweep the
16:44whole set.
16:45There's guys who don't even know what somebody else did.
16:48What happens to that neighborhood?
16:49First of all, you took fathers, brothers, family leaders that might have been finding
16:55a way to survive to take care, their siblings or their parents, grandmothers.
16:59You done took whatever resources they had out that house.
17:02The next players want to step up.
17:03So when the next players step up, now we're going to beef and combat with each other,
17:08shoot at each other, kill each other, because we need to take a stronghold of this neighborhood.
17:13So gang sweeps lead to more violence.
17:16I don't think it works.
17:18I ran for borough president in Brooklyn, New York in 2021.
17:21I actually ran as an independent candidate.
17:23I'll definitely be able to make changes around public safety because I'm somebody who understands
17:30the full context of the gang mindset and the lifestyle.
17:39The first time walking to Rikers Island, I remember I was very, very young, of course,
17:4416.
17:45And I got beat up by the caressing officers my first time at Rikers.
17:49They beat me right on up and took me to my housing area.
17:52I had a black eye and everything.
17:54And I remember going to the housing area and guys saw me with a black eye and they came
17:59up to me and they was like, yo, let me get your sneakers.
18:02Let me get them Timbs.
18:03Let me get those pants.
18:04You're not getting none of this.
18:05So they're like, ah, you're a tough guy.
18:06When we come, everybody telling me, yo, you're always a tough guy.
18:09I felt victim to everything that was there.
18:12It was, this is jail.
18:14The mindset is like this.
18:15I'm a survivor and I'm going to give y'all all the negative energy that you have for
18:19me, I'm going to give it to y'all before you give it to me.
18:21So that was my mindset.
18:22Then it was just back and forth.
18:24Every time I went back and forth, I automatically started to gain control.
18:28Somebody has to run the house.
18:30That was me, right?
18:31And it just became who I was.
18:33Every time I went to jail, I'm taking over this house.
18:35I'm taking over the phone, right?
18:37I'm running the situation.
18:39And that's what it was.
18:40How do you make money in prison is getting drugs inside the jail.
18:44You might have people in state prison that was doing heroin, but Rikers is definitely
18:48known for weed.
18:49You have COs that would bring weed.
18:51Back then, you would get a visit and you have girls bringing you weed.
18:56You don't have cash on Rikers.
18:58Long as you have commissary food items, that's money in there.
19:01So you take some weed, you sell somebody $25 worth of weed, and they'll give you $25 in
19:07commissary or send that money out to the streets.
19:10I reflect on my prison time as education, as school.
19:13I've come to the terms of understanding that no life is the same.
19:17We're all going to go through something that's going to help define who we are.
19:21And it didn't rehabilitate me.
19:24I had to rehabilitate myself.
19:26The adolescent mind is different.
19:28So as that prefrontal cortex shifted and I started understanding life and who I really
19:33was, I changed my mindset.
19:35So I reflect on it based on the work that I've been doing, that it was for me to experience
19:42that so that I could be who I am to be able to help make change, right?
19:46Experience is the best teacher.
19:53When did you decide that you wanted to leave the gang?
19:56Upon my last incarceration, 2005, 2008, I ended up doing my last bid for three years.
20:05I was convicted of attempt criminal possession of a weapon.
20:09That changed my way of thinking and my lifestyle.
20:12Shift happened while incarcerated.
20:14And I thought about my past of recidivism, in and out, in and out.
20:19And so I came home from my first bid.
20:22I started working.
20:23I was actually doing a security job, and I got fired because somebody else who was a
20:28felon, he was working for the same security company I was working for, and they found
20:32out that this was hiring felons to do security, and they had to fire people like me.
20:38And every time I went in and came out, I went back to the same neighborhood, to the same
20:44lack of opportunities.
20:45The opportunities that was open to me was criminal activities, drug dealing, hustling.
20:50I decided that I had to do something different.
20:52I had to stop that cycle the best way I could.
20:55March 20, 2012, I founded GMAC in Brooklyn, New York.
21:00Gangsters Making Astronomical Community Changes.
21:02And our goal was to focus on violence prevention, interrupting the transmission of violence,
21:07getting in the middle of conflicts, using street smarts to be the liaison between those
21:13who are at conflict in our community.
21:15GMAC was credited for a 30% decrease in gun violence in the neighborhood in East Flatbush,
21:22Brooklyn, that we were providing these services to.
21:25We had to find the violence to be able to de-escalate that violence.
21:29And once we picked that catchment area, it took about two years or so, and we were able
21:34to bring down the shootings.
21:36My book is Two-Way Mirror, Trife Gangster vs. Shanduke McFatter.
21:43I put that book together in that concept of understanding the difference between Trife
21:47and Shanduke.
21:48Trife is who consistently kept me in and out of the system.
21:52Shanduke is who I really am as a man, as a person, that transitions my life into a positive
21:59to help other people's life.
22:18Hi, I'm a producer on How Crime Works.
22:20If you enjoyed this video, then please subscribe and comment below with more ideas of topics
22:25you'd like us to cover in this series.