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FeedShort North Posse: A timeline
The Short North Posse is back in the news after a recent bust. Indictments were issued for 19 suspected members on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking and weapons. Here’s a summary of various news accounts of the gang’s activities through the years.
August 1989
Federal indictments date the start of the Short North Posse’s activities to this month, marked by the selling of crack cocaine and firearms around Weinland Park. Court testimony later would allege that childhood friends Robert W. Dotson and Marshon Mays were the founding members.
May 1994
A 15-year-old boy is fatally shot in City Center mall. The act is widely regarded as a gang dispute, as Columbus police believe the dead teen was a leader of the Short North Posse.
March 1995
Following the filing of more than 200 federal felony charges against 46 suspects, Columbus police conduct a massive raid that nets 32 alleged gang members. The remaining suspects would be captured in the following months. A federal attorney says the Short North Posse is Central Ohio’s “largest and most violent” gang, adding, “They literally took over the neighborhood with violence.”
August-October 1995
Gang members take the witness stand, testifying against one another and detailing the day-to-day operations of the Short North Posse. Forty-three convictions follow, including a handful of maximum prison sentences for several members early in 1996 (among them, Lamont “Fridge” Needum, who would receive a nearly 50-year sentence for robbing an undercover ATF agent at gunpoint outside a North Fourth Street apartment).
February 1996
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno speaks at Weinland Park Elementary School to promote an antigang grant program developed by the Department of Justice. The program would go defunct in 1998. In April, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are briefed on the Short North Posse.
May 1996
Derrick Russell, the final suspected SNP member listed in the March 1995 indictments, is captured in Louisville, Kentucky, after 14 months on the run. Russell allegedly is the gang’s ringleader, leveled with eight drug and weapons charges. In February 1997, he would plead guilty to one count of drug trafficking conspiracy and be sentenced to 27 years in prison. He would be released in 2007 after serving 11 years.
1997
Police say a revitalized Short North Posse has emerged, mostly comprised of friends and younger relatives of those original members now incarcerated. In the coming years, several of the convicted members will be released, with reportedly small numbers of them returning to gang life.
December 2006
Five suspected members of a second-generation Short North Posse are arrested in response to federal charges being filed against 10 people.
August 2009
Robert L. Wilson III, a suspected member of the Short North Posse, admits to killing a man during a robbery in September 2008 near Weinland Park. He is given a mandatory minimum sentence of 18 years in federal prison. The following month, Rashad “Buckwheat” Thompson would plead guilty to being an accomplice in the murder. He would be sentenced to 13 years in prison.
This story appeared in the February 2011 issue of Columbus Monthly.
