They are young and dangerous and organized unlike any other street gang, police say.
The group known as 30 Deep recruits them young and demands loyalty that it usually gets.
They sell drugs, stolen high-end jeans and expensive electronics, police say.
“They’ve done everything from homicide to burglaries to robberies,” said Sgt. Archie Ezell, a member of the Atlanta Police Department’s gang unit. “They’ve done it all. Right now, they are one of the more active gangs.”
On Tuesday, two juveniles and four adults became the most recent 30 Deep gang members arrested. Atlanta police say they connected the six to a theft at a Radio Shack store on Metropolitan Parkway and to a smash and grab at Georgio's Big and Tall men's store at Greenbriar Mall.
Police say they have linked the gang to a burglaries at Discover Mills in Gwinnett County, in Midtown and in Buckhead.
“They’re all over the place,” said Maj. Debra Williams, who oversees the APD gang unit. “What we’re targeting them for now is thefts, burglaries, smash and grabs and [stealing] blue jeans.”
But that is not their only crimes, Williams said.
30 Deep prefer commercial robberies to home robberies, police say. But they have been accused of home invasions.
“What makes them different is they are persistent,” Ezell said. “They will go out and do a crime and they don’t mind doing two or three burglaries a night. They’re always on the move, always wanting to do some kind of crime.”
They will become violent if necessary, Ezell said.
One member of the gang is being held without bond on charges that he murdered John Henderson, a popular bartender at the Grant Park restaurant Standard Food & Spirits, last January. A group of teenagers shot Henderson during an armed robbery 2 ½ weeks after another Standard Food & Spirits employee was robbed outside the restaurant.
Two days after Henderson was killed, police said, Jonathan Redding and his friends forced their way into a southwest Atlanta home. They got into a gun battle with the homeowner and Redding was shot in the shoulder, police said.
A gun was left at the house and tied the home invasion to the two robberies at the Standard. Blood found at the house matched Redding's, police said.
Redding, 17, was picked up in April, but he refused to tell police who was with him.
All their criminal activity is a business, Williams said.
Ezell said 30 Deep uses the money it gets from robberies and the proceeds from selling what they steal to buy narcotics to sell for even more money.
“It’s like a circle,” Ezell said.
The members are getting younger as well; it's common to arrest 13- and 14-year-olds, Ezell said.
Police believe the group started in the Mechanicsville neighborhood near Turner Field. There were 30 buildings in the apartment complex where the gang started, and that is how the members came up with the name.
Like most gangs, 30 Deep has spread beyond the poor neighborhood where it began.
But unlike most gangs, there is no hierarchy. There are “leaders and followers,” but no one person in charge, Ezell said.
“It’s not a traditional gang,” Williams added.” It’s a hybrid. They may have 20 members one day, may have 30 [the next]. They recruit kids hanging out in the neighborhoods. They [the members] are not growing up in the gangs.”
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