Free Republic

There are no gang “wannabes” in Garfield County, only gang “gonnabes,” said two sheriff’s deputies assigned to a recently formed anti-gang task force. Deputies J. Miller and J. McCune, who don’t use their real first names due to the potentially dangerous nature of their work, are members of the Threat Assessment Group, or TAG, in the sheriff’s department. The group was formed after jail staff noticed an increase in gang members from California and elsewhere among the inmate population. “Then we found some of them were hanging out by some of the schools, just off school property, trying to recruit...

While hundreds of Mexican soldiers are deserting the army to join drug trafficking gangs, California is facing the opposite problem: A growing number of gang members here have infiltrated the U.S. Armed Forces in order to receive military training. The numbers speak for themselves: In 2003 there were just 16 incidents of gang members in the U.S. Armed Forces, while in 2006 the total was 10,309, according to the study, "Gang-Related Activity in the U.S. Armed Forces Increasing," released in 2007 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Twenty-two official entities, including the Los Angeles Police Department, participated in the...

With the wide-eyed wonder of a 10-year-old, Timothy Miranda entered the hallowed, dimly lit church of the Alamo. It was in the venerated shrine that his great-great-great-great-grandfather, then a 13-year-old and named Juan Losoya, is said to have watched his older brother, José Toribio Losoya, die fighting for Texas independence in 1836. "I saw a bunch of cool stuff here," Timothy said, reflecting on his first visit to the Alamo. It was a well-timed adventure. Timothy has been studying Texas history in his fourth-grade class in Houston and found out just last year that he had ancestors at the Alamo....