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Crime, Law and Justice
Matt Sepic
Minneapolis

Grand jury indicts 11 alleged Lows members amid federal gang crackdown

man with red tie and navy jacket looks at camera
U.S. Attorney Andy Luger announces charges against 11 alleged members of the Lows gang at a news conference in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Matt Sepic | MPR News

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A federal grand jury has indicted 11 alleged members of the Minneapolis Lows gang. Prosecutors say that the defendants are responsible for a spate of murders and attempted murders over the last three years targeting their rivals. The indictments unsealed Wednesday are the latest in an anti-gang crackdown by the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The men are all reputed associates of the Lows gang that generally operates in north Minneapolis south of W. Broadway Avenue.  All 11 are charged with racketeering conspiracy. Most face other charges as well, including drug conspiracy and murder with a firearm.

U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said the defendants are connected to seven shootings involving 10 victims, five of whom were killed. He said “information that we’ve received from gang members and from others in the community” indicated the group was particularly violent.

The indictment lists crimes going back to May 2021, when Albert Jerome Lucas, 20, allegedly shot a member of a rival group at a gas station on West Broadway. The most recent incident happened in February, when Lucas and another defendant, Victor Mortar Collins, 22, are alleged to have opened fire near Chicago and Franklin avenues in south Minneapolis, killing one person and wounding three others.

Both of the cases were initially filed by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, but federal prosecutors are taking them over. The indictment also includes two shootings from 2022 and three from 2023.

Nearly 80 alleged members of other gangs — the Highs, Bloods, 10z and 20z — have been charged since May of last year. Around 40 of of the defendants pleaded guilty, and earlier this month a federal jury in St. Paul convicted three Bloods members in connection with the murder of two rivals.

That case was a major victory for prosecutors because it was the first time in the enforcement effort that a jury returned a racketeering conviction against a Minneapolis street gang member. Many others have pleaded guilty to racketeering charges including Highs member Montez Brown, who received a nearly 20-year sentence in April.

Congress passed the RICO law in 1970 to target East Coast mob families. Luger said it’s also applicable to street gangs because it allows the government to go after criminal organizations by targeting the group as a whole. While it carries a greater burden of proof and more work for prosecutors, it can result in longer sentences compared to prosecuting the underlying crimes individually.

“You have to prove the overall existence of a criminal enterprise, and then [that] these people were not only members of the enterprise or associated with it but they participated to further the enterprise’s objectives and goals, which is here, shooting at rivals, gun trafficking and selling fentanyl,” Luger said.

Luger noted that the anti-gang effort required the work of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Minneapolis police, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.

Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara said that the impact is noticeable in an area of the city that has historically had high levels of gang activity.

“In north Minneapolis, where the Highs and Lows have terrorized people for years, the number of shooting victims year-to-date is lower than the number of shooting victims in north Minneapolis, [in] the 4th Precinct, at this point in 2019,” O’Hara said.

Luger added that community members tell him they notice a difference in their neighborhoods, and that when alleged gang members are taken into custody they sometimes ask if their arrest is part of the RICO effort.