The tattoos make it easy for him to blend in with American professional athletes.
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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| FBI: Burgeoning gangs behind up to 80% of U.S. crime |
| 2009-02-02 |
| Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials. The major findings in a report by the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center, which has not been publicly released, conclude gangs are the "primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs" and several are "capable" of competing with major U.S.-based Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. "A rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships" with U.S. and foreign drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal groups to "gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs," the report concludes. The gang population estimate is up 200,000 since 2005. Bruce Ferrell, chairman of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, whose group monitors gang activity in 10 states, says the number of gang members may be even higher than the report's estimate. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #12 Would I be politically incorrect to inquire whether illegal immigrants or their children are over-represented in these gangs? |
| Posted by: tipover 2009-02-02 23:09 |
| #11 ExtremMo: There are only a few officers versus hundreds/thousands of gang members in the major ciites. |
| Posted by: hammerhead 2009-02-02 21:00 |
| #10 The result of "our strength lays in out diversity" falsehood. |
| Posted by: hammerhead 2009-02-02 20:46 |
| #9 They're up in my town 50% over last year. Which for a town of less than 30,000 is a huge jump. Our police have managed to catch quite a few of them, and I'm not sure it's gang related though as most of them are usually in their 40's and tend to be druggies. Might be increased drugs is forcing addicts to find more money. Dunno. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2009-02-02 20:35 |
| #8 We had a murder here in Colorado Springs when two rival gangs duked it out over an iPod. The guy that did the shooting is looking at 30 years to life. The shooting took place about three miles from my house. We've heard of gang activity in all the "small" towns between Denver and Cheyenne - bedroom communities, for the most part. Robberies, assaults, and vandalism are all up. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2009-02-02 19:23 |
| #7 Probably they mean 80% of violent crime, not all crime and only in urban areas with systemic gang warfare. I don't think so. As the article makes clear, there is gang activity in a lot of smaller towns and rural areas now - this is not just an urban problem and its effects go way beyond gangbanger red on red. Re: gang task forces, the FBI is a participant / sponsor of many of them. The list is online here |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-02-02 18:59 |
| #6 Don't most major cities have some sort of "gang taskforce" as part of their police departments? How's that working out? (That's not a snark, btw ... serious question: Are cities with effective gang taskforces seeing the same rate of increase in gang activity?) |
| Posted by: ExtremeModerate 2009-02-02 17:10 |
| #5 ...when it is illegal to deploy the military on home soil? Oh, that only applies to non-liberal activity, whether its federal troops to integrate a high school in Little Rock or a college in Jackson, troops are employable in domestic law and order. They just can't be subordinated to local law enforcement. Andy Jackson had no more trouble implementing martial law in New Orleans than the commander in Hawaii did after that nasty bit the Japanese did one December. When the fed's do it, it's ok [or as least as long as there's a -D after the name or something THEY approve of]. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-02-02 16:38 |
| #4 Probably they mean 80% of violent crime, not all crime and only in urban areas with systemic gang warfare. |
| Posted by: mhw 2009-02-02 16:22 |
| #3 Gang crime is really up and not just on the borders. Chicago's murder rate is about Iraq and Afghanistan's combined. Even sleepy Omaha averages a murder a week, attributed to rival gangs. How would respond to an urban insurgency, especially one trained by the US School of the Americas, like the Zetas, when it is illegal to deploy the military on home soil? Obama was really short-sighted on this one--should have kept Gitmo open for these guys. They have deported many of the illegal members, although the connections haven't been severed, and some just continue business elsewhere. Our overcrowded prisons let them go but they need separated from society. Maybe the ACLU will start an Adopt-a-Gangbanger program and take them home to learn multicultural values in the privacy of their own homes. |
| Posted by: ThealingBorgia 122 2009-02-02 15:56 |
| #2 Part of the rich mosaic of multi-culturism. We should be thankful. The tattoos make it easy for him to blend in with American professional athletes. |
| Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2009-02-02 15:00 |
| #1 A reminder of the 2005 Army War College monograph warning that street gangs are increasingly morphing into urban insurgency in their methods and effects. From the summary: The primary thrust of this monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms of the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. Locally, we might note that MS-13 has targeted US police and drug enforcement officials for assasination, demonstrating that the analysis has domestic as well as foreign relevance. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-02-02 14:13 |