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 whats different about the violence. In Americas 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 reports 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 ...
Mandatory hard labor for life for any crime - felony or not- commited by a gang banger. Or, fence off Mexico and just dump them on the other side.
I couldn’t have said it better.
The suspects were identified as: Joseph Carter Jr., 42, of Wilmington; David Cole Jr., 64, of Long Beach; Debra Ann Johnson, 49, of La Mirada; Kenneth Bernard Riley, 45, of Moreno Valley; Gerald Plaze Thomas, 43, of Los Angeles; and Anthony Quin Wheeler, 47, of Inglewood.
And we will continue to support and provide for them just like we have for the past 40-50 years. It has been a waste of resources in the past and will be a waste if we do it again. I say “if” knowing full well that the government in California will still consider this individuals as deprived of opportunities and needing our sympathy and understanding.
The only thing they will understand is 5 minutes to make their peace and then a .45 behind the ear and.....
I have called it urban terrorism since the early eighties.
25 years later it’s worse then ever.
There is no courage to make the hard decisions to solve the problem.
We could use more guys like Joe Horn.
Why are criminal gangs legal?
Looks very interesting. Ping for a read tomorrow.
LBT
......
It’s the culture, stupid. I mean it’s the stupid culture.
Why are criminal gangs legal?<<<<<<<<<
They aren’t, but there are hoops LE has to jump through to show that the activity is truly gang related and not just friends hanging out. There are gang enhancements in CA law that add time to an offense if it can be shown that the perpetrator is a member of a criminal street gang and meets certain criteria. Many jurisdictions have obtained injunctions that enable LE to arrest gang members more easily without waiting for the major offenses. The gang members must be noticed that they are considered members of a criminal street gang and advised that further activity will result in arrest. That means you don’t hang on the corner with the homies, and many think it’s too harsh to stop gang members from associating. Because these injunctions are geographical in nature, some gang members merely relocate and move their activities elsewhere. Gangs are more mobile now than they used to be, and many are not dependent on turf boundaries. The Central American gangs here will pick up and go wherever it suits them to further their criminal agenda.
Is there a gang with the spray paint “777” anywhere? We are noticing this on walls on many of the buildings here in NE Mississippi.
“Is there a gang with the spray paint 777 anywhere? We are noticing this on walls on many of the buildings here in NE Mississippi.”
Doesn’t ring a bell, but apparently there is now...in MS.
Welcome to Bush’s “war on drugs”
Here is an excellent source on streetgangs.
http://www.streetgangs.com/
There ya go again, kellynla. Clouding the issue with truth, common sense and logic.
You might be interested.
“Six O.C.(CA) Residents Suspected in International Drug Ring(Illegal aliens?)”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1939867/posts
What this article does not mention is that we have Special Order 40 here. This prevents our police from inquiring the legal status of immigration. Even if they are known Illegal Immigrants and known to have been deported before, it is illegal to pick up a criminal based on his legal status.
It does say Watts and neighboring Compton, historically and famously black neighborhoods, are already roughly 70 percent Hispanic
Colombian cartels, looking to reduce the risk of American prosecution, had transferred the bulk of the trafficking part of the drug business to Mexican and Hispanic-American gangs
The average American has a 1-in-18,000 chance of being murdered. In this area of Los Angeles, the chances are 1 in 250.
In this neighborhood 90 percent of young men have been sexually abused. I will say 99 percent of ladies.
We have a mayor that has turned our city into a Mexican style city. It is a sanctuary city. My guess is that 80 percent of the residents here are Hispanic and that most of them are illegal. It is true that they start out here and spread across the country. It will take a federal force to clean out all the illegal aliens and gangs. If we wait until the anchor babies become voters or the Democrats manage to make illegal aliens legal, then we will have failed.
Chertoff-Destroyer of True Homeland Security: And my Job #1 remains to get all of them, every one, full Amnesty."
“What this article does not mention is that we have Special Order 40 here.....”
IMHO,A good civil rights attorney can probably find cause in there somewhere...but I’m NOT an attorney!!!
Special order 40 has been in effect for over 30 years.
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