Mexican Mafia grows in Staten Island

NEW YORK - (KRT) - At the foot of the Bayonne Bridge, in the Staten Island neighborhood known as Little Mexico, crime is down - falling by more than 6 percent this year. But troubling signs remain.

Fights regularly break out in the Port Richmond neighborhood's Latino nightclubs, and even more unnerving are the graffiti scrawlings for M13, a street gang with ties to the notorious Mexican Mafia.

"We've got a lot of problems right now with the gangs," said a 28-year-old Mexican man who ran with a gang for five years before being jailed. "They're even going after the 14- and 15-year-old kids."

A federal sting operation last month in Staten Island netted 20 members of the Mexican Mafia, shining a local spotlight onto one of California's oldest and most violent prison gangs.

Its members have been accused of killing Bill Cosby's 27-year-old son, Ennis, in Los Angeles in 1997, targeting mob turncoat Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano in an Arizona prison in 2002 and devising a sophisticated plot last February to murder three guards at one of California's most secure prisons.

The thought of the Mexican Mafia migrating to the East Coast and laying down its roots in the city is disturbing to many.