Posted on 06/08/2007 8:23:54 AM PDT by george76
They might look like blue jeans and a white T-shirt to anyone else. But for Adolfo "Li'l Grim" Rodriguez, they are an essential part of his daily uniform.
His expletive-laced speech, defiant attitude and blue bandana that usually hangs from his back pocket define who he is and what he says he represents.
The 19-year-old says he has been a member of a Hispanic street gang for the past eight years.
In that time, Rodriguez has survived a bullet and spent months in juvenile detention and the county jail. He proudly admits he's a gang member in Greeley.
He was "jumped" in by other gang members and began "flying a rag" from his back pocket while he was still in elementary school, he says. Suddenly, the codes of the street were as important, or more, than spelling and long division.
Rural problem, too
Talk gang violence, and many people think of larger cities, such as Denver and Aurora.
But authorities say violence and the lure of street gangs don't just happen in urban centers. Rural communities, like Greeley, are also grappling with them. And in turn, so are the small towns that border them.
Along Greeley's southern boundary, the city of Evans, population 19,000, worries about the effects of gangs spilling over.
"(Gangs) don't know the difference between Evans and Greeley," Evans police Lt. Gary Kessler said. "Gang members don't care about jurisdictions."
Since 2004, nine of Greeley's 11 homicides have been linked to gangs...
Greeley has roughly one gang member for every 175 people, while Denver's ratio - with 8,811 gang members - is one for every 63 people.
The two biggest gangs in Greeley are Hispanic...
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
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They’re just engaging in the gang warfare Americans won’t engage in.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Just another one of the great “Americans” which Harry Reid and his majority refused to bar from amnesty by failing to pass the Coryn amendment.
Good post.
"The 19-year-old says he has been a member of a Hispanic street gang for the past eight years.
yes :
The bitter harvest of wide open boarders...
Has no one ever heard of the Zoot Suit Riots?
Ahem.
He's also one of George W. Bush's constituents.
Bush has been working to give people like him benefits almost from the day he took office.
I thought the concern was enforcement of the borders.
I'm not sure why I'm supposed to see an enormous difference between a two hour drive to LA from Tijuana and a ten hour drive to Denver from El Paso.
If you're over the border, you're over the border.
not some rural town in Colorado.
There were plenty of Mexicans, including criminal ones, in rural towns in Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona back then too.
And the Zoot Suiters weren't doing drive-bys to defend meth territory either.
No - they were stabbing, shooting and firebombing people in order to defend their trade in heroin and marijuana back then.
We don’t need to import these punks, we got plenty of our own. Fairbanks—America’s fourth most dangerous city.
Fairbanks is?! How so?
And now with nobody watching the borders and our polititcians proposing legalization for 12 million of them we can look forward to even more.
“It’s not a gang, it’s a club.”
It’s been crazy since 1984. Come on up and take a look.
It’s about time we institute a mandatory “DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE AND CITIZENSHIP SERVICE requirement to YOUR nation.”
Lots of scummy bummy hoods running around with nothing to do and no ambition whatsoever except to cause havoc. They have no notion if what it means to be an American citizen. It’s not just the illegals ..it’s a lot of spoiled brats who have no goals.
Wow. I did not know this :
Fairbanks—America’s fourth most dangerous city.
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