Posted on 12/14/2007 9:04:30 PM PST by Lorianne
Nationwide, juvenile gang homicides have spiked 23 percent since 2000. There are six times as many gangs in L.A. as there were a quarter century ago, and twice as many gang members. But as important as the gang activity itself is what’s different about the violence. In America’s urban ganglands, and in L.A. in particular, the ferocity of the thuggery has surged; gang members, their victims and police long on the gang beat tell me the fighting has become more codeless, more arbitrary and more brutal than ever.
And it is everywhere. According to the Department of Justice, today America has at least 30,000 gangs, with 800,000 members, in 2,500 communities across the United States. (Gang experts at the University of Southern California claim the number of American jurisdictions with gang problems has reached 4,000.) Federal, state and local law enforcement across the country agree that street gangs connected to or mimicking the L.A. model have become a national epidemic.
Last January, a report on gang violence commissioned by the Los Angeles City Council found that the gang epidemic is largely immune to general declines in crime nationwide. In other words, gang crime is surging just as other violent crime is decreasing. And unlike other categories of crime, gangs and gang-related crime are spreading to formerly safe middle-class communities, or, “to a neighborhood near you,” says the report’s author, civil rights attorney Constance Rice.
What this means is that the communities gangs come from are pulling away from mainstream society more than ever, and the gangs that plague them, like storm systems, are growing and feeding on themselves, gathering destructive strength. In Los Angeles, law enforcement officials now warn that they have arrived at the end of their ability to contain gangs to poor minority and immigrant hot zones.
(Excerpt) Read more at laweekly.com ...
didn’t read the article ..
..Did it mention how many of those gang members were illegals....?
Thought not...
For the most part, don’t they just kill each other? Not that that makes it OK, but...
Are they really “juvenile” gangs?
Look on the bright side, the average gang is only one third as large!
Grew up in El Monte in the 50’s ‘n 60’s. Just a quiet place. Yeah, we had some racial fights, but nothing ongoing.
You put too many people in one place, I don’t care who they are, or if they are related, there are going to be disagreements.
SoCal is packed tight as a drum. There have been even riots in the past. But, now, I hate to think what a real breakdown will bring.
Why is it so easy to hate, and so difficult to care for each other?
I guess I might sound a little harsh, but since these people have no value on human life, why should we value their lives? I am sorry, when the civilized decide that barbarism is a preferred lifestyle, I can not value them anymore. Kill them like the animals they become; leave the bodies where thier “homies” can see them and keep doing it until they once again value life. If they don’t learn to value life again, then when they are dead and gone, maybe civilization may continue and the people who contribute may do so in some thing approaching security and peace.
I probably haven’t said this the right way, but it is from the heart. Maybe my brain just isn’t into caring for these people anymore.
The gangs are becoming very much like the Fedayeen were in Iraq after the invasion.
Somehow that looks a lot more satisfying than a taser. LOL
Personally, I think they should round up gang members and check them out if they are legal....then deport the ones that aren’t.
On New Year’s Eve so much automatic weapons fire pours into Watts’ airspace that LAX air traffic control must divert the flight path of incoming planes.
The U.S. military sends its medics to train at local trauma hospitals because the conditions in their trauma units so resemble live warfare.
According to the Department of Justice, today America has at least 30,000 gangs, with 800,000 members, in 2,500 communities across the United States.
It is obvious that the police can no longer protect and serve. Yet in California, the police are totally against an armed citizenry. Hence my tagline.
Lieutenant Sullivan, the intelligence analyst for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, has started to track a demoralizing parallel between the way street gangs are changing in the United States and the inception of home-grown terror cells in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, as well as child soldiers in Africa.
“There is debate as to whether gang members are child soldiers because they are not in a declared war. But I think functionally it is the same thing. Whether you declare war or not, we are in a societal conflict.”
The mexican gangs are quickly overtaking the traditional black gangs/territory around the country. A lot of these gangs are just puppets for the cartels south of the border.
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