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"Pre-Katrina gangs were all neighborhood and housing project outfits, not necessarily connected to anything bigger. These guys might be a different story."

It is my understanding that St. Bernard Parish was, for the most part, destroyed in the flooding. Is it just territory these newly-arrived gangs are looking for? Do you have any insight on just what is attracting them?

St. Bernard was annihilated. I don't see why any gang would want to set up shop there, in particular, right now. I could understand them going after New Orleans proper; the gangs that we had pre-Katrina were weakened by attrition (read: 5.56 mm bullets from National Guardsmen) or just spread out all over the rest of the country. The local cops are weakened, the feds and national guard don't have their bearing straight quite yet as far as tearing up gang structures goes, and there's federal and insurance money flying all over the place. Ripe for the taking.

Seriously, though, the reason they're here is probably a lot more innocuous than that. These guys are just moving with construction crews. There happens to be a lot of construction work in New Orleans right now. They may very well be peddling dope on the side or something. I can't see these guys getting arrested for anything major, just bar fights and that sort of thing. And there's been plenty of that; these guys are more likely to get into knife fights than gun fights, compared to the thugs we used to have here.

So I wouldn't look at this as any sort of gang invasion. They might eventually decide to set up shop here, but odds are pretty strong that they haven't made that decision themselves yet.

Perhaps they are looking for a fairly well destroyed place, thinking it will not be very organized and patrolled by LEOs yet ... to establish a base of operations. In the main, they probably do not require the level of goods and services that we ordinarily think of as "normal" ... a quiet place [virtually destroyed] where they won't attract much notice might appeal to them. On the other hand, if I had to guess I would say that St. Bernard, before Katrina, was probably 80-90% white ... not a racial gumbo like N.O., at all, and it seems that they would stick out like a sore thumb.

Welcome to the Louisiana Ping List, JDB.