History of gangs The first gangs in the United States can be

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 5 GANG VIOLENCE IN AMERICA (3 CE HOURS) Learning objectives Gain knowledge of the history of gangs in United States. Describe the current state of gang membership and activity. Identify the breadth of the gang violence problem. Describe the role and image of gangs in popular culture. List programs shown to be effective against gang violence. Introduction A 15-year-old Chicago boy is gunned down while standing in front of his cousin s house, receiving his birthday gift. 1 In St. Louis, during a funeral visitation, a dispute between gang rivals erupts in gunfire on the lawn of the funeral home. 2 In Daytona Beach, Fla., dealers and users populate a park known for its drug deals while on the opposite street corner, families and tourists stop in for a dozen Krispy Kremes. 3 All across America, street gangs and their activities and violence have become commonplace. News outlets are filled with daily recitations of the violence. No place is immune, and even when performing as simple a task as stopping off for a dozen donuts on the way to Sunday school, Americans never know when they might become the next innocent victim. Although numbering far less than 1 percent of the American population, gang members, at minimum, evoke a healthy caution from the average American if not a gut reaction of fear over something that seems out of control. Log onto any forum, blog or newspaper comments section on the subject and the American attitude is evident. Anger comes first, then bluster, then frustration and fear of a subsection of American society that mainstream America sees as out of control. And when Americans turn to their leaders, they see that the officials, too, are frustrated. There appears to be no single answer, no single act that government, law enforcement or social services can take that will solve a problem allowed to fester and grow. Law enforcement, social workers and ordinary citizens alike search for answers as the gang problem seems to escalate beyond their ability to deal with it. Where did these groups come from? Why did they spring up? What is the extent of the danger? And how do we combat it? This course will provide answers to those questions, outline solutions that appear to be working and offer links to resources for breaking the vicious cycle of gang violence. History of gangs The first gangs in the United States can be traced back to soon after the Revolutionary War. However, those first groups are characterized more as social clubs, forming among groups of like background and ethnicity, devoted to maintaining some form of homogeneity while the nation moved forward into the unknown territory of its newly won independence from England. The more serious street gangs did not emerge until the early 19th century, and were still mostly youth fighting over local turf. 4 New York City, as the hub of immigration, naturally assumed the role as birthplace of gangs in America. In a comprehensive report on gang history in America, the U.S. Justice Department s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) found that early immigrants encountered limited possibilities because of discrimination by native-born Americans and a lack of marketable skills. Because of the enormous waves of people arriving daily, housing was scarce, as were jobs for the unskilled. Finding themselves living in the squalor of early American slums, some immigrants turned to crime out of desperation, and gangs formed as a result. This lack of opportunity would raise its head often in the nation s history as a primary reason for gang formation. Although some early American gangs formed along ethnic boundaries, many sprouted in areas that were not populated by a single ethnic group. Many gang members had jobs, although routinely in manual labor. Ethnicity often took a backseat to territoriality with the early gangs. Forming after the War of 1812, the more serious gangs began appearing in New York City on the lower East Side. With mainly Irish membership, these gangs, among them the Bowery Boys, were joined after the Civil War by gangs formed among the Italians and Jewish. However, the violence was still along the lines of turf warfare. It wasn t until 1820 and the formation of the Forty Thieves Gang that America got its first dangerously violent gang that focused on criminal enterprise. The latter part of the century saw the advent of what many still believe to be the most significant street gang in the country s history, the Five Points Gang. Named after the area of Manhattan where five streets converged, the Five Points Gang graduated many of its best into membership in the Sicilian Mafia, known as La Cosa Nostra. One member in particular learned the lessons well, a teen-aged recruit early in the 20th century named Alphonse Capone. 5 The 2002 Oscar-nominated movie Gangs of New York told the story of the Five Points Gang. 6 In that late 19th century time frame, the Chinese Tongs formed in New York, satisfying themselves with running the opium trade and gambling enterprises. That period also spawned The Whyos, a gang that actually had a menu with prices for various violence-for-hire activities. 7 In the early 1900s, gang activity began to move west as Chicago street gangs formed in earnest, although a few white gangs in the area could trace their roots Whyos Menu Punching... $2 Break nose & jaw...$10 Break leg or arm... $19 Shoot in leg... $25 The Big Job $100 and up (Source: OJJDP) back to the 1860s. Chicago was gearing up as an industrial giant toward the end of the 19th century, and recruited workers heavily from southern and Eastern Europe. As with New York, gangs grew out of this massive immigration and mirrored the New York patterns. Some early Chicago gangs sprang out of the famous ward politics system. One of the most infamous was Ragen s Colts, an offshoot of the Ragen Athletic Club established by Cook County Commissioner Frank Ragen. The club, originally formed as an amateur baseball team, made the news of the day repeatedly in stories about violence against black Chicagoans. 8 During this period, Chicago had a well-defined gangland that bordered the downtown business district on three sides, with Lake Michigan on the fourth side. The area south of downtown included the turf of the Ragen s Colts, who claimed 3,000 members. North and west of downtown, the gangs used river bridges to battle each other. 9 By the Roaring 20s, Chicago became the focus of gang activity in the U.S. as rival gangs sprayed the streets with machine-gun fire. Young Mr. Capone, having moved from New York, had perfected his craft and stood atop the heap. The 1930s through the 1960s saw a second wave of Chicago gang formation, this time driven not by immigration but by a different engine, the migration of Hispanics and African-Americans to the North. Some of the largest gangs of this era were the Disciples, P. Stones, Vice Lords and Latin Kings. As the 1960s dawned, gang violence exploded again in Chicago as battles raged over drug distribution. Meanwhile, Los Angeles had been gearing up with the formation of gangs in the 1930s and 1940s that grew out of Mexican ethnicity. The earliest Americans of Hispanic descent found themselves left out of opportunities as the western United States grew, but in 20th century America, Hispanic Americans organized for different reasons. The Treaty of Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican- American War in 1848, created Americans out of whole cloth by virtue of Mexico s ceding land that is now the Southwestern U.S. All Mexicans living in the region Many gangs with a national presence can trace their roots to Los Angeles. Violence Prevention Coalition immediately became American citizens. But as America moved westward, these new citizens were treated as interlopers. 10 As residents of these areas made their way into the cities, and as immigrants crossing the border Page 57

2 from Mexico arrived, they brought with them an intense loyalty to their ethnicity and homeland. These loyalties, more than a lack of opportunity in the East, fueled the early gang movement in the western U.S. As millions of Latinos moved into the region, most found their way to Los Angeles, allowing it to supplant Chicago as the nation s secondlargest city. These immigrants brought with them pride in their particular part of their homeland. As they settled in the barrios of East Los Angeles, Mexican-Americans banded through the bonds of this regional pride. Those gangs began as social groups, but quickly blossomed into violence over turf and the honor of their groups. The 1940s also saw the first African-American gangs forming in the L.A. area. But in South Central L.A., the early 1970s marked the beginning of what many see as the modern era of gang violence. As a response to their belief that they were shut out from the social and work opportunities available to others, the African-American youth of that region of Los Angeles formed the Crips and the Bloods. 11 Two names. Two colors of the spectrum, but as synonymous with gang violence in the American lexicon as Band-Aid or Xerox are with the product lines they pioneered. Ask the man on the street about Mara Salvatrucha (considered the most dangerous gang currently operating in the U.S.) and he may not know. But he ll be familiar with the Crips and Bloods and probably be able to tell you which colors they wear. The documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America offers reasons behind the formation and surge in popularity of the two gangs through interviews with current as well as founding members of both groups. Exclusion from social groups is put forward as one of the main issues. The movie says the eastern border of the Watts area of South Central L.A. (almost exclusively populated by African-Americans) is accepted to be Alameda Street, which is also the accepted western edge of two white-dominated cities, South Gate and Huntington Park. In the documentary, Kumasi, an early member of the Slausons gang, a precursor of the Crips, said he and others in South Central L.A. knew not to cross Alameda, that police would enforce the boundary between black and white. Every day, that s my diet, a spoonful of hatred, Kumasi says in the film, referring to his experience maturing to manhood in South Central L.A. Bird, another early gang member, tells of searching the social offerings of the time. He relates the story of his mother taking him to join a local Boy Scout troop. As he speaks, the camera pans across the troop s group picture, showing only white faces. Be prepared to be turned down, he quotes his mother saying at the time. Bird then quotes the Boy Scout oath, anger still heavy in his voice Page 58 some 40 years after being denied membership in the Boy Scouts because of his skin color. That s the Boy Scouts of America. he says, a racist organization. Kumasi echoes the sentiment, brimming with remembered rage that seems to boil easily to the surface even now. We couldn t be Cub Scouts, Kumasi says. We couldn t be Boy Scouts; we couldn t be Explorer Scouts. We couldn t become involved in any kind of organization that would bear us good fruit. So the youth of South Central Los Angeles formed their own clubs, fueled by the anger evident in the documentary s interviews. The many individual groups throughout the area quickly consolidated into two groups, the Crips and the Bloods, with neighborhood branches. Tagging their hoods with graffiti, both gangs spread throughout the South Central L.A. region, Crips wearing blue and Bloods wearing red. A map of the region showing neighborhood allegiances began to resemble an Election Day map on network television. But the result of a red being caught in a blue region, or vice versa, was far more dangerous than simply a heated political conversation. The documentary states that more than 15,000 people had been killed as of 2008 in the gang wars of South Central L.A, claiming that total to be more than three times the number killed in the violence of Northern Ireland. And after establishing a foothold in South Central L.A., the two groups fanned out across America, pioneering the proliferation of gang affiliates throughout the nation. That expansion also sparked the spread of gangs, and gang violence, into the South, which prior to the 1970s had experienced little, if any, gang activity. The South became the latest area of expansion for gang activity as the big name gangs branched out looking for new turf. Toward the end of the 1970s, only Miami among cities in the Deep South reported significant gang activity, while New Orleans began seeing some gangs forming. 12 From the 70s through the 90s, southern states measured increased gang activity, but still widely spread throughout the region. In measures of counties with gang activity, the period saw significant increases in Florida (23 percent), South Carolina (15 percent) and Alabama (12 percent). For the same period, the South led the country in the number of new cities reporting gang activity, a 32 percent increase to the Midwest s 26 percent. The Northeast and West saw increases of only 6 percent and 3 percent, respectively. 13 About the time the Crips and Bloods were forming, popular culture and the entertainment industry took note of the gang issue. Among the first was songwriter Mac Davis, who penned A Vicious Circle in Renamed In The Ghetto and sung by Elvis Presley, the song captured America s imagination. The song followed the short life of a child born into the ghettos of Chicago through his learning the lessons of street life until he lies dead in the street, holding a gun. Acknowledgement of the vicious circle of gang life is brought home through the device of beginning and ending the song with almost identical verses about a tearful mother giving birth, sad instead of joyous because she knows what the child will face. America so embraced the song that it became Presley s first Top 10 hit in four years. He also made it a staple of his Las Vegas shows. As much as Elvis grabbed America by the heart, two years later, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick shook it by its sensibilities with the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. While based in London and telling the story of a gang of British youths, Kubrick s film graphically displayed the horrors of gang rape, violence and murder as no film had before. Originally released in the U.S. with an X rating, the film was upgraded to R in 1973 when Kubrick re-released it with some of the most graphic scenes deleted. He pulled the film from distribution in Britain after copycat killings were reported by youths dressing and acting as the characters in the film. But along with other films of the period, A Clockwork Orange had already sparked a debate in America about film violence and its influence on society. While that debate was going on, gangs were mobilizing. No longer satisfied with the income from the drug trade and other activities in the major cities, the large gangs began sending out feelers into the suburbs and ultimately into rural areas as well. The most active among these were Los Angelesbased gangs, thus fueling the public perception that America s gang problem began there. In a Fact Sheet published in 2007, The Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles confirmed that: Many gangs which today have a nationwide presence, such as the Bloods, the Crips, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and 18th Street, can trace their roots to Los Angeles. The migration of gang members from Los Angeles to other regions of the United States has led to a rapid proliferation of these gangs in many smaller suburban and rural areas not accustomed to gang activity and its related crimes. (Quote used by permission of The Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles.) The U.S. Justice Department s National Gang Intelligence Center in January 2009 issued its National Gang Threat Assessment outlining the migration. According to that report, gang members moved from the cities into suburban areas beginning in the 1970s, often battling among themselves over the new territory. These new gang lords, forming gangs in the suburbs, recruited members from low-income, singleparent families.

3 Gangs in pop culture Part II Nowhere was the influence of gang violence and pop culture s fascination with it more evident than the story of the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast factions in the Gangsta Rap industry. The West Coast was represented by Death Row Records (Snoop Dog and Tupac Shakur, et al) and the East Coast by Bad Boy Entertainment (Puff Daddy and Notorius B.I.G., et al). Death Row employed many members of the Bloods, and Bad Boy aligned itself with the Crips. What began as a war of words escalated into beatings and robberies, turning fatal on Sept. 7, That night, Tupac Shakur and others were captured on security video as they left a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas. The video shows them beating, but not killing, a rival gang member accused of robbing a member of Shakur s entourage. Less than three hours later, as his car waited at a traffic light, another car pulled alongside and the occupants opened fire, hitting Shakur four times in the chest. He died six days later. Persistent reports put Notorious B.I.G. behind the hit as a retaliation for the beating earlier that night. Six months later, B.I.G. was in Los Angeles for the Soul Train Music Awards. After the ceremony, as his car waited at a traffic light, another car pulled alongside and the occupants opened fire. B.I.G. died at the scene from several gunshots to the chest. As the 1980s dawned, the large urban gangs moved into the suburbs in earnest, swallowing up the smaller gangs to increase profits from the drug trade. At the same time, they sent members to locate new drug markets throughout the nation. Encountering resistance from local gangs already established, these moves resulted in more killings and drive-by shootings. The 1990s served to strengthen those gang handholds on America s towns and cities, prompting law enforcement to target key gang leaders in an attempt to defeat the problem from the top down. But data from the National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) in 2008 show gang activity is still increasing. Law enforcement agencies reporting gang activity increased from 45 percent in 2004 to 58 percent in 2008, with the largest increases in the East and Southeast. This migration is confirmed by a May 2010 bulletin of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which states that as early as 1998, the southern United States had surpassed the Northeast in the number of states reporting counties with gang violence. At the other end of the spectrum, the 2009 Justice report includes data from interviewing students as young as 12 years old about gang activity in their schools. The interviews, conducted in 2005, showed that 17 percent of suburban students reported increased gang activity in their schools. Shockingly, rural students reported a 33 percent increase after reporting an 8 percent decrease only two years before. According to the NDTS, middle schools and high schools have become prime recruitment fields and markets for drugs. Law enforcement agencies even report that gang members who drop out of school are encouraged to re-enroll so they can recruit new members and sell drugs. The Justice report estimated gang membership in the U.S. at more than 1 million as of September 2008, consisting of more than 147,000 documented gang members in custody and approximately 900,000 walking the streets. Those 900,000 have made the streets a war zone where ordinary citizens doing ordinary things are at risk: July 11, 2011: A 34-year-old cook at Alice s Bar-B-Que in Bronzeville, a Chicago neighborhood, steps outside for a smoke break. He is gunned down and dies at the scene when occupants of a silver car open fire at another man, described as a gangbanger, who is walking by. 14 July 12, 2011: In Tracy, Calif., a city of 83,000 about 50 miles east of Oakland, one group of suspected gang members fires into another group standing in front of a grocery store. Police suspect it to be gang activity based on eyewitness reports of verbal exchanges between the groups. 15 July 12, 2011: In the coastal community of Half Moon Bay, Calif., population 11,324, three 17-year-olds are charged with beating a member of a rival gang with baseball bats and a shovel. 16 July 14, 2011: Police in Caldwell, Idaho, population 43,000, arrest four men after a gang fight. The men were identified as gang members by items found in their car. 17 July 11, 2011: Police in Greenville, N.C., population 84,000, blame a gang war for a rash of shootings in the city. In one of the cases, police arrested four men after a highspeed chase in which one of the suspects shot at officers. 18 Just an average week in gangland, the above incidents reflect the breadth of the gang violence issue, ranging from a bystander death in a driveby shooting in the nation s third-largest city to a brutal beating in a tiny, idyllic community known for its oceanfront bed and breakfasts and where the largest employer is the Ritz-Carlton. 19 The message is clear: beachfront village or inner city, no place is immune to the issues surrounding gang violence. And America s youth are not even safe from the gangs in their own homes, in front of their own computers. Media reports abound of gangs venturing into cyber space looking for recruits and enticing them with stories of gang life along with photos and videos to back it up. It s a risky business for impressionable youth and those charged with protecting them. Information on gangs is readily available at the click of a mouse to youth who might be feeling bullied, left out or misunderstood. A simple search on YouTube brings up dozens of videos where the gangs can display guns, money, music and women to attract new members. In fact, a survey conducted in 2009 by a California state assemblyman said that 70 percent of gang members polled found it easier to make new contacts online than in person. 20 Just like the rest of America, gangland has embraced technology, utilizing Twitter, Facebook, text messaging and so on to both communicate within the ranks and sow the seeds that swell the ranks. They also can use your own social networking against you. It s no longer necessary to stroll through a neighborhood, looking for an accumulation of mail or newspapers as tips to which houses are temporarily unoccupied and ripe for burglary. People are telling the crooks themselves who is home and who is not. In a brief article on its website, PC World magazine points out the danger in tweeting or notifying Facebook friends that you re going to spend the weekend in the mountains or at the beach. It s not only your friends watching, the magazine says. 21 The article outlines a September 2010 cracking of a burglary ring in Nashua, N.H., that was using Facebook to plan its crimes. More than 50 burglaries were reported in the town of 85,000 in one month. Arrests of gang members immediately cleared 18 of those, and police recovered between $100,000 and $200,000 in stolen items. PC World also told of a website that could be used to determine when people were home by tracking Twitter usage. While not an example of genuine, organized gang violence, flash mobs are a recent phenomenon gone wild, an example of how the prevalence of gang violence can bleed into society, affecting behavior of groups of people who are not necessarily members of a street gang. When they originated, flash mobs were fun get-togethers in public places by massive groups of individuals all bent on committing public jocularity. Organized mainly through social networks, the only problems with the first flash mobs were temporary disruption of commerce and clogging of inboxes with videos that went viral and entertained America. But it wasn t long before those prone to violence saw the value of a flash mob. Internet blogs and news websites are full of reports on flash mob violence throughout the country, but the summer of 2011 perhaps fueled by a nationwide heat wave seemed to burn with violence. Chicago bore the wrath of multiple flash mobs assaulting residents throughout the city 22 while in Kansas City, bodyguards for the mayor had to shove him to the ground when shots rang out while he was visiting that city s Country Club Plaza area, according to a story published Aug. Page 59

4 14 by the Kansas City Star. The mayor had been in the area to view personally the weekend crowding issues that had sparked calls for an earlier weekend curfew. But it s likely none of the flash mob violence shook Americans as much as what occurred at the Wisconsin State Fair in August of A report by WISN television of Milwaukee said three law enforcement agencies responded when bands of youths began attacking fair-goers as they were leaving the midway. Police told the news station that some fair-goers were beaten while walking out of the fair, while others were pulled from cars and motorcycles first. In the days following the violence, initial reports claiming it as a flash mob of African-Americans targeting whites was confirmed and reported by major news outlets. At the blog americanthinker. com, witnesses to the violence were quoted as telling WTMJ Radio that dozens of young African-Americans targeted white people leaving the fairgrounds at the end of the fair s opening day. And in a video report, WTMJ television interviewed a man who rescued a lone white man he claimed was being attacked by up to eight African-Americans who took turns kicking and punching him while he lay in the middle of the street. The racial aspect even provided fodder for conservative hosts of national political radio broadcasts. 23 Racial tensions also gave birth to Mara Salvatrucha, which is widely considered America s most dangerous gang. Formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s, MS-13 as it is sometimes known, has the reputation of being the Godzilla of American gangs because of the shockingly violent actions of its members. Dubbed The World s Most Dangerous Gang in a 2006 National Geographic report, MS-13 was formed by Salvadoran immigrants fleeing the civil wars of that period in Central America. The original purpose of MS-13 was banding for protection against other Los Angeles gangs during the massive growth period of the Crips and Bloods. 24 They eventually met violence with violence, and because of their involvement in the civil wars in Central America, were much better at it. Members of Mara Salvatrucha rained vengeance on the gang s enemies with guns, blunt objects and machetes, their favorite instrument of retribution. 25 The gang, whose members often stand out because of their overall tattoos, blossomed in the 90s, fueled by the initial reaction of immigration officials to deport members convicted of crimes. But the Los Angeles Times reported in 2005 on Page 60 how that strategy blew up in officials faces. Deported gang members simply recruited and exported more members when they arrived in their home countries. Often, the deported members would return as well, increasing U.S. membership exponentially and fueling the gang s nationwide expansion. Some gang members were actually deported multiple times, recruiting new members each time they arrived in their home country. 26 The U.S. Department of Justice estimates Mara Salvatrucha membership worldwide at between 30,000 and 50,000, with 8,000 to 10,000 of those in the United States. 27 Particularly brutal, Mara Salvatrucha reaches the heights of violence in exacting retribution from rival gang members and even their own members who have been viewed as disloyal to the gang. One of the most brutal was the killing of a 17-year-old former gang member, four months pregnant when she was stabbed 16 times, condemned to die because she had agreed to testify in murder trials against other gang members. 28 The FBI, in its 2008 report entitled The MS- 13 Threat, A National Assessment, gives the gang its highest threat rating in areas where it is most concentrated. The report says MS- 13 has a presence in 42 states, with heaviest concentrations in California, Texas and much of the East Coast, and the largest increases being seen in the Southeast and Northeast. The report also says that when looking for employment, MS-13 members usually present forged documents and select companies that don t check very thoroughly, specifically mentioning construction, restaurant, delivery services and landscaping companies as employment targets for MS-13 members. Other national gangs the U.S. Justice Department is watching: 29 18th Street: Formed in Los Angeles, with an estimated membership of 30,000 to 50,000. Composed mainly of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, its members are presumed by the FBI to be mainly illegal aliens. As with most of the gangs being watched, 18th Street engages in a mix of drive-by and snatch-and-grab robbery and drug distribution. The gang traffics mainly in cocaine and marijuana. Active in 44 cities in 20 states. Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Chicago-born in the 1960s, with membership drawn mostly from Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, the Latin Kings now accepts members of any nationality. Membership estimated between 20,000 and 40,000. Income stream primarily from drug operations, as well as identity theft and money laundering. Operates in 158 cities in 31 states. Asian Boyz: Composed mainly of Vietnamese and Cambodian males, this gang was formed in Southern California in the early 1970s. Primary income from sales of methamphetamine, marijuana and MDMA (Ecstasy). Estimated membership is now 1,300 to 2,000 members in 28 cities in 14 states. Black P. Stone Nation: Alliance of seven gangs under a single leader. Income derived from sales of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. Estimated 6,000 to 8,000 members, mostly African-American males in the Chicago area. Bloods: Main income from distribution of cocaine and marijuana, with other drugs to a smaller degree. Estimated membership of between 7,000 and 30,000 nationwide. Active in 123 cities in 33 states. Crips: Income mostly from sales of cocaine, marijuana and PCP. Heavily invested in the Los Angeles area, Crips are also active in 221 cities in 41 states. Estimated membership of 30,000 to 35,000 nationwide. Gangster Disciples: Formed in Chicago in the mid- 60s, this gang is run like a corporation and led by a chairman of the board. Active in 110 cities in 31 states, income derives from sales of cocaine, marijuana and heroin. Estimated membership of 25,000 to 50,000. Tiny Rascal Gangsters: One of the largest and most violent Asian gangs, this group numbers between 5,000 and 10,000 members involved in sales of cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy and meth. Vice Lord Nation: Primarily in the Great Lakes Region, this gang is active in 74 cities in 28 states selling cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Estimated 30,000 to 35,000 members. Outlaw motorcycle gangs: The Justice Department lists five motorcycle gangs it considers a threat to safety of the nation because of their violent and criminal behaviors. The largest are the Bandidos and Hell s Angels, with about 900 U.S. members apiece. They are followed by the Mongols with members and the Outlaws with about 700 members. The last of the five is the Sons of Silence with about members. Prison gangs: About a half-dozen prison gangs that also operate outside prison are on the Justice Department radar. Most are small, but all trade in violence and drug activity. The most well known is the Aryan Brotherhood, a mostly Caucasian group active mainly in the Southwest and Pacific regions. Membership numbers and the breadth of influence of these gangs brings home the fact that gang violence has permeated America to even the smallest communities. In Bunnell, Fla., population 2,676, the leader of the local Bloods gang was charged with racketeering and being a principal to second-degree murder. According to his former girlfriend, who was testifying at a pre-trial deposition, the Bloods leader ordered his gang to conduct a home invasion in nearby Palm Coast to steal the drugs he believed a man was holding there. One of

5 the gang members was killed in a shootout, and prosecutors contended that because he ordered the home invasion, the head of the gang was culpable in the killing. If convicted, the gang leader could face life in prison. 30 In Donora, Pa., population 4,781, a 17-yearold man from nearby Monesen, population 8,669, fired at least 20 shots into the home of a man who had been charged in a shooting four days earlier in Monesen. 31 In its comprehensive May 2010 history of street gangs, the OJJDP summarized the then-current extent of street gang influence by region. In the Northeast, much of the emerging gang activity was along what is known as the 222 Corridor. The Corridor is the region where Pennsylvania Route 222 passes through six cities, Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Reading, Lancaster and Harrisburg, all of which have seen increased gang membership and activity. The OJJDP also pointed to new activity by the Trinitarios, a gang formed as a protection device in New York prisons. The East Coast Bloods and Dead Man Inc. are also prison gangs formed in the mid- to late-1990s, the Bloods at New York City s Rikers Island and Dead Man at the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, known as Supermax. Although pointing out that traditional Chicago gangs dominate the Midwest presence, it said the cities of Cleveland, Detroit, Joliet, Ill., Kansas City, Minneapolis, Omaha and St. Louis all reported serious gang problems. In the Western Region, the Crips and the Bloods reign supreme, but the OJJDP also outlines major Latino gangs as La Eme, 18th Street, Nuestra Familia and Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13. Because gang emergence is a relatively recent phenomenon in the South, the OJJDP did not address that region in its summary of current status. The government agency did point out that MS-13 and 18th Street have morphed into transnational gangs, defined as gangs with bases in multiple countries that frequently plan and operate criminal enterprises across national borders. The OJJDP considers these gangs particularly dangerous to America because their Latin heritage provides them with the ability to form ties with drug cartels in Mexico and Central America. The 18th Street Gang, formed in Los Angeles in the 1960s because founders were not 100 percent Mexican heritage and were refused membership in the Clanton Street Gang, has formed alliances with cartels in Mexico and Colombia, according to the OJJDP. And Mara Salvatrucha s international aspect resulted because of the previously outlined immigration policy of deporting members convicted of crimes. Using those ties and positioning themselves in cities all along the U.S.-Mexico border, these transnational gangs participate heavily in the drug trade, according to the report. The report also states that drug producers use the any port in a storm theory in turning the other way when gangs hook up with multiple cartels because the producers are in desperate need of distributors who can move freely within the U.S. Even the FBI, in its National Gang Threat Assessment in 2008, acknowledged the symbiotic relationship between the transnational gangs and the drug cartels. Speaking specifically of Mara Salvatrucha, the FBI assessment said, Members smuggle illicit drugs, primarily powder cocaine and marijuana, into the United States and transport and distribute the drugs throughout the county. Combating gang violence what works? Sometimes the effort is as simple as the 2007 law in Sunnyside, Wash., that criminalized gang membership and gave police authority to stop anyone wearing gang colors. Sometimes the action is even more targeted, such as the vote by city fathers in Collinsville, Ill., to ban baggy pants that hang below the waistline. But to truly combat the violence that is taking over society requires study, planning and cooperation from all the stakeholders in the effort to control a runaway train. One of those stakeholders, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, held hearings on the topic of gang violence in September 2003 as the battle for the streets was gearing up in earnest. The hearings were chaired by Senators Patrick Leahy, (D-Vermont) and Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah). In opening comments, Sen. Hatch acknowledged that gang violence was not a new problem, but the face of the problem has shifted and become severely more troubling in recent years. It is abundantly clear that this problem is no longer limited to our largest cities. Gangs now plague even our smallest communities. 32 Leahy, in his opening comments, expanded on the issue. Headlines in the local sections of our newspapers depict senseless acts of gang violence only to be followed by reports of retaliatory violence. I am sure that a one-size-fits-all solution for the myriad of communities that are faced with a crisis does not exist. I am equally sure that the answer to gang violence is not likely to be found in simply enacting new federal laws. The tone thus set, the committee spent a day listening to more than a half-dozen of the nation s top law enforcement personnel, ranging from district attorneys to U.S. attorneys and lifelong gang investigators. Testimony was heavily weighted on efforts to contain and diminish thencurrent gang populations. One of the witnesses was Wesley McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Association and a 35-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Gangs are the master predators of the urban landscape. Wesley McBride, President, California Gang Investigator s Association. Sheriff s Department. He gave the committee the benefit of his experience in the streets, having joined the department s gang unit in 1972, the height of the gang explosion in South Central Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County we have hundreds of persons slain every year by gang members, McBride said. I have watched this number grow from less than 200 per year to 807 during our record year of Los Angeles gangs that have migrated into the eastern U.S. or Midwest are joining forces with the Chicago-based gangs with the possibility of uniting into a super-gang in the future. The malignancy of gang presence kills communities just as surely as their bullets kill people, McBride continued, speaking from the platform of a lifetime dealing with the issue. Gangs so intimidate the citizens of communities that they are too afraid to testify, or even complain about the gang s activities. The most important weapon in the gang s arsenal is fear, he said. Gangs are the master predators of the urban landscape. McBride told the committee about an alliance that had just been formed between the L.A. County Sheriff s Department and the Los Angeles Police Department, a regionwide clearinghouse of gang-related information, suggesting that such an organization could also be organized on a nationwide basis. Robert McCulloch, president of the National District Attorney Association, commented on the urban sprawl of gang activity. McCulloch was, and still is, the elected prosecutor for St. Louis County, Mo., a crescent-shaped suburbia of about 1 million people surrounding the city of St. Louis. Suburban kids used to drive into the city to get their drugs, he said, but they don t have to anymore as the drugs get delivered to the suburbs through regular supply lines. Gang graffiti and costumes are seen in even the most yuppie of suburbs now. The thug culture is romanticized in music video and in the movies. And evidently, suburbia embraces the romance. St. Louis County law enforcement officials have documented nearly 4,000 gang members in approximately 180 identifiable gangs, McCulloch told the senators. While most of our gang members are home grown, a significant number have well-documented origins in established groups from both coasts and the Chicago area. Increasingly our gang members have migrated to other parts of Missouri, far from St. Louis. Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told the panel that, in large part because of the gang influence, the Chicago murder rate in 2002, the year prior to the hearings, was nearly three times that of New York City. He told the senators that Chicago s murder rate was 22 per 100,000 population, compared to Page 61

6 eight per 100,000 for New York City. Addressing the year current to the hearings, he said, It is fairly estimated that 45 percent of the homicides in Chicago in 2003 are gang-related. He outlined a three-prong, enforcement-driven approach his department had taken toward Chicago s gang problem. Project Safe Neighborhoods was aimed at increasing federal prosecution of convicted felons caught carrying a gun. Second, they formed gang strategy teams in the city s neighborhoods, drawn from various law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute gangs. Third was the reliance on word on the street that parolees carrying guns were being targeted. But Sen. Leahy had hit on what is widely considered the best option for containing and combating gang violence when he said in his opening comments, Unfortunately, there are far too few programs that would examine why our youth choose to associate in gangs and prey on others. Since that time, such programs have sprung up throughout the nation, often thriving with the assistance of the Justice Department s own Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Founded in 1974, the OJJDP has positioned itself as one of the go-to players in the battle to control gang violence. According to its own mission statement, the OJJDP provides national leadership, coordination and resources to prevent and respond to juvenile delinquency and victimization. 33 The OJJDP provides downloadable PDF information on its website, as well as the ability to order publications through a shopping-cart style ordering system. Among the wealth of resources are Best Practices, a database of programs that communities nationwide are using effectively to aid troubled youth, conferences such as the 2011 National Gang Symposium held in Orlando, Fla., the Gang Reduction Program and the Comprehensive Gang Model. The OJJDP s objective, through the use of its varied programs, is to help communities determine what programs work best for them, rather than implement methods that may not work in a particular setting. To that end, the OJJDP developed the Comprehensive Gang Model, a series of processes by which a community can arrive at a tailored solution to its unique gang atmosphere. 34 The model outlines seven steps in assessment and preparation that must be followed before implementation of a gang strategy: 1. Acknowledgement of the problem: Essentially, everybody must be on the same page. If there is denial present, it must be addressed. 2. Assessment of the problem: Organizations that will be involved in the solution cooperate in determining exactly where the problem lies. Determining who is involved in gang activity and where it is concentrated allows for targeted response. Page Goals and objectives: They must be clearly stated and linked to the findings in the assessment phase. 4. Relevant services and activities: Clearly spell out strategies, policies and services each organization will provide. 5. Intervention team: Enforcement and monitoring agencies must have multiple weapons in their arsenal to hold gang members accountable for their actions while also retaining the capability of directing those youth to social services available to them. 6. Steering committee: Decision-makers from the various organizations who oversee the collaborating agencies while assuring that barriers to those services are broken down. 7. Evaluation and sustainability: An avenue for measuring effectiveness is paramount, as is ensuring that the mix of programs can be sustained over a long period. The program then calls for action in five separate categories, called strategies, that can only be implemented after the initial assessment and organization period. 1. Community mobilization: Rallying the troops, as it were. The model calls for involvement of local residents, former gang members, community groups and agencies to coordinate programs. 2. Opportunities provision: Development of specific, targeted training, education and employment services for gang youth. 3. Social intervention: Cooperative outreach involving all of a community s organizations, police, church, schools and so on to help gang youth gain access to services. 4. Suppression: Monitoring or supervision of gang members by those same agencies. 5. Organizational change and development: Establishing policies and procedures to effectively use existing resources. Among the best at implementing the program, according to the Justice Department s National Gang Center, is the package of programs in place in Pittsburgh, Pa. Targeted at the Homewood section of the city as the area with the highest concentration of gang violence, the programs run the gamut from interdiction to intervention and prevention. 35 The Pittsburgh Initiative to Reduce Crime (PIRC) was begun in July 2010, and as of mid-2011 there were no statistics yet on its effectiveness. Based on holding an entire gang responsible for the actions of a single member, the program is patterned after one designed by David Kennedy of the City University of New York, director of the university s Center for Crime Prevention and Control. The program is being used in Boston, and police in High Point, N.C., received a national award in 2007 for using the program to virtually eliminate neighborhood drug markets. In Pittsburgh, the targeted behavior is homicide. In that July 2010 meeting with city and police officials, identified gang members were told that a homicide by one member would result in a crackdown on the entire membership, effectively setting up a zero tolerance level for gang violence. Although hard statistics were not available as of mid-2011, a mayoral spokesman said officials were already seeing some progress. And taking a page from the experience of High Point, a Pittsburgh city councilman in March 2011 called for the program to be extended to open-air drug markets. The package doesn t stop there. Groups throughout the city, ranging from police to social workers and schools to charitable organizations, have joined hands to combat gang violence. Among the programs are the Comprehensive Gang Model, the Safety Zone Partnership and the Be A 6th Grade Mentor program. In Pittsburgh, Comprehensive Gang Model has resulted in an intervention program using teams of individuals from various disciplines who help to set up case plans for individuals wanting to leave the gang lifestyle or those at risk of recruitment. The school system and the city cooperate in the Safety Zone Partnership to establish a 1,000-foot zone around city schools that is free of attractants to gang members and the associated crime and violence. One success story for that program is the area around Faison Elementary School in the Homewood area. The city demolished 17 abandoned homes prime cover for drug activity and prostitution and carted away 15 tons of debris to give the neighborhood a cleaner look. Pittsburgh schools also partner with multiple agencies, among them the United Way and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, for the Be A 6th Grade Mentor program. By contacting one of the participating agencies, a community member can become a mentor to a youth who is on the verge of his or her first temptation and initial fascination with gangs. Experts at the National Gang Center and the OJJDP are convinced this multi-pronged approach is the best way to deal with the issue, removing from the streets the most violent gang members, helping others to escape the clutches of their gangs, and keeping pre-teens from becoming the gang members of the future. One intervention program that is astonishingly fast in producing results is the CeaseFire program. Begun in Chicago in 2000, it has been replicated throughout the country because of its tendency to produce a nearly instantaneous decrease in gang violence. Combining community and public education with hands on interdiction methods, CeaseFire was launched in the West Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago in According to the program s website, in its first year, shootings dropped 67 percent. After seeing such results, the program was rolled out into other neighborhoods, and by 2005 was in place or planned in 15 Chicago neighborhoods and five other Illinois cities. While the program provides materials that help residents assist in taking back their neighborhoods, CeaseFire s highest profile comes

7 from The Interrupters, a group of former gang members and prisoners who work in the trenches to prevent shootings and other violence, both gang-related and unrelated to gang activity. The Interrupters fight the battle on two main fronts, going into the streets to stop violence before it starts and visiting victims of violence in the hospital. The second front is more than just a mere visit, though. That s where CeaseFire fights its biggest battle against retaliation violence. Interrupters talk to victims of shootings, stabbings and other violence while thoughts of revenge are still fresh in their minds. Catching that plan of revenge before it is fully hatched and planned is an important part of the CeaseFire program. And it appears to work. One of the findings of a three-year Department of Justice study quoted on the CeaseFire website is that there was a 100 percent reduction in retaliation murders in five of the eight neighborhoods studied. The government study also found that shootings and killings dropped between 41 percent and 73 percent in areas where CeaseFire was active, and that from percent of those were directly attributable to CeaseFire s intervention. The program is so successful it drew the attention of Steve James, director of the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams. His full length documentary The Interrupters, debuted in limited release in August 2011 after winning Best Documentary prizes at the Miami and Minneapolis/St. Paul film festivals and being chosen as an official selection of the 2011 The Interrupters tells the story of three violence interrupters, former gang members themselves, who ply the streets of Chicago, trying to stop violence before it happens. It examines a year in which Chicago drew national headlines for violence and murder. Sundance Film Festival, according to the movie s website. But once a gang member recognizes the truth and has agreed to accept help and be rescued from the streets by being plugged into the right programs to assist in turning around his or her life, another problem rears its head gang tattoos. Not only do their tattoos leave them open to attack from rivals, but they also can form a serious barrier to employment. It s an accepted bromide that employers are turned off by multiple tattoos, and coming out of the gang culture, many young people are heavily inked. In an economy where there are often dozens of applicants for every job, former gang members can be placed at a disadvantage by their tattoos, thus making them a candidate to return to the streets for a lack of acceptable options. But tattoo removal is an expensive proposition and an extensive process. Removal of a single tattoo can cost hundreds to thousands of dollar, depending on the size, and require multiple visits to the laser center, spaced weeks apart. 36 Many gang members have multiple large tattoos, making the cost of removal prohibitive. When desperation meets necessity, the resulting invention can sometimes be unhealthy as former gang members attempt to remove their tattoos by themselves. A Fillmore, Calif., High School student so feared attacks from other gang members that he used a knife to carve a gang insignia from his hand. And an 18-year-old single mother suffered infection and scarring when she used a flame to heat a spoon and pressed it to her cheekbone in an unsuccessful attempt to remove a gang tattoo under her eye. 37 That s why some communities have taken the creative step of including tattoo-removal programs in their mix of services. QueensCare, a faith-based health care organization, sponsors one of several such programs in the Southern California area. QueensCare provides free health care to qualified residents in a wide area of Los Angeles County, which includes the South Central L.A. gang stronghold. 38 Through a program it launched called Next Step, the organization provides free tattoo removal services to former gang members referred by parole and probation officers as well as agencies assisting in substance abuse recovery. According to the QueensCare website, each tattoo requires from 6-12 treatments, spaced eight weeks apart, translating to as much as a twoyear commitment on the part of the former gang member. The Los Angeles Business Journal in a March 2007 article described participants on a typical day at the QueensCare clinic: 39 A father, years-removed from the gang lifestyle, seeks removal of his gang tattoos because he is concerned for the safety of his children as he walks down the street with them. A mother who decides to get a referral to the program after finding her 3-year-old drawing on herself so she could be more like mommy. A drug counselor and former abuser himself, who has brought two of his patients for enrollment in the program. The California model appears to be making its way across the nation, as groups across the nation are jumping on the bandwagon. 40 While concerned citizens, activists and community groups are banding together to help gang members ready to leave the underbelly of society, law enforcement organizations scramble to stay on top of the violence and do their own part in steering willing gang members to the doorway to a better life. One of the newest tools is the mix of technologies known collectively as social media. As America on the whole has embraced these technologies, so, too, have the gangs. Just as Uncle Frank, Cousin Sue or mom and dad use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on to stay in contact and plan their lives, the gang members have discovered cyberspace as well. And to keep ahead of the game and gang tactics on social media outlined here earlier, law enforcement has had to learn new techniques. An online article outlines six strategies used by law enforcement in the social media to both combat and solve crime: Police blotter blogs: This technique allows police to provide information both to the public and news media in a timely manner. In some cases, it involves the police agency writing its own crime story and distributing it to the media. Police are finding that sometimes, media outlets will simply cut and paste the story as is. 2. Digital wanted poster: Far from Wanted, Dead or Alive, this tactic gets names, faces and often security video of criminals onto the social media only moments after a crime has been committed, with the objective of warning the public to keep a watch. 3. Anonymous cyber tipsters: There is a program being marketed to law enforcement that assembles anonymous reports with the ultimate objective of constructing a clickable crime map on Google. 4. Cyber stakeout: Police scan the social media outlets, monitoring for gang activity and key words in Tweets and other messages. 5. Gang infiltration: Law enforcement officers can create phony profiles used to gain the trust of gang members online and thus gain insider information. 6. Tweets: Law enforcement has found Twitter particularly useful for instant communication as well as tracking groups. Some entities concerned about the public nature of the service have set up similar services of their own which they can control. One highly visible use of Twitter was the Los Angeles Police Department s reliance on the immediacy of the medium to monitor crowds during the Michael Jackson funeral. Two stories: The road not taken, and redemption from the wasteland But no matter how much technology or police presence is thrown at the problem, all the studies have shown that, in a nutshell, the way out of the vicious circle of gang violence is opportunity, just as the way into gang influence is often the lack of opportunity. Coupled with the proper timing and a willingness on the part of gang members or at-risk youth to seize the day, opportunity is everything. Nothing says that more than the stories of two young St. Louis men who grew up within a mile or so of each other in the violence incubator that is that city s north side. Their stories were told in articles on stltoday.com, the website of the city s newspaper, on consecutive days in September Billy (not his real name) had been pictured in the newspaper in September of 2000 at age 8 along with his sister, 9, when a news photographer recorded their horrified reactions to seeing their uncle wounded as one of four victims of a driveby shooting. Billy s sister told the photographer the shooting was gang-related. Page 63