Terror on the streets

U.S.News & World Report ^ | 12/13/04 | Chitra Ragavan and Monika Guttman

[neverdem]

The FBI prepares to help beleaguered police chiefs fight a new brand of gang violence that's spreading like wildfire

The thunderous show of force shattered the quiet dawn: Flash-bang grenades exploded, doors were battered down, and dozens of men were taken into custody. But the setting wasn't Fallujah or Ramadi; it was Southern California, where last January 400 armed Los Angeles police officers and FBI agents targeted the ultraviolent Bounty Hunters gang, which was terrorizing the residents of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts.

The LAPD-FBI collaboration--which included federal indictments of 15 people--was at the leading edge of a quiet sea change inside the FBI: Three years after the September 11 terrorist attacks made counterterrorism the FBI's top priority, the bureau is slowly returning in part to its traditional roots: crime fighting. The FBI is preparing a broad new attack against gangs, U.S. News has learned, based on frightening intelligence assessments of the changing face of the problem. FBI Director Robert Mueller will soon unveil the strategy and the reasoning behind it in "A Report to the American People on Gangs." The bureau, Mueller told U.S. News, is obligated to respond to the growing "barbarity and the willingness to utilize homicide, torture, and assaults in furtherance of violent gang activities."

Sleeping tigers. Mueller's decision to step into the fray stems in part from the entreaties of police chiefs like the LAPD's William Bratton, who described gangs as a "sleeping tiger" to Mueller in a conversation last year. "Outside of New York, al Qaeda isn't killing people [in the United States]; gang violence is," Bratton told his old friend. After dropping dramatically in the late 1990s, gang-related killings have again reached alarming levels (chart, Page 23). And not just in cities like Los Angeles that long have had gang problems.

[Americanwolf]

yeah, it is gangs like MS-18 an other gangs that have member that are former military from south and central america that are the majority of the problem.

[MisterRepublican]

Quick, call the ACLU! I'm sure the violent gang-bangers rights were violated somehow.

[SittinYonder]

Reclassify gangs from "violent criminal offenders" to "criminal organizations and enterprises," placing them on a par with the traditional organized crime families

I'm shocked that this wasn't done many years ago. I think when "Colors" starring Sean Penn was released in the late 1980s we all knew gangs were criminal organizations. :-)

[joesnuffy]

If they could only get drivers licenses they wouldnt be a problemo

[skeeter]

Hey, nothing to see here gangs are as American as apple pie why are you posting this stuff? /sarcasm

[sheana]

Well if they could get driver's licenses they could drive to work and support their families. We all know that they only come here to work and have a better life because... "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande".

[jocon307]

More illegal aliens please!

[GeekDejure]

Quick, call the ACLU! I'm sure the violent gang-bangers rights were violated somehow.
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Shut up, fool. Loose ships split lips !!! ;-))

[libs_kma]

"...which was terrorizing the residents of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts."

Watts...35 years later and nothing much has changed....imagine that.

[JustAnotherSavage]

More from the article: "Create a national gang task force to decimate one major gang--Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a Latin gang that is "spreading like a virus" up and down both coasts, says FBI gang intelligence analyst Don Lyddane."

I can't believe someone finally said it! It's even further inland than the coasts. Ask the county commissioner ( a hispanic American) about the hispanic gang that is terrorizing little Canyon county, Idaho.

[7.62 x 51mm]

Use The Patriot Act to track them down, arrest, try by military tribunal and summarily execute them. Clean-up the streets. Sanitize the cities of such subhuman, murderous filth. They're as bad or worse than muslim terrorist garbage.

[JustAnotherSavage]

" They're as bad or worse than muslim terrorist garbage."

I would like to see the numbers of people killed and injured by these gangs. With all the hispanics in jail, about 33% of the prison population, it's got to be a bigger number than we lost on 9/11/01.

[7.62 x 51mm]

It's huge, I'm sure, and surely dwarfs what happened on 9-11, and probably before that, too.

[gubamyster]

But FBI officials say a group like MS-13--now their biggest target--shows why a coordinated national strategy is necessary. MS-13 was created in Los Angeles by the children of immigrants who fled the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s, to protect themselves against a rival Mexican-American gang. As MS-13 members were convicted of crimes, they were deported from the United States, taking their violent gang culture deep into El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. As those governments began cracking down, MS-13 members illegally re-entered the United States and proliferated along the U.S. coasts. MS-13 is now a major problem even in southern cities like Charlotte and Durham, N.C., where Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority. "Anytime there's an increase in a demographic," says Lt. Mark Bridgeman, president of the North Carolina Gang Investigators Association, "we have a negative portion of the population that goes with it."

El Salvador Comes to Grips With Gangs

ping

[sinclair]

"Watts...35 years later and nothing much has changed....imagine that."

Watts. Another name for plantation.

[RaceBannon]

Colors?

We knew the Dead End Kids were violent, too! :)

[Gritty]

The Justice Department estimates there are 21,400 gangs nationwide with 731,500 members who are engaged in drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution, alien smuggling, counterfeiting, burglary, forgery, welfare fraud, arson, motorcycle thefts, money laundering through tattoo parlor operations, bank robberies, and murder.

That's some big-time criminal army. It's larger than the US Army!

[ApesForEvolution]

As those governments began cracking down, MS-13 members illegally re-entered the United States and proliferated along the U.S. coasts. MS-13 is now a major problem even in southern cities like Charlotte and Durham, N.C.

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FTAA is on the way!!! (sigh)

[ApesForEvolution]

The Justice Department estimates there are 21,400 gangs nationwide with 731,500 members who are engaged in drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution, alien smuggling, counterfeiting, burglary, forgery, welfare fraud, arson, motorcycle thefts, money laundering through tattoo parlor operations, bank robberies, and murder.

>>>

!Hay, carumba!