T.N.O. the “Real Story” by Colonel “Strikeforce”
TNO or “The New Order” was a paramilitary style suburban
street “gang” (they hated that tag) from Islip Terrace that began in the
late 80′s which peaked out at 400+ members in it’s day in the early
90′s. I was in TNO pretty much from almost the beginning, wasnt quite
original sump crew but I definitely was there til the end. The group
started pretty basically from just a bunch of ragtag hoodlums having BB
gun wars in a sump every weekend.
From what i know of reclusive “sump-commander” (later to be known as KT) was transferred to EI High School in early 1986 from LaSalle Military Academy in Oakdale. He excelled in the ROTC program at LaSalle as cadet captain but in East Islip School he was a loner, hated by the popular “south of main street” types, often ostracized by the “jocks” & picked on for being “weird”. Any that knew him say they say he would cut out of school & just chill in an underground bunker in the woods to plot, set tripwires, traps, for kids walking home or just napalming the neighborhood. He stayed pretty much low-key basically eating pork n beans in a drainage pipe, after a while people generally avoided him they thought he was pretty nuts lol. He wasn’t popular in school & had managed to gain the friendship of a only small handful of misfits he chilled with usually at lunch or played commodore-64 games at his house. These “misfits” took part in the early grimy sump battles, basically BB gun wars without rules, the sump on fire every other day, kids just going at it with homemade flamethrowers & rocket launchers. They called this mayhem “Bones Productions”; after the nickname of one of the original crew, the “Productions” part was the 1st video camcorder that was available, a big old clunky VHS Quasar in which the picture tube burnt out quickly and all the images is filmed were in a kind of fluorescent green, anything filmed with that was definitely from the “Bones” era. The Sumpcommander had other nicknames, some called him “commando vietnam”. He would walk around the school in dirty green camo & a “Sat Cong” shirt asking everyone “what are you doing this weekend”, they’d be like “why”, he’d say “there’s gonna be a war in the sump”. He also had a fantasy plot of recruiting kids to go to vietnam to free the POW’s there, probably a Rambo inspired plot. He would go on mini-missions he called “Ninja Walks” at night, no real objective just mayhem.. In 1987 he pulled a prank on the 3rd precinct, saying he found a canister of radioactive material in the CI hospital grounds which caused a big stir with local authorities & brookhaven lab. There were radioactive response teams that shut down his block & set up a decontamination center!, until they found out it was a hoax. This was known as the “Radon” incident & pretty much jolted him from unpopular obscurity in high school to near celebrity status. He even came to school the next day wearing the white radiation suit they put him in & arrested him in!. With this boost, new kids started showing up & the sump became more popular, soon kids were there building bunkers, treeforts, foxholes, & obstacles & cleaning the sump up under his direction.
The sump wars lasted until about 1990 when the “sumpcommander” began bumping things up, creating a ranking system, instilling tactics, military field drills, basically whatever he learned from LaSalle. In early 1990 there was an incident; a “gang” from EI known as TWC “the wrecking crew” destroyed the sump bunker, supposedly because of a fight earlier between a sump recruit & one of their friends. Unfortunately for them this created the 1st spark of true unity in this little sump platoon. I was there when we found TWC on divison ave in EI & quickly surrounded them, beat them & chased them through backyards & all over until we caught up to the “leader” who basically capitulated with a bitchslap after they all abandoned him. The concept that they all left him there was unfathomable actually, we felt we were above these common “punks” because we felt a higher unity, thats what really started the thinking process as well as the fact that we rallied up so efficiently; it really put the hook in everyone that we can be something more than what we were at the time. There were a few neighborhood skirmishes with the sump crew & other kids in the area going on too. The sumpcommander felt it would be better to somehow assimilate these guys because they were pretty cool & could be useful if we can somehow get them down with what we had going. I remember a few years after this of his system he used to accomplish this. I recall how he explained he’d create what he’d call “pools of commonality”, basically taking two or more groups of people, creating a common interest & in a way joining these “pools” to make a larger pool with a system of networking that he perfected. He spent alot of time up at the triangle on lowell ave just playing operation wolf on the arcade, i’d come through & he was there in full camo & a beret getting into the game bigtime. We’d dip from there to sunvet mall on bike to pickup c-64 games, everyone he ran into he began hyping them about the sump & telling kids to come down & join the crew. He’d also be creeping all over islip terrace on bike just rolling right up on kids & drafting them lol. Other days he;d bike to carleton park in CI with a lasonic boombox & get with all the kids breakdancing at the time. He was hanging with these dudes franky & lucky out there basically uprocking all day on refrigerator cardboard.
The terrace skirmishes ended & the kids that were problems were all down with the sump. The neighbors who lived near the sump were becoming tired of amount of people gathering, loud systems, & people trooping in/out of the sump so called the cops regularly, this pretty much ended the “sump era” as it was, which.. prompted a shift which fit in well with that “spark”. So by early 1991 the sumpcommander eventually unified the scattered & eager sump crew which by now had participants from other towns, into one unit and named the group “The New Order” (named for the feeling described above, the “higher unity” concept) & the “Sump Commander” became the “Street Commander” & known as “KT” (short for king tom) whom overnight issued the “Street Operations” doctrine. With TNO acclimated to being a “street crew”, all sump ranks applied & the transition went pretty well & TNO gatherings now concentrated at various “house partys” that were organized by ranking members. Only the top ranks of TNO would gather at the sump now, only during the summer usually at night & a big tarp tent was erected for this purpose. To solidify the new “Street OP’s” KT created an emblem for the group of a half red/half white circle, with black swords crossed in the center, quite similar to the Pink Floyd The Wall symbol but without the hammers, this was chosen because “The Wall” was a heavy influence on the group back in the day often played on cassette over & over during the earlier “wars”. Now with everyone basically living “The Wall”, KT pretty much became the persona of “Pink”. Those who opposed TNO better “run like hell” lol.
With the enactment of the “Street OP’s” doctrine, virtually & impressively TNO members overnight pumped out over 500 emblems, islip terrace, east islip, ronkonkoma, central islip, & other areas were awash with TNO posters, a large TNO flag was dropped from connetquot ave bridge, the radisson hotel in ronkonkoma, emblems tagged on the EI handball courts, buildings, bridges, streets, the walking bridge, etc. The female members pumped out loads of emblemed hats, armbands, & flags. KT would cruise through town with the bass bumping followed by an entourage of cars loaded down with troops. It was a super-high profile thrust into the spotlight which ultimately brought the group much attention from many sides of the spectrum. Recruitment swelled, kids at school were given detention for drawing the TNO emblem on books, the entire school was awash with TNO emblems tagged all over the desks, walls, bathrooms, sidewalks, mostly by non-members who were riding the wave of the groups’ popularity. Mini-crews were popping up from all over to join up, KT had his original sump troopers handle the new influx & find ways to evaluate them to see if they were TNO worthy. Each sub-commander was allowed to use their own method for evaluating, this continued until one new recruit was thrown out of a moving car, this was the extreme though, other evals were to crawl through a drainage pipe while flares where thrown in or m80s, sometime there were crazy high risk missions to go on, or being bumrushed. Reprimands were issued for infractions, one popular method was know as “thighs” where everyone would mob the recruit, pin him down & punch the inner thighs of the recruit until he broke. Some other initiations were carving the emblem into bare flesh with a razor then pouring rubbing alcohol on it, then putting on fire, others were taking a hell ride in the trunk of a car, or thrown off a roof. KT basically allowed free reign for the evals & dealt basically with the candidate when they were approved to recruit. By the time the end of summer 1991 rolled around, membership was around 220 members. In the fall KT lifted the minimum age requirement for members from 18yrs to 15yrs which ushered in the TNO youth division. Kept out of any dangerous scenarios by KT’s direct orders, mostly they served by spreading the emblem & tagging.
This was the beginning of the “glory zone” for TNO, a short-lived zone because of the groups dedication to a hyper-high profile stance in the community & “flash recruitment’s”. In winter 1992 the TNO recruitment party’s & rally’s of the colder months proved very fruitful & a bit turbulent. Smaller groups & established groups were challenging TNO’s presence. We wll were constantly responding to threats, shit-talkers, punks, herbs harassing members, you name it. The winter months were also big club months for the ranking TNO members. Often while the group rallied, KT would make appearances to boost morale & get briefings from platoon leaders before he would head out to the clubs with a small elite contingent. It was that winter, KT met Archie “AK” Kalafatis (the leader of SIB) “Strong Island Boys” at a club called “Barkers” in Babylon, they both were really buzzed as i recall, no idea who each other was! it was a crazy night!, once they found out they starting talking about their plans for LI & how there needs to be “respect” restored to the island. Archie did show up on occasion to some of the TNO house partys & was always a solid supporter of KT, SIB was a very deep troop in that day too. With the two largest suburban “gangs” on LI on good terms with each other, this enabled more aggressive postures against the groups that disliked TNO such as LOD (Legion of Doom) and EBP (Eight Ball Posse). KT would troop from town to town in a black & gold cadillac with me driving, some of his other best troopers inside, bumping NWA on the subs, as we passed around 40′s all night, the whole car smelled like malt liquor & blunts. We would close down the OBI every friday & saturday night of the week, take over half the dance floor. KT would be wrecked breakdancing doing windmills n shit on the floor with his shirt tied around his head like a pirate or wearing a camo bandana lol. He would be all Z cavarricci’ed out other nights just hardcore club dancing, there were a few squabbles with herbs there but never any real beef, TNO was too thick in there, nothing got out of hand. One time i remember some dude got bent out of shape because KT was dancing with his girl so he came up from behind with like 5 guys bumrushing him from behind. Next thing you know, I grabbed KT & threw him to side & my boy SF came over my shoulder with a “haymaker” overhand & just broke this dudes nose instantly!, KT was struggling to get into the fight & no one ever let him, we just kept lunging forward & keeping him shielded with mad bods. The spirit & heart we all had in TNO now that i think of it, was pretty fanatical it was out troop our army, we felt pretty strong & liked that feeling alot. KT was the center of this strength, he was the one that breathed life into “this” & in that, all of us, we’d fight for him & “that” without hesitation.
With the coming of spring 1992 KT shifted from exposure to tightening the group tactically as a more formidable force, with the release of the “Platoon Leaders Handbook” doctrine. This manifesto propelled the group both to absolute glory & ultimate destruction as outlined how to “raise & train a “youth militia” with a system based upon a creating smaller semi-autonomous units under one central command hierarchy. I read it a few times and it did make sense at the time, basically it gave platoon leaders greater command, charged with recruiting, rallying, & training inductees with a more rigorous roster, including: hand-to-hand, boxing, wrestling, recruitment, propaganda, field drills, tactics, logistics, aesthetics, infiltration, among other points. I think KT was starting to feel the “burden of command” & wanted to delegate power downward, it worked quite well. The platoon leaders competed for recruits & collectively raised up over 400+ inductees in the summer of 1992, spanning from Brooklyn to Mastic. This was the high tide mark for TNO, & with all this adrenaline & empowerment came the problems. Fights with other smaller crews were constant, EI was actually the most problematic, but with this strife was also the arrests, the tumult, & the beginning of the downfall. TNO Platoon commanders became power drunk, getting high, going on the offensive and instigating fights, issuing beatdowns, destroying & pillaging property in the name of TNO; this all as you can imagine reflected badly for KT. When you delegate power = you dilute power, this new doctrine was flawed, TNO platoons even began warring with other TNO platoons when disputes broke out between members. There was constantly battles at this point, within, without, & oppression by authorities.
The group was still growing like wildfire and things began whirling out of control. Amongst all this KT & TNO were already under investigation by the Secret Service (I don’t know why them particularly?? makes as much sense as lets say.. the DEC busting drug dealers?!? lol) definitely local police & federal entities were involved, all wondering.. what waht KT up to?. Often the federal investigators would photograph KT when he appeared at the local platoon rallies. Basically the authorities were drawing a “blank” trying to figure out TNO & it’s agendas and/or motives. It didn’t fit neatly into the “gang” definition, it wasn’t about drug trafficking, profiting, drive-bys, etc.. Nor did it exist for any true criminal purposes, no anti-governmental or any racial agendas. There were even fears that the group may be some sort of neo-nazi movement or affiliated with a 1960′s skin group out in ohio called “the order”.. That is until they found members of every color, race, sex & creed within the group. But why was a private army being so aggressively raised, so publicly, so suddenly? what was their goal? TNO in retrospect was a “social experiment” with a purpose: It existed simply to serve itself, self-glorification and ultimately provide protection to those whom joined the ranks of membership & respect to all within. However with the authorities capture of the “platoon leaders handbook” it became imminent that they would formulate a round peg to fit in a square hole approach to the group. TNO was a danger & needed to be stopped, a series of arrests, interrogations, & a campaign against the group began.
Despite this pride was strong!, the popularity of TNO continued to rise in 1992, constant TNO house parties all over, KT kept fueling the fires, VHS recruitment videos played at partys were popular, bonfires in the sump, expansion to different towns, easy victories over any other crews, formation of all female platoons, even kids moms joining the group & actual adults!, confrontation of smaller crews was routine they never fought they always ran, there was a brawl with bikers which was pretty bad, We herbed out LOD, they called out TNO to battle at 711 on lowell & they refused to fight thus ending their legitimacy, & other real major victories, such as at the East Islip high school, where a large contingent of “jocks” surrounded two local captains of TNO jeering them and insulting the honor of the group. KT got a call & sent one of his best divisions to respond, totalling about 86 members whom confronted the “jocks” as the school day ended. Just about the whole school walked out behind the TNO members and stood with them!, the opposition ran back into the school and hid. Two TNO officers took matters into their own hands and was subsequentially arrested along with two other members for rioting. Well this finally prompted the schools to act, suspensions for known TNO members, cops called to the school to talk to students, mass mailing s by the schools to explain the warning signs of “gang activity” to parents, youth groups discussing TNO. “The New Order” was quickly becoming the new scourge.. lower ranking members were raising their own brigades of brigands, The emblem became like a rash from Moriches to Queens. New alliances were formed with TMR in Brooklyn, & other clicks i can’t remember in an attempt at boosting unification.
One day on his way home, KT was surrounded & interrogated by federal investigators accusing him of being some sort of anti-governmental revolutionary or aryan white power guy (truly a joke), KT seen that he was being accused for everything his troops did. Cops would surround his black cadillac wherever it stopped, was KT gun running or something? their searches always turned up empty, KT wasnt that round peg for the round hole textbook hood, so they got inventive. KT called for a large rally in an abandoned factory in ronkonkoma, truly a scene that looked like the end of pink floyd’s “wall”, the flags, the fervent followers, me up there beside KT serious as fuck!. We were going to root out the malefactors & beatdown the doubters!. The cops got wind of this rally & what sounded like a fleet of sirens was inbound. I got KT’s caddy & pulled up to exctract him while everyone else was breaking in different directions. We dipped pretty slickly, KT drove & was able to evade the cops with the help of a diversion from one of the new & fervent recruits from ronkonkoma platoon codename “cleveland”. That night was a night of vengeance, KT was in a particularly diabolic state of mind that night, ordering all of TNO in every town to unleash anarchy.. In that, random beatdowns, vandalism, tagging, & general mayhem. Now the anti-hero that everyone expected him to be, KT pretty much gave up on everything that night, “No Order” was the new unspoken doctrine.
Coming back to his senses a bit, KT tryed to change the course in mid-stream by issuing the “Black Beret” doctrine of winter 1993. This idea was to train a special detachment of the “homeland” division (his best platoon) under an ex-Army ranger whom KT befriended, he agreed to help. The last of the folding remnants were called up to enter this program. The purpose was simple, to create a community friendly group in attempt to stave off the inevitable. This was to be almost like a “guardian angel” type division whos task was to gain good publicty, clean up rundown areas and ultimately keep the “streets safe”. The reasoning was to regain gain public favor and then use this division to “clean-up” or re-unify the warring renegade platoons. If this was properly excecuted it would then clear the name & honor of the group and give us a platform from which to restore order. A date was set and a task was chosen, the cleanup and restoration of a park in a rundown drug neighborhood in Bayshore. News12 was there to cover the story as well as a personal visit from a Congressman Downey and a Town Councilman!. The Operation was successful, yet this new direction was not easy to digest for his weary troops, and the concept gained no ground afterwards. The shattered but active renegade platoons continued their self-destruction.
A week later KT, whom was getting more & more out of touch with reality & into psychedelics, no more buzzcut & camos, now it was long hair & nietzschie, he dropped off the grid as a recluse & surrendered his crown to the flames, ordered the decimation of the last remnants of the “New Order” the group eventually came full circle until it represented the opposite of what it was intended to be. I still don’t understand how he let things get so out of hand? Too large, too loud, too fast! quantity over quality dilluted the quality, the final embers of the group fell cold in the winter of 1993 leaving nothing more than a skeleton of a lost legacy. With the exit of TNO came the end of the true suburban gang era on Long Island & the rise of the hiphop cookie-cutter syndicated prison gangs, kind of the “walmart” of the gang enterprise. latin kings, bloods, crips, ms-13, all the parasites dedicated to crime & violence. Many Ex-TNO members went off to join the military, others descended more into addictions, jail, & some are dead.
Last time i seen KT i stopped by his house in late 1993, he was tripping balls just sitting with a rambo knife locked in his teeth for hours not talking just staring, no one could get him to talk so i left.. haven’t talked to him since but been hearing too much strange shit about him lately, I got alot of shit to deal with these days in my own life, but i hope to pop up again someday to thank him for all the crazy days back when.
- Ex-TNO Colonel “Strikeforce”
From what i know of reclusive “sump-commander” (later to be known as KT) was transferred to EI High School in early 1986 from LaSalle Military Academy in Oakdale. He excelled in the ROTC program at LaSalle as cadet captain but in East Islip School he was a loner, hated by the popular “south of main street” types, often ostracized by the “jocks” & picked on for being “weird”. Any that knew him say they say he would cut out of school & just chill in an underground bunker in the woods to plot, set tripwires, traps, for kids walking home or just napalming the neighborhood. He stayed pretty much low-key basically eating pork n beans in a drainage pipe, after a while people generally avoided him they thought he was pretty nuts lol. He wasn’t popular in school & had managed to gain the friendship of a only small handful of misfits he chilled with usually at lunch or played commodore-64 games at his house. These “misfits” took part in the early grimy sump battles, basically BB gun wars without rules, the sump on fire every other day, kids just going at it with homemade flamethrowers & rocket launchers. They called this mayhem “Bones Productions”; after the nickname of one of the original crew, the “Productions” part was the 1st video camcorder that was available, a big old clunky VHS Quasar in which the picture tube burnt out quickly and all the images is filmed were in a kind of fluorescent green, anything filmed with that was definitely from the “Bones” era. The Sumpcommander had other nicknames, some called him “commando vietnam”. He would walk around the school in dirty green camo & a “Sat Cong” shirt asking everyone “what are you doing this weekend”, they’d be like “why”, he’d say “there’s gonna be a war in the sump”. He also had a fantasy plot of recruiting kids to go to vietnam to free the POW’s there, probably a Rambo inspired plot. He would go on mini-missions he called “Ninja Walks” at night, no real objective just mayhem.. In 1987 he pulled a prank on the 3rd precinct, saying he found a canister of radioactive material in the CI hospital grounds which caused a big stir with local authorities & brookhaven lab. There were radioactive response teams that shut down his block & set up a decontamination center!, until they found out it was a hoax. This was known as the “Radon” incident & pretty much jolted him from unpopular obscurity in high school to near celebrity status. He even came to school the next day wearing the white radiation suit they put him in & arrested him in!. With this boost, new kids started showing up & the sump became more popular, soon kids were there building bunkers, treeforts, foxholes, & obstacles & cleaning the sump up under his direction.
The sump wars lasted until about 1990 when the “sumpcommander” began bumping things up, creating a ranking system, instilling tactics, military field drills, basically whatever he learned from LaSalle. In early 1990 there was an incident; a “gang” from EI known as TWC “the wrecking crew” destroyed the sump bunker, supposedly because of a fight earlier between a sump recruit & one of their friends. Unfortunately for them this created the 1st spark of true unity in this little sump platoon. I was there when we found TWC on divison ave in EI & quickly surrounded them, beat them & chased them through backyards & all over until we caught up to the “leader” who basically capitulated with a bitchslap after they all abandoned him. The concept that they all left him there was unfathomable actually, we felt we were above these common “punks” because we felt a higher unity, thats what really started the thinking process as well as the fact that we rallied up so efficiently; it really put the hook in everyone that we can be something more than what we were at the time. There were a few neighborhood skirmishes with the sump crew & other kids in the area going on too. The sumpcommander felt it would be better to somehow assimilate these guys because they were pretty cool & could be useful if we can somehow get them down with what we had going. I remember a few years after this of his system he used to accomplish this. I recall how he explained he’d create what he’d call “pools of commonality”, basically taking two or more groups of people, creating a common interest & in a way joining these “pools” to make a larger pool with a system of networking that he perfected. He spent alot of time up at the triangle on lowell ave just playing operation wolf on the arcade, i’d come through & he was there in full camo & a beret getting into the game bigtime. We’d dip from there to sunvet mall on bike to pickup c-64 games, everyone he ran into he began hyping them about the sump & telling kids to come down & join the crew. He’d also be creeping all over islip terrace on bike just rolling right up on kids & drafting them lol. Other days he;d bike to carleton park in CI with a lasonic boombox & get with all the kids breakdancing at the time. He was hanging with these dudes franky & lucky out there basically uprocking all day on refrigerator cardboard.
The terrace skirmishes ended & the kids that were problems were all down with the sump. The neighbors who lived near the sump were becoming tired of amount of people gathering, loud systems, & people trooping in/out of the sump so called the cops regularly, this pretty much ended the “sump era” as it was, which.. prompted a shift which fit in well with that “spark”. So by early 1991 the sumpcommander eventually unified the scattered & eager sump crew which by now had participants from other towns, into one unit and named the group “The New Order” (named for the feeling described above, the “higher unity” concept) & the “Sump Commander” became the “Street Commander” & known as “KT” (short for king tom) whom overnight issued the “Street Operations” doctrine. With TNO acclimated to being a “street crew”, all sump ranks applied & the transition went pretty well & TNO gatherings now concentrated at various “house partys” that were organized by ranking members. Only the top ranks of TNO would gather at the sump now, only during the summer usually at night & a big tarp tent was erected for this purpose. To solidify the new “Street OP’s” KT created an emblem for the group of a half red/half white circle, with black swords crossed in the center, quite similar to the Pink Floyd The Wall symbol but without the hammers, this was chosen because “The Wall” was a heavy influence on the group back in the day often played on cassette over & over during the earlier “wars”. Now with everyone basically living “The Wall”, KT pretty much became the persona of “Pink”. Those who opposed TNO better “run like hell” lol.
With the enactment of the “Street OP’s” doctrine, virtually & impressively TNO members overnight pumped out over 500 emblems, islip terrace, east islip, ronkonkoma, central islip, & other areas were awash with TNO posters, a large TNO flag was dropped from connetquot ave bridge, the radisson hotel in ronkonkoma, emblems tagged on the EI handball courts, buildings, bridges, streets, the walking bridge, etc. The female members pumped out loads of emblemed hats, armbands, & flags. KT would cruise through town with the bass bumping followed by an entourage of cars loaded down with troops. It was a super-high profile thrust into the spotlight which ultimately brought the group much attention from many sides of the spectrum. Recruitment swelled, kids at school were given detention for drawing the TNO emblem on books, the entire school was awash with TNO emblems tagged all over the desks, walls, bathrooms, sidewalks, mostly by non-members who were riding the wave of the groups’ popularity. Mini-crews were popping up from all over to join up, KT had his original sump troopers handle the new influx & find ways to evaluate them to see if they were TNO worthy. Each sub-commander was allowed to use their own method for evaluating, this continued until one new recruit was thrown out of a moving car, this was the extreme though, other evals were to crawl through a drainage pipe while flares where thrown in or m80s, sometime there were crazy high risk missions to go on, or being bumrushed. Reprimands were issued for infractions, one popular method was know as “thighs” where everyone would mob the recruit, pin him down & punch the inner thighs of the recruit until he broke. Some other initiations were carving the emblem into bare flesh with a razor then pouring rubbing alcohol on it, then putting on fire, others were taking a hell ride in the trunk of a car, or thrown off a roof. KT basically allowed free reign for the evals & dealt basically with the candidate when they were approved to recruit. By the time the end of summer 1991 rolled around, membership was around 220 members. In the fall KT lifted the minimum age requirement for members from 18yrs to 15yrs which ushered in the TNO youth division. Kept out of any dangerous scenarios by KT’s direct orders, mostly they served by spreading the emblem & tagging.
This was the beginning of the “glory zone” for TNO, a short-lived zone because of the groups dedication to a hyper-high profile stance in the community & “flash recruitment’s”. In winter 1992 the TNO recruitment party’s & rally’s of the colder months proved very fruitful & a bit turbulent. Smaller groups & established groups were challenging TNO’s presence. We wll were constantly responding to threats, shit-talkers, punks, herbs harassing members, you name it. The winter months were also big club months for the ranking TNO members. Often while the group rallied, KT would make appearances to boost morale & get briefings from platoon leaders before he would head out to the clubs with a small elite contingent. It was that winter, KT met Archie “AK” Kalafatis (the leader of SIB) “Strong Island Boys” at a club called “Barkers” in Babylon, they both were really buzzed as i recall, no idea who each other was! it was a crazy night!, once they found out they starting talking about their plans for LI & how there needs to be “respect” restored to the island. Archie did show up on occasion to some of the TNO house partys & was always a solid supporter of KT, SIB was a very deep troop in that day too. With the two largest suburban “gangs” on LI on good terms with each other, this enabled more aggressive postures against the groups that disliked TNO such as LOD (Legion of Doom) and EBP (Eight Ball Posse). KT would troop from town to town in a black & gold cadillac with me driving, some of his other best troopers inside, bumping NWA on the subs, as we passed around 40′s all night, the whole car smelled like malt liquor & blunts. We would close down the OBI every friday & saturday night of the week, take over half the dance floor. KT would be wrecked breakdancing doing windmills n shit on the floor with his shirt tied around his head like a pirate or wearing a camo bandana lol. He would be all Z cavarricci’ed out other nights just hardcore club dancing, there were a few squabbles with herbs there but never any real beef, TNO was too thick in there, nothing got out of hand. One time i remember some dude got bent out of shape because KT was dancing with his girl so he came up from behind with like 5 guys bumrushing him from behind. Next thing you know, I grabbed KT & threw him to side & my boy SF came over my shoulder with a “haymaker” overhand & just broke this dudes nose instantly!, KT was struggling to get into the fight & no one ever let him, we just kept lunging forward & keeping him shielded with mad bods. The spirit & heart we all had in TNO now that i think of it, was pretty fanatical it was out troop our army, we felt pretty strong & liked that feeling alot. KT was the center of this strength, he was the one that breathed life into “this” & in that, all of us, we’d fight for him & “that” without hesitation.
With the coming of spring 1992 KT shifted from exposure to tightening the group tactically as a more formidable force, with the release of the “Platoon Leaders Handbook” doctrine. This manifesto propelled the group both to absolute glory & ultimate destruction as outlined how to “raise & train a “youth militia” with a system based upon a creating smaller semi-autonomous units under one central command hierarchy. I read it a few times and it did make sense at the time, basically it gave platoon leaders greater command, charged with recruiting, rallying, & training inductees with a more rigorous roster, including: hand-to-hand, boxing, wrestling, recruitment, propaganda, field drills, tactics, logistics, aesthetics, infiltration, among other points. I think KT was starting to feel the “burden of command” & wanted to delegate power downward, it worked quite well. The platoon leaders competed for recruits & collectively raised up over 400+ inductees in the summer of 1992, spanning from Brooklyn to Mastic. This was the high tide mark for TNO, & with all this adrenaline & empowerment came the problems. Fights with other smaller crews were constant, EI was actually the most problematic, but with this strife was also the arrests, the tumult, & the beginning of the downfall. TNO Platoon commanders became power drunk, getting high, going on the offensive and instigating fights, issuing beatdowns, destroying & pillaging property in the name of TNO; this all as you can imagine reflected badly for KT. When you delegate power = you dilute power, this new doctrine was flawed, TNO platoons even began warring with other TNO platoons when disputes broke out between members. There was constantly battles at this point, within, without, & oppression by authorities.
The group was still growing like wildfire and things began whirling out of control. Amongst all this KT & TNO were already under investigation by the Secret Service (I don’t know why them particularly?? makes as much sense as lets say.. the DEC busting drug dealers?!? lol) definitely local police & federal entities were involved, all wondering.. what waht KT up to?. Often the federal investigators would photograph KT when he appeared at the local platoon rallies. Basically the authorities were drawing a “blank” trying to figure out TNO & it’s agendas and/or motives. It didn’t fit neatly into the “gang” definition, it wasn’t about drug trafficking, profiting, drive-bys, etc.. Nor did it exist for any true criminal purposes, no anti-governmental or any racial agendas. There were even fears that the group may be some sort of neo-nazi movement or affiliated with a 1960′s skin group out in ohio called “the order”.. That is until they found members of every color, race, sex & creed within the group. But why was a private army being so aggressively raised, so publicly, so suddenly? what was their goal? TNO in retrospect was a “social experiment” with a purpose: It existed simply to serve itself, self-glorification and ultimately provide protection to those whom joined the ranks of membership & respect to all within. However with the authorities capture of the “platoon leaders handbook” it became imminent that they would formulate a round peg to fit in a square hole approach to the group. TNO was a danger & needed to be stopped, a series of arrests, interrogations, & a campaign against the group began.
Despite this pride was strong!, the popularity of TNO continued to rise in 1992, constant TNO house parties all over, KT kept fueling the fires, VHS recruitment videos played at partys were popular, bonfires in the sump, expansion to different towns, easy victories over any other crews, formation of all female platoons, even kids moms joining the group & actual adults!, confrontation of smaller crews was routine they never fought they always ran, there was a brawl with bikers which was pretty bad, We herbed out LOD, they called out TNO to battle at 711 on lowell & they refused to fight thus ending their legitimacy, & other real major victories, such as at the East Islip high school, where a large contingent of “jocks” surrounded two local captains of TNO jeering them and insulting the honor of the group. KT got a call & sent one of his best divisions to respond, totalling about 86 members whom confronted the “jocks” as the school day ended. Just about the whole school walked out behind the TNO members and stood with them!, the opposition ran back into the school and hid. Two TNO officers took matters into their own hands and was subsequentially arrested along with two other members for rioting. Well this finally prompted the schools to act, suspensions for known TNO members, cops called to the school to talk to students, mass mailing s by the schools to explain the warning signs of “gang activity” to parents, youth groups discussing TNO. “The New Order” was quickly becoming the new scourge.. lower ranking members were raising their own brigades of brigands, The emblem became like a rash from Moriches to Queens. New alliances were formed with TMR in Brooklyn, & other clicks i can’t remember in an attempt at boosting unification.
One day on his way home, KT was surrounded & interrogated by federal investigators accusing him of being some sort of anti-governmental revolutionary or aryan white power guy (truly a joke), KT seen that he was being accused for everything his troops did. Cops would surround his black cadillac wherever it stopped, was KT gun running or something? their searches always turned up empty, KT wasnt that round peg for the round hole textbook hood, so they got inventive. KT called for a large rally in an abandoned factory in ronkonkoma, truly a scene that looked like the end of pink floyd’s “wall”, the flags, the fervent followers, me up there beside KT serious as fuck!. We were going to root out the malefactors & beatdown the doubters!. The cops got wind of this rally & what sounded like a fleet of sirens was inbound. I got KT’s caddy & pulled up to exctract him while everyone else was breaking in different directions. We dipped pretty slickly, KT drove & was able to evade the cops with the help of a diversion from one of the new & fervent recruits from ronkonkoma platoon codename “cleveland”. That night was a night of vengeance, KT was in a particularly diabolic state of mind that night, ordering all of TNO in every town to unleash anarchy.. In that, random beatdowns, vandalism, tagging, & general mayhem. Now the anti-hero that everyone expected him to be, KT pretty much gave up on everything that night, “No Order” was the new unspoken doctrine.
Coming back to his senses a bit, KT tryed to change the course in mid-stream by issuing the “Black Beret” doctrine of winter 1993. This idea was to train a special detachment of the “homeland” division (his best platoon) under an ex-Army ranger whom KT befriended, he agreed to help. The last of the folding remnants were called up to enter this program. The purpose was simple, to create a community friendly group in attempt to stave off the inevitable. This was to be almost like a “guardian angel” type division whos task was to gain good publicty, clean up rundown areas and ultimately keep the “streets safe”. The reasoning was to regain gain public favor and then use this division to “clean-up” or re-unify the warring renegade platoons. If this was properly excecuted it would then clear the name & honor of the group and give us a platform from which to restore order. A date was set and a task was chosen, the cleanup and restoration of a park in a rundown drug neighborhood in Bayshore. News12 was there to cover the story as well as a personal visit from a Congressman Downey and a Town Councilman!. The Operation was successful, yet this new direction was not easy to digest for his weary troops, and the concept gained no ground afterwards. The shattered but active renegade platoons continued their self-destruction.
A week later KT, whom was getting more & more out of touch with reality & into psychedelics, no more buzzcut & camos, now it was long hair & nietzschie, he dropped off the grid as a recluse & surrendered his crown to the flames, ordered the decimation of the last remnants of the “New Order” the group eventually came full circle until it represented the opposite of what it was intended to be. I still don’t understand how he let things get so out of hand? Too large, too loud, too fast! quantity over quality dilluted the quality, the final embers of the group fell cold in the winter of 1993 leaving nothing more than a skeleton of a lost legacy. With the exit of TNO came the end of the true suburban gang era on Long Island & the rise of the hiphop cookie-cutter syndicated prison gangs, kind of the “walmart” of the gang enterprise. latin kings, bloods, crips, ms-13, all the parasites dedicated to crime & violence. Many Ex-TNO members went off to join the military, others descended more into addictions, jail, & some are dead.
Last time i seen KT i stopped by his house in late 1993, he was tripping balls just sitting with a rambo knife locked in his teeth for hours not talking just staring, no one could get him to talk so i left.. haven’t talked to him since but been hearing too much strange shit about him lately, I got alot of shit to deal with these days in my own life, but i hope to pop up again someday to thank him for all the crazy days back when.
- Ex-TNO Colonel “Strikeforce”
