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Gang-related shootings underscore problem of retaliatory gun violence

September 03, 2015 at 11:30 AM, updated September 04, 2015 at 4:12 PM

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A feud between two East Side street gangs has punctuated another Cleveland summer marred by gun violence.

Police attribute almost two-dozen shootings to the tension between the Broadway-Fleet area rivals. Investigators believe the battle began with a robbery of drugs and money in April that spawned one retaliatory shooting after another into August.

Retaliation shootings and a code of silence amongst the victims and perpetrators make these crimes particularly difficult for police to solve. The "I'll take care of it myself" attitude coupled with a proliferation of cheap guns on the streets have fueled an increase in the number of shootings in Cleveland and many other American cities.

Police and community leaders have tried many methods to quell the violence here, but little has proven effective. Gun-related assaults are higher than they've been in nearly a decade, and homicides are up this year as well.

It isn't a problem isolated to Cleveland. Cities from Baltimore to New Orleans are dealing with surging levels of gun violence.

'They are at war with each other'

The feud between the Broadway Boys and Fleet Boys boiled over about 2 a.m. April 5, at a birthday party at the Big Boss Lounge -- a now-defunct bar at East 71st street and Harvard Avenue.

Investigators believe the shooting was provoked by a robbery of a massive amount of drugs. Whatever the reason, it sparked a string of retaliatory gun fights and a firebombing that put more than a dozen people in the hospital, including two children, and left three dead over the next four months, multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said.

Antwowine Palmer, 22, got into a heated argument with a bartender at the Big Boss Lounge right before the shooting, according to a police report. If that name sounds familiar, it is because Palmer was arrested last week in connection with a string of armed robberies in Tremont.

Palmer, along with Kenneth Jackson Jr., Tervon'tae Taylor, D'wan Dillard and Calvin Rembert, face dozens of charges in connection with a string of carjackings in the popular West Side neighborhood connected to Broadway by Interstate 490. The men are all members of the Broadway Boys, according to court documents filed this week.

But on that night in April, three men fired shots into a crowd assembled outside the bar seconds after Palmer left. The commotion sent bartenders and customers beneath their tables. The crowd outside scattered. The gunmen ran toward Harvard Avenue as someone in the crowd returned fire. One man ran inside the bar, bleeding from a bullet wound and pleading for help. Friends dropped off three other men at MetroHealth Medical Center. Each of the four men who took bullets at the Big Boss Lounge shooting hailed from the Fleet neighborhood.

And none of them would talk to police.

"They are at war with each other," said a source involved in the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.




Police have accused two groups of men and women in a violent, summer-long feud in and around the city's Slavic Village neighborhood. Though each person pictured here faces gun-related charges, they have also been victims of gun violence.

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