Report of the Law Enforcement Youth Gang Symposium . Hyde Park Hilton Hotel Hyde Park, Illinois March 1, 1988 Edited by Irving A. Spergel Candice Kane Michael Hyatt Ruth Ross Pam Rodriguez National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Project July 15, 1988 Distributed by: Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse Box 6000 Rockville, MD 20850 1-800-638-8736 ______________________________ Sponsored by the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. This draft report was prepared under Grant Number 90-JD-CX-k001 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view of opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 07/93 ______________________________ National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Project ADVISORY COMMITTEE Miguel Duran, Director Specialized Gang Supervision Program LA County Probation Department 11243 East Valley Blvd. El Monte, CA 91231 (818) 575-4003 Michael Genelin, Head Deputy Hard Core Gangs Division LA District Attorney's Office Rm. 17-1118, 210 W. Temple St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 (213) 974-3901 Dr. Malcolm Klein Professor, Dept. of Sociology Social Science Research Institute University of Southern California 950 W. Jefferson Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90089-1111 (213) 743-5612/5713 Dr. Walter B. Miller, Emeritus Harvard Law School 9 Sibley Court Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 547-0137 Edward Pleines, Commander (Ret.) Gang Crime Unit Department of Police City of Chicago 1121 South State St., 12th Floor Chicago, IL 60605 (312) 744-6328 Barbara Wade Coordinator for Gang Activities Program City of Miami Police Dept. 400 N.W. 2nd Avenue Miami, FL 33128 (305) 579-6176 OJJDP STAFF Dan Bryant Research and Program Dev. Division OJJDP 633 Indiana Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20531 (202) 724-8491 Benjamin Shapiro Special Emphasis Division OJJDP 633 Indiana Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20531 (202) 724-5914 PROJECT STAFF Dr. Irving Spergel, Chief Investigator School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 East 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-1134 Dr. Candice Kane, Project Director School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-9879 Betty Begg, Senior Research Associate School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-9253 Ron Chance, Project Coordinator School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-0726 Michael Hyatt, Research Assistant School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-5879 Pam Rodriguez, Research Assistant School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-5879 Ruth Ross, Administrative Assistant School of Social Service, BW13 University of Chicago 969 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 702-5879 Symposium Participants Capt. James M. Boyle Preventive Patrol Unit Philadelphia Police Dept. 3701 Frankford Ave. Philadelphia, PA 19124 (215) 686-3204 Dan Bryant Research and Program Dev. Division OJJDP 633 Indiana Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20531 (202) 724-8491 Det. Manuel C. Cota Street Gang Enforcement Unit 620 West Washington, Rm. 345 Phoenix, AZ 85033 (602) 262-7331 Lt. Michael Cushing District #7 6120 S. Racine Chicago, IL 60637 (312) 744-8220 Ms. Paula Daleo Asst. States Attorney Gang Crime Unit Cook County States Attorney Room 1324 2650 S. California Ave. Miguel Duran, Director Specialized Gang Supervision Program LA County Probation Department 11243 East Valley Blvd. El Monte, CA 91231 (818) 575-4003 Sgt. John A. Galea, Jr. Youth Gang Intelligence Unit New York City Police Dept. One Police Plaza, Room 1100S New York, NY 10038 (212) 374-4272 Sgt. Michael D. Gresham Gang Crimes Bureau Evanston Police Dept. 1454 Elmwood Ave. Evanston, IL 60606 (708) 866-5055 Det. John F. Hayes, Jr. Seattle Police Dept. 610 3rd Avenue Seattle, WA 98104 (206) 684-8748 Sgt. Jesus Hernandez Gang Intelligence Unit Forth Worth Police Dept. 350 West Belknap Forth Worth, TX 76102 (817) 877-8227 Mr. Thomas Hughes Chief of Investigation Cook County States Attorney Room 14D40 2650 S. California Ave. Chicago, IL 60608 Robert K. Jackson Gang Activities Section LA Police Dept. 150 N. Los Angeles St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 (213) 485-2501 Sgt. Wes McBride Operation Safe Streets LA County Sheriff's Dept. 11515 S. Colima Rd. Whittier, CA 90604 (213) 946-7916 Dr. Walter B. Miller 9 Sibley Court Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 547-0137 Edward Pleines, Commander (Ret.) Gang Crime Unit Department of Police City of Chicago 1121 South State St., 12th Floor Chicago, IL 60605 (312) 744-6328 Officer Michael Schoeben Gang Unit Special Investigative Div. Minneapolis Police Dept. City Hall, Rm. 13 350 S. 5th Street Minneapolis, MN 55415 (612) 348-4121 Benjamin Shapiro Special Emphasis Division OJJDP 633 Indiana Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20531 (202) 724-5914 Barbara Wade Gang Detail Coordinator City of Miami Police Dept. 400 N.W. 2nd Avenue Miami, FL 33128 (305) 579-6176 Sgt. E.W. Williams Youth Gang Division] Jackson Police Dept. P.O. Box 17 Jackson, MS 39205 (601) 960-1934 Lt. Charles E. Wilson Youth Crime Unit Special Crime Section Detroit Police Dept. 6840 McGraw Detroit, MI 48210 (313) 898-6718/6724 ______________________________ I YOUTH GANG SUPPRESSION AND INTERVENTION PROJECT POLICE GANG SYMPOSIUM Summary The Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Project is a two-year research and development effort funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to identify and formulate promising justice system and also community based approaches for dealing with emerging and chronic gang problems in cities. On March 1, 1988, the project convened representatives of gang experienced law enforcement agencies from thirteen cities and counties across the country in Chicago to describe and assess various approaches to gangs which they have tried. In attendance were members of the following police and sheriff departments: Chicago, Detroit, Evanston, Ft. Worth, Jackson, Miami, Los Angeles (city and county), Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Seattle. Unable to attend was a representative of the Atlanta Police Department. Also present were members of the project's advisory committee-- Miguel Duran (Los Angeles County Probation Department), Walter Miller (Harvard University, emeritus), and Barbara Wade (Miami Police Department), and Edward C. Pleines (Chicago Police Department); staff members of the University of Chicago project and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and representatives of the Cook County State's Attorney's vertical prosecution unit. The following is an edited transcript of the daylong symposium, as well as a summary both of the key findings of the presentations and discussions, and the results of a brief survey of participants completed beforehand as a basis for the discussions. The symposium produced a great deal of information which hopefully will be useful to newly developing and as well as established law enforcement units attempting to cope with law violating behavior of youth gangs. Law enforcement personnel are closest to gang problems. They often possess the best available data and develop insights as to what needs to be done in law enforcement as well as in general social terms. Therefore, we believe the present report has value as well to a wide array of agencies, community groups, public and private organizations concerned about youth gangs. Definitions Agreement on the precise definition of the gang problem did not exist but a common frame of reference for discussion was clearly present. Definitions of three terms were considered: gang, gang member, and gang-related incident. Gang: All appeared to agree that a gang is a group of people predominately male) who commit illegal acts often, but not exclusively, of a violent nature. The ages of the gang members ranged from as young as 8 years to 40 years or older depending on the city. However, it was estimated that 60 percent or more of the gang members in several cities were adults according to state statute. Thus the law enforcement representatives were reluctant to apply the term juvenile to the groups with which they were dealing, preferring instead the terms youth gang or "street gang" since the groups were street oriented, comprising mainly adolescents and/or young adults. Gang Members: Gang members in the participating cities are individuals who either state they are in a gang, are identified by police as gang members because of their associates, wearing of colors or symbols or other factors, and/or who are involved in a gang-related incident, usually as offenders. Gang-Related Incident: A gang-related incident was defined in one of several--less to more inclusive--ways: as involving intergang violence; a criminal act motivated by gang membership or gang function; or a criminal act committed by a gang member regardless of motivation, function or situation. Some cities may employ more than one definition or change definitions over time. Gang-Related Issues Observed While each of the departments at the meeting was experiencing problems which were unique to their cities, many were having experiences which were similar. The more common problems and experiences include: Criminal Activity: Many of the law enforcement agencies seemed to respond to similar kinds of gang-related problems. Certain types of crimes appeared to be relatively more common in certain cities than in others. Traditional turf-related and retaliatory gang violence was common and a key problem in Chicago and Los Angeles, but relatively less prominent in most other cities. Common to all cities, although with different degrees of severity, was the growing involvement of gangs or street groups in narcotic sales. In some cities, youth gangs were not necessarily bound to particular neighborhoods and were now engaged in a variety of property crimes, from smash and grab to car and yacht theft. Youth groups or gangs were also involved in spontaneous or planned outbreaks following attendance at concert or sporting events. Gang activities and problems were viewed somewhat differently in the various cities and even in the same city over time. The concept of the gang problem was termed as "elastic" by one of the symposium participants. Violence: Eight of the thirteen cities or counties indicated they are experiencing increased violence attributed to gangs. Of greatest concern are shootings resulting in death or serious injury to gang and nongang members. Gangs or street groups in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Miami are better armed than in the past. Guns, including semi-automatics, are often purchased legally, at times perhaps with the aid of funds obtained from drug sales. Gang Structure: Contemporary gang structures were changing compared to those of two to three decades ago. While leadership positions existed, often they were not stable or clearly identifiable. The tightly-organized hierarchy observed in gangs of the 1960s were not necessarily present except in the case of certain older, more criminally organized street gangs or subgroups. Some gangs were small unstable associations connected with adult criminals engaged in a range of property crime. Hispanic gangs seemed to be more traditional in structure and turf orientation than black gangs which seemed to be relatively more focused on certain criminal activities, such as drug sales, in some cities. Asian gangs were believed to be often associated with an organized adult crime element. There was some difference of view whether to include white stoner or hate groups as youth gangs. They were occasionally allied with street gangs. A wide range of gang structures was present within and across cities. Mobility: Gangs were described as more mobile than they were in the past. This was attributed to their increased access to automobiles. Increased mobility of gangs was also believed to have an impact on the notion of "turf" which should be expanded to include the ideas of control of narcotics sales or even commitment to a certain anti- black or anti-semitic ideology. ______________________________ II POLICE GANG SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS MORNING SESSION INTRODUCTION OF PARTICIPANTS SPERGEL: Your observations and comments at the symposium today will be important for at least two reasons. First, they will be useful, if not a basis, for other law enforcement departments not present today in their development of strategies for dealing with emerging gang problems. Secondly, they will be useful for federal officials in the formulation of policy specifically addressed to youth gangs. Also important will be the opportunity to share your present concerns, interests and ideas with each other. All but one of you whom we invited (Atlanta) was able to come. Some of the people here are guests, some of them are members of our advisory committee. Four of the six members of our advisory committee are present today--Commander Pleines of Chicago, Dr. Walter Miller, formerly of Harvard University's Law School, Miguel Duran of the Los Angeles County Specialized Probation Department and Barbara Wade from the Miami PD. This is a two-year research and development program we began only a month or two ago in cooperation with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It's an attempt to develop promising approaches, particularly for the justice system, in dealing with the gang problem. The approach to gangs varies both by different units of the justice system as well as over time. We're aware that the gang problem varies in scope and severity across the different cities, and even within cities. There are different contexts, different ways that organizations get together to deal with the problem. Some cities have a variety of programs--a richness of programs dealing with the problem, although I am not sure whether this necessarily substantially affects the problem. Many external factors may impinge on a given situation and limit what can be done. Our research and development project will survey the literature, not simply theoretical and research, but also the organizational literature that describes gang problems and particularly programs that deal with them. We'll be making site visits. The present law enforcement symposium is the first of at least two symposia that will help us with an understanding of the various approaches. A key objective is to develop prototypes, models of intervention, as a basis for training and technical assistance materials. At the end of the two-year period there presumably will be a selection of sites to test specific models which will be systematically evaluated. Our primary purpose at this first symposium is not to educate or prepare you to do a better job. It's not even to get you together to share information about what's going on, which will be an important by-product. You are here to help us, the advisory committee and the project staff, to think about important strategies and promising approaches. In selecting you, we attempted to invite law enforcement personnel with extensive experience and expertise in dealing with the gang problem at the grassroots. We need your help this morning in defining the problem, in discussing the different strategies and programs utilized for the problem, and to discover promising approaches, however you define such approaches. KANE: Let's then start with a brief description of what you perceive the gang problem to be in your cities. And then this afternoon we'll talk about your approaches, what you've tried that's worked, and what you've tried that hasn't worked. One of the things we talked about at some length at our advisory committee yesterday was "what we mean by promising." Hopefully from our discussion today we'll be able to develop some criteria of what's promising. Sgt. Galea, do you want to start? GALEA: The street gangs in New York are no longer organized like they were years ago, the traditional structured organization. A lot of the kids that we have right now don't even have names. They're just groups of kids roaming around; it's very difficult to term them youth gangs. A lot of the kids are running around with more than one particular crowd, or what they term a "crew." You can't pin them down to any one particular organization. I would classify the groups in New York in three ways. We have the traditional street gang, an organized structured group. Then we have "crews" and "posses" which tend to be loosely knit, not highly structured organizations having from three to maybe ten people in the group. I say loosely knit because sometimes three crews break out and become gangs themselves. Generally they just stay a crew. And then we have a third group that I term a disorderly group of youths who tend to roam the schools, a concert, or any large gathering, where they know a lot of people are going to be, and use the opportunity to rip somebody off. They tend to act independently even though they will group together. When we arrest them, you'll find one kid who lives in Brooklyn, one kid who lives in Manhattan. Their only connection to each other is being at the same place at the same time and victimizing the same person. One of the biggest problems that we have in New York right now is that a lot of our groups are small. They don't have names. They're not fighting each other. And they're committing crimes for profit. I think it's very important that New York be looked at because ten years down the road, another city is going to look like New York. We haven't structured our definition of a youth gang yet to include a lot of these groups, so much of the crime that they commit just goes unrecorded as gang crime. We're going to have to redefine what a youth gang is and expand the Youth Gang Information Unit. We need more trained, experienced people to pursue the leads about certain groups. We have a multitude of problems in New York because of its geographical location, its access to foreign countries. Our immigrant population is burgeoning. Our gang problems tend to be transitional. For the most part there is no relation between a gang ten years ago and a gang today. We have a West Indian population which brought their problems with them. They're fighting amongst themselves and with the American kids whom they call Yankees. They've also created a network or federation similar to some of the youth gangs in L.A. and in Chicago so they can network with other cities. We know that they are trafficking drugs from New York to Delaware, to Washington, and probably to Boston. Again, New York City gangs tend to be loosely- knit groups. Since their mode of transportation has to be public transportation, it's very difficult for them to get around. The drug trade, as far as our city gangs are concerned, is limited to working for an organized crime group which will not allow these street kids to really take over any of their lucrative drug trade. New York City does have groups which have been termed gangs in the newspapers. For instance, the "Wild Bunch," is an organized drug group. Its membership ranges in age from 50 on down to kids in the neighborhood. I wouldn't characterize those kids as "street gangs" because of their affiliation with the organized crime element. However, they're dangerous kids. SPERGEL: I think it's very important that we have a way of looking at groups which don't fit traditional descriptions of street gangs that constitute a major crime problem in many cities. MILLER: What Sgt. Galea is saying essentially is there are serious law violating youth groups in the city of New York. A lot of them don't fall under the classic category of gangs, but that doesn't mean they aren't a problem in the city and that they aren't violating laws. GALEA: We don't use any terms other than gang. "Crews" and "posses" are terms they came up with. During the fifties, what we termed a "crew" was just some guys hangin' out together. I think these kids have taken it a bit further and have a little more organization than we had then. Today's "posses" are predominately West Indian and they deal predominately in the drug trade. Today's "crews" are predominately Black and Hispanic. SPERGEL: In the fifties, in New York, a kid who would be in a named gang might also be in a social club. He might have a history of being in four or five different groups, sometimes being in two or three at the same time. He might be on a term, in a youth agency, and in the street gang. GALEA: But that's quite different than what's happening today. Most of these kids belong to more than one anti-social group rather than belonging to a social group such as an athletic club or a boys' club. A lot of our kids group together based on their criminal specialty and then go out and commit a crime. Today I'm with a guy who's snatching chains. Tomorrow I'll be with somebody who's doing a burglary or robbery. They don't have any allegiance to anybody else but to themselves. And the leader becomes whoever is best at whatever is on that particular day. WADE: A year ago the term "crew" surfaced in Miami. Most of the kids who belong to crews in Miami came from New York. That's the impact of mobility on the gang problem. JACKSON: Just an overview of what we've got in the City of Los Angeles. I'm not going to talk about outlaw bikers or various stoner groups whom I don't consider to be street gangs because of the lack of overt criminal violent activity. The bulk of the problem we've got is with street gangs. Our two most active groups are Hispanic and Black street gangs. In the past we thought we had around fifteen thousand in-file identified gang members and associates within the city. Now that we're automating our files we are up to twenty-five thousand identified gang members or associates. Over the last couple of years, we have been averaging five thousand violent crimes committed by gang members. Our section only monitors and attempts to identify the violent crimes--murder, attempt murder, felony assaults, battery on peace officers, kidnap, rape, arson, extortion. We realize that gang members commit a lot of other crimes, but unfortunately we don't have the manpower to continue to monitor that activity. The street gang problem in our Hispanic area seems to be rather consistent. One traditional neighborhood Hispanic street gang has been active for about sixty years. Their activities are consistent. We are able to have a certain amount of success in dealing with this type of activity. We can go into a community and say "let's stop the violence" and we can stop the violence for a given period of time. We cannot go in and say "let's wipe out gangs," because frequently gang membership is seen almost as a rite of passage. The second, and in my opinion a much more violent problem, is our Black street gangs. Our Black street gangs at the present time number well over a hundred various groups and subgroups. We're dealing with Crips, non-Crips, Bloods, and red and blue rags. There is no one Crips gang. There is no one Blood gang. Factions of each fight among themselves. They are in a kind of loose-knit association. Black gang activity revolves frequently around crimes for profit, as opposed to our Hispanic and traditional gangs that would be more turf-oriented to protect the neighborhoods. Black gang activity extends beyond the Black areas into what I call "freeway crimes" where they would steal a car in their own neighborhood, hit the major thoroughfares in other communities, commit robberies, rapes, or other crimes, and then return to their own community. What we have been seeing for the last three or four years would be the additional problem of narcotics superimposed on our existing Black street gang problem. It's not that our Black gangs have all of a sudden discovered that they can sell dope and make millions of dollars and have shifted their activities. Rather, we have a number of ex-gang members that are into the mid-level of narcotic dealers. These are smart individuals. We're used to dealing with street gang members that may not be the brightest individuals on the face of the planet. Now we have gang members not only fighting for turf but for the narcotic traffic within their own neighborhoods. We are dealing also with a situation where the profit margin outside the City of Los Angeles is probably four to five times what it is in LA. Consequently dealers can buy a twenty-five dollar rock in LA and go to Arizona or go to Texas or Oregon and sell it for seventy-five to eighty bucks. HAYES: We don't have territories in Seattle, so it's hard for these individuals to set up, get a name, get the territories just right, and so forth. There's one main street, which divides the central area from the valley area. And that's basically how the kids identify themselves. Some of the incidents that occur are pretty predictable. All we have to do is go to one of the bigger rival basketball games, or one of the rap concerts to find a problem. Our initial focus was on kids that were grouping together to do smash and grabs. They weren't even break-ins. As we got to know the kids a little bit better it was a easier to see who was involved with which types of crimes. And then came some folks 18 to maybe 24 from L.A. That's when we started seeing gang-type activity. The kids from Seattle wanted to become involved with these gang folks. And, of course, we had the "want-to-be" folks. So we found kids trying to act out what they felt gang activity was all about. At the same time, the influence is largely those who are 17 to 18 and up as far as gangs themselves go. And we have those that are under that age that are "want-to- be's" and then there's the other section of just the groupies. We have identified certain individuals who are active in the Seattle area. We have found that if we remove them from a group that's causing a disturbance, the whole group doesn't have a purpose any more. So they end up going their own way or doing graffiti sometimes on their way home. WILSON: Basically we have the same type of conceptual problem in Detroit that New York does. That is, we don't have the traditional gangs that we had in the early seventies up until about '78. In the early seventies, a lot of the older people--22 to 23 years old-- were placed into prisons by our gang squad. Today we have less organized, transient groups. They are not turf-oriented because of a lot of disciplinary transfers within the school system, the economic and social change within the city. So you don't have adult leadership. You don't have two and three generations of members. They are spontaneous. They band together for particular incidents that may take place in a Coney Island or shopping center. Usually thee is one major event following which the police will identify the actors, take aggressive enforcement action, and eliminate the groups. We have to change our tactics just about day to day. We decide who's right or who's wrong, we snatch everybody up and we start throwing 'em out until we get to the quarterback or the one we want. We find that the youth membership ranges from about 13 years to about 17 to 18. That's the most effective way to do it. We share with LA the membership of the street level people being the young Black males who have dropped out of school, who don't want to work at McDonald's. All of a sudden somebody recruits them, puts them on the street corner, starts them selling crack at five dollars a rock and the next thing you know they're up to two or three hundred dollars in their pocket. At one particular time we found young people working in teams--seller, the stash man, and an enforcer. They were led by adults anywhere from 20 to 30 years old, members that had been in prisons for ten or fifteen years, went in at an early age and came back out and were the enforcers. And again, they're not a street gang. They're not a youth gang. They were a narcotics organization led by adults that utilized these youthful members on the street. However, a lot of the younger people have learned to use street tactics for selling. Therefore we have a lot of shootings over street corners. Not for turf, but for street corners. If the corner is moving a lot of rock, the word gets out. It's a hot corner. Somebody's going to try to move in. So we get a lot of shootings on a daily basis--in the hand, the leg, the right hand or left hand-- on purpose. It's strictly enforcement, intimidation, to maintain control. And that's the find of problem we're facing now. Our unit spends probably about five to ten percent fighting any type of gang problem. The other seventy-eighty percent in dealing with schools, school violent offenses, school shootings, and just shootings in general of perpetrators and victims under the age of twenty-one. We have a Street Enforcement Unit that relates mainly to violence of the narcotic trade, not a traditional type of gang problem. Our Narcotics Section has been expanded to a division with three sections. One of them is Street Enforcement which works the street corners and handles most of the violence that falls out. We put our intelligence in after the street corner raids; or if there is a crack house in the area or a number of crack houses, we go in after the fact and mop it up because generally there's going to be some type of confrontation to reestablish the group in that area. The majority of the people involved at that particular level are the 16 to 17 year olds. They also get the guns from middle level dealers and are there trying to impress other people and dealers. BOYLE: Philadelphia seems to have a number of problems in common with other cities. Our biggest problems go back to 1969 when we had forty-five active gang members shot and killed, and a number of others shot and not killed. As a result the Philadelphia Police Department formed our Preventive Patrol Unit, formerly known as the Gang Control Unit. That unit went out and did intelligence work. They picked up different members from the gangs, identified the leaders of the gangs, the war lords and the check holders and others. Also, in Philadelphia in the early seventies, there was a concentrated effort not only by the police department but also by a lot of different agencies. The courts, the district attorney's office, and different social agencies worked together to infiltrate the gangs, to identify gang members and put them into different programs to pull them away from the gangs. Because of all the killings in Philadelphia a lot of the parents of the gang members were involved. They organized and they actually went out in the street to break up the gangs. In the early seventies we had as many as ninety-two organized gangs, mostly turf gangs. You would have a corner, like Twenty-First and Westmoreland, where about twenty-five kids would hang out. If they decided to gang war against other members they would pool with different corners so they looked like one conglomerate. They would go out and fight back and forth and kill back and forth. After we identified the kids that were doing the shootings and the murders, we tracked them through the court system. If a kid was identified as being a gang member and actively participating in the gangs we would have one of our gang patrol or preventive patrol officers go to court. After the kid was adjudged delinquent the officer would testify to his activity in the gang. The judge would then take that particular gang member and send him to a secure facility and remove him from the gang activity. As a result of that, the gangs became less and less active. Around 1974 there was an organization formed called Crisis Intervention Network. I believe it was a federal, state and locally funded program. CIN would recruit former gang members that were past the gang fighting ages and they would go and obtain information and develop a rapport. They would also channel those active in the gangs toward more positive activities. And they had a lot of good intelligence. The police department would come out, identify gang members, and make arrests. And then Crisis Intervention would go in and permeate the area where the problems were. As a result of the interventions of the police department, the Gang Control Unit, the courts, the district attorney's office, Crisis Intervention Network and the rapport that was established and the cooperation among the other agencies, the gang murders slowed down. In '69 there were forty-five, in '75 only fourteen, and afterwards, just one or two. Currently there are very few gang murders in Philadelphia. We also had some problems with bikers around 1980. The police department formed a Motorcycle Task Force. Their approach was to stop the bikers whenever they got the opportunity, examine their motorcycles. Most were either stolen or had stolen parts on them. So we confiscated the motorcycles and they kind of lost interest in Philadelphia and moved out. Like the other major cities, we're having problems with drugs. We only have about eleven active turf-type gangs that are fighting. The rest of them are interested in selling drugs. They are somewhat organized and structured. We've had some problems with the Jamaicans coming in and selling drugs. In West Philadelphia today there are more and more Asians moving in. They seem to set up the way they did, from wherever they came, including extorting money from shop owners. The big problem you run into in the Asian community is cooperation. It is as if the people being victimized are afraid to cooperate with the police department. As soon as they realize that you're from the police department, they shy away. They don't want to talk and they don't want to do anything. As a result, 15 to 18 year old kids are being given a free hand. They can go in, just take whatever they want, and walk out without any fear of reprisals. Our narcotics unit is more interested in the drug-type trade. We're expanding our narcotics unit now. Its staff will go into schools and develop information and intelligence. We have an Habitual Offender program where kids that are committing a lot of crimes are identified and the information is entered into the computer. We also have an anti-graffiti network which identifies wall writers. GRESHAM: Evanston, with a population of 80,000, is the smallest community here. We're north of Chicago. Around 1972, we started experiencing a gang problem with the Black P-Stone Rangers. Even though there were several homicides attributed to those individuals, it took until 1983 before the city recognized it had a gang problem. In 1983, we had eight gangs and some 440 identified gang members. In a city the size of Evanston that was considered a grave problem. In 1984 a gang unit was formed and all the stops were pulled out. We had great cooperation with and tutorship from Commander Pleines of the Chicago Gang Unit and many of his gang specialists. We also had help from the Cook County Gang Prosecution Office. Today there are only three gangs in the city of Evanston, with only 120 to 130 active members. We are not experiencing a lot of the violence that some of these other cities have. The majority of our increase in activity seems to be more criminal in nature. Armed robberies, rapes and robberies that turn into shootings and things like that. We are starting to have a problem with females organizing and forming gangs. They have gone virtually untouched by us over the years. We've never really had anyone to deal with them. My particular unit only deals with adult gang members from 17 upwards. Juvenile Division supposedly deals with the juvenile gang members. I've yet to get a list or any information regarding juvenile gangs from them. But we do know that they're there. In 1984 our gang members were between the ages of 17 and 36. There were some older members, maybe 38. Today we're dealing primarily with 17 to 25 year olds, and three gangs that operate out of Chicago: the Disciples, the Vice Lords, and the Cobra Stones. We feel the majority of the gang members that were sliced out of the 440, were the marginal and the fringe members, probably Evanston kids who at the time thought it was a great idea to be a member of a gang. I think since they saw a lot of the leaders and the hard core people going to jail and doing time, they changed their minds. We were successful in a couple of sting operations that targeted gang leaders, gang members involved in various criminal activities, burglaries, narcotics, and things like that. We put a lot of the leaders and the hard core people behind bars. Unfortunately, the majority of these are getting out this year and next year. We'll have to take a close look and see if they try to reorganize the splinter groups there now. The majority of the gangs are now disorganized. There's inexperienced leadership and we're hoping it stays that way. Our biggest problem today is not so much the gangs as it is the other criminal activity that seems to be at an all- time high in our city. SCHOEBEN: The problem we see in Minneapolis is traditional gangs like those in Chicago. Most of our gangs, I think, originated in Chicago. We have the Vice Lords, Disciples, Imperial Gangsters, and offshoots or affiliates of all these different groups. In 1983, we first started to see the presence of street gangs in Minnesota. St. Paul at that time was experiencing problems with a group out of East St. Louis called the B-Boys. They were actually Black Gangster Disciples. We also started to see people calling themselves Red Berets. In actuality they were El Rukins. In 1984 several gang leaders were released from our state prison. They imported people from Chicago into Minneapolis and were able to contact certain leaders within our community. They were able to secure a fifty thousand dollar grant from the city of St. Paul. About that time, the leader and several of the people involved in the grant were involved in a burglary of a gun store. A young lady who was with them was captured and subsequently killed by the gang. It focused so much attention on street gangs in Minneapolis that a task force was formed. After about six or eight months of heavy coverage in the paper it became quite apparent that Minneapolis and St. Paul were experiencing gang problems. Our unit was formed for a six-month period early or late in '85 to look at the street gang problems in Minneapolis. We are a permanent unit now. Minneapolis has approximately twelve hundred to thirteen hundred gang members. St. Paul claims to have about two hundred and eighty gang members. The gang problems that we see are related to narcotics. Narcotics dealers are coming out of Kansas City. Some of the larger cities are utilizing street gang members as enforcers and hit men for their different operations. In the last seven weeks we've experienced twelve gang-related aggravated shootings over narcotics. The age range that we're seeing is 14 to about 24 years of age. We have a unique situation, I think. We're surrounded by states that have repeat offenders laws, but Minnesota doesn't. I interviewed many gang members in jail and I asked them "why do you come to Minneapolis?" The two most common reasons were that they like the area because there's a lot of money available, and they like the prison system because it's so lenient. We found that since 1983 or 1984 Minneapolis has become a major hideout for all the street gangs in Chicago. Since that time we have had a heavy influx of people released from the Illinois or Wisconsin prison systems, and are immigrating to Minnesota. Again, I think that the problems that we're seeing with gangs is narcotics. Word from the street is that by summer there is going to be a large gang drug war. The L.A. Crips, who are starting to show a presence in Minneapolis, are using the Disciples as lookouts and enforcers. They're actively involved with them in the transportation and distribution of narcotics. We have L.A. Bloods showing up. There's a group in St. Paul that only extorts money from drug dealers. They shot a couple of drug dealers. At the present time we have identified about twenty-seven major gangs in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Our unit consists of three people. We do more intelligence work than anything else. We work with our Narcotics Division, Juvenile Division, Robbery and Homicide Divisions in trying to apprehend perpetrators of these different crimes. A new problem that's just starting to surface in Minneapolis is that of Asian street gangs. We had a rash of armed robberies of Laotian lottery dealers. There is a large Laotian lottery going on in the Twin City area. These groups seem to be coming from California. We find it's virtually impossible to get any information out of the Asian community, unless there is a serious injury. One other problem that we are having, which may be unique to Minneapolis, is that we have one of the largest urban Indian populations in the United States. We now have four American Indian gangs whose members number about a hundred fifty to two hundred. They're urbanized kids on the streets, with no ties to their old traditions. The Indian community leaders are up in arms. They think there's no control over them. COTA: Probably since the thirties we've had the traditional neighborhood-centered Hispanic gang in Phoenix. Their activity peaked between 1975 and 1980. We call that the gang explosion years in Phoenix because around that time we had two hundred seventeen gangs in Maricopa County with approximately forty-five hundred gang members. Since then that number has dropped considerably. I'm in the process of identifying gang members in Phoenix and seeing where they're located. I expect those numbers will be cut down to about forty-seven gangs with eight hundred or nine hundred members. So, the drop in Hispanic activity is quite apparent. The next identifiable group is the Black gang. They also reached a peak between 1975 to 1980, but disappeared by 1980. In 1985 we saw a new type of Black gang activity, thanks to California and Los Angeles, revolving around narcotics. Our homicide rate involving these groups seems to have doubled. We've had maybe ten to fifteen a year, but by 1987 we had twenty, and we're seeing an increase over that now. There are two types of Asian gangs. First we have Amerasian youth. Maybe thirty to fifty of them are causing a problem. There is an Asian community of about five thousand people located in the Phoenix, Maricopa County area. The next type that we are seeing is the transient Vietnamese-based gang that seems to be hopping from Vietnamese community to Vietnamese community throughout the nation. We've also heard of extortion letters and things of this nature being spread throughout this Vietnamese community. The final type of gang we've identified are the Skinheads or White Supremists, but we haven't begun our research into them because of manpower limitations. We do have adult drug organizations, not only the Blacks but the Hispanics. They're into organized crime. We're also seeing motorcycle gangs. Our biggest concern now in Phoenix is Black narcotics traffic that no one agency wants to deal with. McBRIDE: In L.A. county, in the Sheriff's area, we have two hundred and forty-five gangs with about thirty thousand gang members. Seventy-nine of the three hundred and eighty-seven gang murders last year in LA County were in our area. Our unit is a tactical unit. It has fifty-one allotted officers. We have the whole spectrum of the gang problem, Hispanic gangs, Black gangs, the Skinheads, Stoners, Asians. We also have a large contingent of Samoan gangs, typically modeled after our Black gangs. They'll either identify themselves as Crips or Bloods. Others are from the island of Tonga. And the Tonganese do not get along with the Samoans. They're also using sophisticated weapons. I was in buying a pistol the other day from a large dealer who had a whole wall of AK-47s, semi-automatic weapons. Imported legally into the United States, he says he sells a thousand a month. I'm sure a lot of them are sold to the gangs. In the State of California, there's no waiting period for a rifle. You can walk in and buy a rifle today and walk out with it. For a handgun there's a fifteen-day waiting period. A little quirk in our law is that carrying a concealed knife, that is determined to be a dagger, is a felony. However, carrying a concealed and loaded firearm, is a misdemeanor. I've never really been able to fathom that. Most of our murders were by firearms county-wide. So that's a real problem with us. I think the Los Angeles Police Department had thirty-three gang homicides this year already. We've had twenty-four. Compton has had about ten. And, probably another twenty from other agencies within the county. So we're saying close to a hundred county-wide this year already. Gang homicides have tripled in the sheriff's area this year. Why? Motives differ. But they're primarily gang rivalries. We aren't having the drug wars that you have been talking about. We have drugs, no doubt about it. And the Black gangs are heavily involved in it. When a Crips kills a Blood he basically is killing a Blood because he's a Blood and not because he's dealing dope. In fact we've seen the guy that's out dealing dope with green shoelaces or green rags as if he's saying, "hey I'm kind of neutral today, I'm dealing dope." But, if they know him to be a Blood, they'll dump him anyway. They're not fighting over drug turf at all. Out of our twenty-four murders, only two can we put to narcotics. And that's the murder of one of our deputies; a suspect was also killed in that. We counted those as narcotic related. The others are not. To my knowledge not one of these other twenty-two have been related to drugs. I think drugs allows them the money to buy the weapons to use in their traditional gang warfare. Last year, out of our seventy-nine homicides, I think we found twelve of them directly related to narcotics. We decided that with thirty thousand gang members, and twelve guys in our unit, we weren't going to win. So we target the most active gang in each of the station areas with our OSS teams. We let station detectives handle the other gangs in the area. When you're putting all these gang members in jail, it falls on the Sheriff's Department to house them. We found the Crips took over our jail system. L.A. County Jail runs a daily prisoner population of twenty-two to twenty-three thousand. The Crips were taking over the prison system, so we had to take one of our field teams off the street and put them in the jail to handle jail gang problems. We have also formed a statewide association of gang investigators. We talk daily and meet monthly. We provide seminars and training and then monthly we meet and talk about new trends. A few years ago the cops and probation didn't talk to each other. It's allowed us all to talk. Now we work very closely. Probation, county, and city police work or ride together. That's no solution--when you have 387 dead people in one year. But it's the only solution we have. You know, the gang problem is not a cop problem. There's only so much we can do. SPERGEL: Almost everyone except you has said that one of the reasons there has been increased gang problems is associated with drug problems. What you're saying is that at least twenty-two of the twenty-four gang-related killings that occurred in the county so far this year are absolutely traditional in nature. Why is it that in the last couple of years, there has been this tremendous rise in the number of this type of gang-related killings in the city and county of Los Angeles? Why is this traditional type of violence occurring now in the late 1980s? McBRIDE: I'm not down playing the narcotic trade, because our Black gangs are heavily involved in it, but, I think it's the compression in Los Angeles of the gangs into certain areas. Some gangs live so close to one another that they can shoot at each other through the back windows, and do on a regular basis. And as they fight each other they'll sometimes accidentally shoot a non-rival gang member. Immediately they have a war with a new gang. Over the years I think that these warfares have just come to a head. It's slowly grown to a point where they don't get along with anybody. So any other gang member is fair game. Obviously, drugs are tied in to the gang wars, in that trafficking provides them the money and the freedom to do things they couldn't do before. They can travel to Seattle. When we first heard of them going to Seattle they were going up there on these smash and grab jewelry heists. Nobody could tell me that there was a Crips gang member in Los Angeles that could find his way to Seattle without help. We're talking 14, 15 year old kids that were caught that didn't know how to use stolen credit cards to get there. So there is someone behind the scenes. We don't have any leadership. It's whoever's there that day with the charisma to be the leader. Basically, I think it's primarily the old wounds that haven't healed. The Crips gangs have split into so many segments that they fight one another. Blood gangs generally don't fight each other. And there are fewer of them than there are Crips. The Crips will have a falling out, one set against another set, or one clique you might say, and then they become separate sets. And you know, a lot of Crips gangs fighting Crips gangs. That didn't happen in the past. SPERGEL: What is the age of the kids you're talking about? McBRIDE: Mid-teens. Late teens. They're staying longer now. They're getting up into their twenties. The Black gangs don't have that affinity for the traditional values that the Hispanic gangs in the past have had. MILLER: Do you think that the prison system contributes to the stability of the gangs, since they were Crips before they go into the system, remain a Crips in the system, and are rewarded for what they've done outside once they go in. And when they come back out, they actually become a gang member again, never really losing their gang identity throughout this whole process of going from society at large to the prison system and then coming back out again. McBRIDE: It's true within the Mexican gang or the Hispanic gang. Because they come out as a hero. Our courts are doing their jobs now. Offenders are getting significant time. And when a Crips goes in, unless he goes in for just a short period of time, it doesn't build his stature in the gang any more because we're getting Crips in there for many years. When he come out, he's likely not to be a Crips any more. He'll be a Crips in the joint. He has to be. When they come out, if they do any significant time, they tend not to be a Crips. They might identify as a Crips to get back in the neighborhood to sell dope, but they've become a more sophisticated criminal and stopped their street-banging. They tried to pass a law last year and we opposed it until they made some changes in it. The law would have said that if you're a gang member you're criminal. This would have meant extra inmates for the jail system, which is already bulging at the seams. We also opposed it because we didn't think it would stand any Constitutional test. In addition it would destroy our intelligence. A gang member would stop being identified as a gang member, but would still be doing the same things. And we wouldn't know what's happening. The problem is worse in the Black gang right now, although, we're starting to see a little bit of a resurgence this year within our Mexican gang population. Some of the Mexican gangs are starting to call themselves Crips and Bloods. But it's usually Black gangs, which is a reversal of the roles within the last two years. HERNANDEZ: If you take Los Angeles and divide it by about a thousand you've got the problems in Fort Worth. Street gang-wise we're concerned with the Hispanics and the Blacks. The majority of the gangs identified in Fort Worth are in fact Hispanics. These are loose-knit groups that don't have an identifiable leader. Mostly they're organized according to territory, neighborhoods. And they take their names from these neighborhoods. Probably the largest gang identified has fifteen active members at one time. Fort Worth claims the Hispanic gangs are the most violent. This is probably because they assume a higher profile than any of the other gangs that we see. They're not at war with each other or anybody else at this point. Generally these gangs have common gathering areas where they'll have a confrontation between one or two members and different gangs will fight. Somebody will get hurt. This will then start a rash of drive-by shootings. Consequently everybody feels the Hispanic gangs are the ones that are the most violent. They are probably the most dangerous to the community itself because of the drive-by shootings. A lot of innocent people have been shot by these guys. We're very fortunate that not all of the gangs are active at one time. Generally we'll have one or two of the gangs that are active at any particular time. What we like to do then is target and harass the active ones. We've found this to be rather effective. They're getting kind of smart now. They disavow any membership. The Black gangs as we see them now are more profit motivated. The younger ones steal cars. The older ones really fit the profile of organized crime rather than street gangs. Since our department doesn't have an organized crime unit, we're the ones that monitor these activities. We're seeing Crips starting to come into Fort Worth from Los Angeles. We anticipate a tremendous problem because a Crips member is establishing a narcotics operation and he's been undercutting the established dealers there. If he gets a foothold and recruits more people, we're going to have a blood bath there. He's carrying anywhere from six to sixteen thousand dollars at a time on his person. They're carrying U2's, very high quality weapons. We're seeing a problem in the schools with the younger Black children. They're not well organized at all. They grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same middle school, and come up to high school where there are kids from various different middle schools. They band together and they fight each other. There again they don't know why they're fighting other than the fact that one guy will get in a fight with another guy and the groups come to aid their friends. Our gangs are becoming more mobile. We're seeing some Asian gangs coming in from California, going down to Houston, back up to Dallas and then across to Fort Worth. We're seeing Hispanic gangs coming in from El Paso and Juarez. One in particular has some adult members running the gang, utilizing 15 to 16 year olds to distribute drugs and run guns between Fort Worth, El Paso, and Mexico. Again we have the Crips starting to come in. The Asian gangs are primarily Vietnamese. They are well organized or profit motivated. The ones we're seeing now that are in fact participating in extortion are a little bit older. In their 20s. Some of the younger Asians, as young as 12 years old, are primarily stealing cars and burglarizing homes. We're also starting to see a problem developing with the Skinheads. There are thirty hard core Skinheads identified in Dallas. There was a KKK rally Saturday and the Skinheads showed up en masse and caused a tremendous problem. We're also seeing some Jamaican gangs. A big problem is that we are the only gang unit in the metroplex. We're the only ones that monitor any kind of gangs. All the other cities are saying they don't have a problem. We're starting to network with Dallas somewhat and that's been helpful. WILLIAMS: The gang unit was started in Jackson in October of 1986, after two youths were killed because of gang problems. Most of our problems are due to unemployment. People that move from the north back to the South bring their kids. Some of whom have been in a gang before coming South and start their own group. In 1986 there were no gangs; now we have eleven gangs--nine Black male gangs and two female gangs which are affiliated with the male gangs. One of these female gangs is from the Folks Nation and the other is from the Peoples Nation. At this time we're not monitoring the females as well as we should because they're not creating any problem. I think the gangs really started growing in 1986 because of the publicity they received after the killing. The news media and the TV just really blew this thing up. Most of these kids really like the publicity so they have started to get into the gang. They're not receiving any attention at home. They get out there and want to be seen on the street corner with their friends. Once organized, they get involved in all types of criminal activity. Right now we have the Vice Lords auto theft ring that's operating inside the city of Jackson. They range in age from 13 to 24. We have a liaison officer in the schools that works closely with the gang members. Again, most of these kids are from the North, the Cook County area, but they start their own groups when they come to Jackson. MILLER: Up until just about four-five years ago, one of the few things that people who were studying gangs could say is that there really were no serious gang problems in any of the cities of the Old South. There are now quite a few of the cities in the south which are having gang problems, although clearly none of them are as serious as the kinds we're having in the North. Why has it spread after all this time? You did mention reverse migration. People don't have jobs in the auto industry or various steel plants. So they return to the South. After World War II large groups migrated North to get war jobs. Now they're coming back and bringing a gang tradition with them. Do you have any other reasons? Why is it that Jackson in the middle and late 1980s, has gang problems when it never had them before? WILLIAMS: We probably always had problems with "anti-social groups." And at one point some kids came and started naming groups. They just brought the name with them. In each area of Jackson, there are groups that don't want anyone on their turf. It's been that way for years. MILLER: Are you saying then that there has been a problem with groups in the area, but they weren't really calling themselves gang before and they weren't seen as gangs by outside people. WILLIAMS: Yes. WILSON: So that actually the nature of the problem really hasn't changed very much. They've always had gangs, or law-violating groups. But now they are beginning to be recognized and called gangs. And that's the major change that's occurred? WILLIAMS: Yes. WILSON: I go to Mississippi at least a couple of times a year and I try to understand why things are changing down there. I see there is still economic growth. There is a growth in the commercial zone around areas like Jackson and Meridian and other little mini- metropolitan areas. And you've got a lot of people from Chicago, from New York, from Detroit that are returning. Some of them are taking sons who can't get jobs and they're finding that they can make a profit on pills and crack from Chicago. Not only can they pay for the trip, but they can make a lot of money. SPERGEL: When we talk about the spread of gangs, we're not saying that guys from Chicago or L.A. are coming down--other than for narcotics--and organizing. There's no deliberate rational organization, a franchiser or unit of the gang going deliberately from the North to the South. Is there? WILLIAMS: I think so. Because we have been confiscating a lot of literature from some of the gang members which is coming from the Chicago area. SPERGEL: They're deliberately coming down to organize. It's not simply one or two guys moving and then you have to make friends, and so you start a gang. It's more than that. Why is there this deliberate organizing? Is it to make money? WILLIAMS: Right. That's what most of the gangs are all about now. They're getting involved in drugs, burglaries, auto theft, and robberies to make money. SPERGEL: Burglary. What's the connection between Chicago and Jackson in regards to burglary? or auto theft? WILLIAMS: Mostly people that we arrest on burglary charges are from the Northern cities. When we ask them the place of birth, it's Cook County or some other place like that. SPERGEL: But that burglary is not necessarily ordered by someone from Chicago? WILLIAMS: No. HAYES: I think what happens is that somebody moves there. Or they have a relative. And he goes down there and he looks around and he says, "Mmmm, they don't know me here. This is a cherry patch." And he'll call back and say, "Go to the Greyhound bus. Send me a load of crack." And they put 'em on a suitcase full of crack. It goes down there. He sells it for about ten times the value that he could get in a glutted market. And the other guys see that and "Hm hmm, I'm going to visit Joe, in Jackson." But I don't think they order them to do any of that. SPERGEL: You were suggesting Barbara (Wade), that there was some deliberate organization and connection? WADE: There is. Miami began to look at the proliferation of gangs in 1985. And most of them came from the North. But they came with their prayers and their charters and their sections. And they started the same thing that we saw here back in the sixties, tightly knit, very highly organized, structured, a flow of authority that went from somebody to someone else. Hispanic gangs were the first to come in. And they were able to come in on the beach and incubate for about a year and a half before we knew they were there. When we found them we asked why they came to Miami. They said, fun, sun, palm trees, Miami Vice. I don't understand why people are so overwhelmed by the fact that we have gangs in Miami. There's a vacuum of leadership down here. Anyone can come in and do anything that they want. And the Latin gangs found that to be a very lucrative business for them. So we're dealing with two tiers--the seniors from up here in the North who are giving orders to the younger kids. Their purpose was to come in and get the Peewees and the Juniors to run the drugs. We also have girl groups who are just as organized as the boys are. They are holding most of the drugs. Police officers never think when they stop the boys to check the girls out. Gangs in Miami are broken down into chapters. They go from one end of the county to the next. We went from four gangs in 1983 to sixty plus today, with the membership ranging anywhere from twenty-five hundred to three thousand; along with twenty-five tag crews. These are kids who like to "tag up" their signatures. Sometimes, if they decide to merge, they attach themselves to the Latin Kings or the Latin Disciples. They're extremely mobile. We also have three groups who are car thieves. They don't belong to anything else. All they do is steal cars and sell them to different groups, like the Haitians. They're doing a big business. Our biggest problem is going to be the Nicaraguans who are now coming in. These are kids who were armed when they were 7 or 8 years of age. The schools are having problems with them. The schools are also used as turf for the gangs. We have a multi-agency gang task force which combines police and social workers. And then we have law enforcement intelligence which includes probation, parole, school officials who are convened at any given time when we feel that there is going to be a problem. Otherwise these groups meet monthly to share intelligence. And of course we have the Skinheads. They're neo-Nazi. And the ones that we have identified are pure-bred Cubans and they are extremely dangerous. SPERGEL: So this would be an exception then, in which there is some deliberate evidence of gangs being formed by leaders in other cities? WADE: Yes, absolutely. SPERGEL: Do they get involved in fighting each other? WADE: Yes. We have rumbles. Sometimes for profit. But then we still have the girl friend who starts a fight because she's going with two major gang leaders, like the Folk and the People. SPERGEL: My point was that if they're so dangerous and they're fighting for turf and for status, that event detracts from business activities. Is there money coming in with all that strutting? WADE: Yes. There's money coming in. They're people who do nothing buy steal cars. There're people who do nothing but deal drugs. And then we have the fighting gangs. They use the structure of the organization when someone gets out of line to violate them. With the gangs we have in Miami, all information and punishment comes down from the leader. The first violation is a beating, the second one is a stabbing, the third one is a shooting, and the fourth one is a shooting to the chest depending on the severity of the violation. And that's how they keep them in line and that's why they're so tightly knit. SPERGEL: Does Chicago or New York order the conflict, the gang fighting? WADE: The Godfather does. SPERGEL: You're sure there's evidence for that? WADE: Oh yes. I have kids who were in gangs who dropped out. And they draw the structures and everything for me. GALEA: Most of the gangs in New York couldn't find the next borough, let alone find a Miami or how to get to Miami or having the money to go to Miami. I know some of the more sophisticated groups have the wherewithal to make that kind of movement. They have the connections from Jamaica to New York to different parts of the country because it's a small group of people. And they generally know each other. But other than that particular group, I can't see one other group that would be that organized. MILLER: Any continuation at all of that traditional earlier Cuban gang network that they had developed? WADE: No. They're all businessmen. The Cuban gangs are mostly Marielitos who came in in 1980. And then the Disciples are just a conglomerate of everything. But the Cubans stick to the Cuban surname, and they are very tightly knit. SPERGEL: Do you have any count on gang-related homicides in Miami? WADE: Last year we had eleven. We could of had many more but the police officers were not trained to identify them. That's happened to us over and over again; we'll pick up the paper three or four days later and know the homicide is gang-related, but it's never counted that way. We have seventeen gangs in the city of Miami--sixteen Hispanic gangs, one Black gang. The city is 58% Hispanic. And the county is 42% Hispanic. But we work it all, because the gangs are so mobile. They go from one point to this point to the other point. And these kids go all across the socio-economic line. We don't have poor gang members entirely. The leadership that we have with the juveniles are 17 and 18 years old. They look at the kids that are from third to sixth grade as futures. And the Peewees are from sixth to ninth grade. Juniors are from ninth to twelfth grade. Seniors are leaders and older. DALEO: What about the folks from Chicago that are involved? Are they 17 and 18 years. WADE: Let's see, we arrested a 33 year old King who was a Major. We have an ambassador from one of the groups now. He's been there for nine months. When he arrived things changed. Kids started paying dues. More "violations." But we saw a lot of kids backing out of the gang which we were able into programs. PLEINES: The gang Unit of the Chicago Police Department consists of 351 officers. We have 125 gangs in the city with approximately fifteen thousand members. Forty-eight percent of our gangs are Black, 42% are Hispanic, 9% are White, and 1% are others. The most violent gangs are the Hispanic gangs, the Mexican and Puerto Rican gangs. The age range of our gang members is from 8 years up into the 40s and 50s. We're dealing really in Chicago with three different types of gangs today. One is the traditional youth-orientated gang, where the age range is from 8 to about 20, early 20s. The second type are criminals coming out of our penal institutions, where 90% of the inmates are gang members or will become gang members before they come out of our penal institutions. They are banding together under the facade of being a street gang for whatever fear or prestige they feel that'll give them in the community in which they're going to operate. The age range of these people is from the 20s up into the 40s and 50s. And the third type of gang we're dealing with is merely a combination of the two. Probably the most serious problem we're facing is where older more sophisticated criminals coming out of our penal institutions are directing the activities of a youth- orientated street gang and probably leading them into areas of criminality. We've also found in Chicago that our gangs are less structured than they were in the past. They're very loosely organized as far as leadership. Before we always had a president and vice president, and you couldn't have a gang unless you had a war lord. Then when the shooting started, the first guy to go was the war lord. Now they couldn't get anybody to be the war lord. The El Rukins here in Chicago are an exception. Although now with the incarceration of Jeff we're finding that two, three, and four people are trying to control the gang that one individual directed before. There isn't a community within the city of Chicago that doesn't have a gang crime problem. It's just a matter of degree. And there isn't a suburb whose boundaries are contiguous to Chicago that doesn't have a gang problem. It's spreading all over the county of Cook. This is the first year that we were able to get information from our vice case reports. We experienced 1,385 vice/narcotic operations in which we arrested almost five thousand people here. The gang crime unit in total last year arrested almost nineteen thousand people. And we took about twenty-three hundred guns away from gang members. We get enough information now to target areas of gang activity. A recent study that we did, showed that 50% of our Part One offenses were occurring in the Fifth Police Area and 32% of that 50% was occurring in one district and 50% of the 32% was happening on two beats. So we moved our forces in there; if we can make an impact there we can greatly reduce the amount of crime. The Gang Crime Unit is an independent unit of the police department. We're not associated with the Youth Division or Narcotic Division, although we work very closely with both of them. We send in police officers to make buys from gang members. Today in Chicago we're arresting more gang members than ever before. We're getting more convictions and longer sentences than ever before, so arrest-prosecution is not the answer or the deterrent that we feel it should be or thought it was in the past. Our gangs are into every type of criminality that you can put your finger on. But in Chicago the predominate activity is drugs. SPERGEL: I would like to comment on the exchange we had during the break in that although more and more of the gangs are into drugs it doesn't reflect itself necessarily in increased or a very large number of gang-related drug homicides in Chicago which is consistent with what you have in L.A. County. PLEINES: No, we're not experiencing the homicides that way. But we really can't identify the aggravated batteries. An example of what I'm talking about, last year we reduced our homicides here down to forty-seven. We had a 37% decrease in our homicides in '87. And we had an 18% increase in the shootings. They're shooting more but they're killed less. CUSHING: We really haven't seen the violence on the street using these weapons. We did a recent study with the ATF on five hundred guns that we recovered from street gang members. Nearly 94% of those guns that we recovered were purchased legally. Prior to that everything was a zip gun or a cheap Saturday Night Special. PLEINES: Our population is changing like every major city. Part of the migration into Chicago is the Asian people. We're seeing a large influx especially in Vietnamese or Koreans who are settling in their own areas. As I said to people in Jackson and some other cities, you better start looking at your social institutions. Are they starting to fall down? That's what I think is happening in the South. What is your dropout rate? Here in Chicago our dropout rate across the board is 50%. In some of our schools, and I'm referring mainly to Hispanic schools, it's 70 and 80%. And when kids drop out, they go to the streets, and when they go to the streets, the gangs get them and recruit them. That's what's happening here. Thee is no alternative for a kid when the gang says "Hey, you, you're gonna join us." There's no place he can go in any of our communities at the present time to get the support to resist the gang. The mothers and fathers don't seem to care. GALEA: In Chicago you have a training system similar to the one we have in New York. Do you have a problem with gangs that crop up only because of schools, the high schools that they go to? We have a few groups that operate only during school hours. PLEINES: The school is controlled by the gangs that control that turf that the school is on. And they recruit from within. Here we have a permissive transfer plan, so you may have a kid who's recruited into the Latin Ds because that's their turf. But when he goes home he's in somebody else's turf and, of course, the time of greatest gang membership in our city is during the school year. You've got a captive audience of a thousand, two thousand, three thousand kids that you can control for five hours. You want to keep coming to this school, you better join our gang. And he does it for protection. GALEA: We have certain schools that have open enrollment, which means they can go to that school from wherever they live within the city of New York. And once that happens, gangs develop to protect kids coming into the area. We have one group formed called the Decepticons that was formed for this reason. PLEINES: We have that same problem, but one important change over the last fifteen years is that narcotics have made the biggest difference in the gang structure. With narcotics coming into gangs, the age range has changed so dramatically. Before when you studied a street gang you were talking about kids that were 14, 15. They couldn't get a driver's license, let along have any money to buy a car. But today, we're calling them gang members and they're 30 year old criminals really. Those types of people can find their way to Miami, New York, Jackson, wherever. And they've got the money to move freely about. Also with the increase in age, we're seeing more serious crimes committed than we did with our youth-oriented gangs. And we're seeing more violence. Because those people are going out and purchasing guns. Most of the weapons years ago that we recovered were zip guns or cheap Saturday Night Specials. The occasional good one they got in a burglary. They're not committing burglaries today to obtain weapons. Today you know, money is cheap. We hit one place--a drug place. In one bathtub the guy had nine hundred thousand dollars in cash. We checked his car on the way out. He had a Jay's potato chip box laying in the trunk with forty-seven thousand. He didn't know what to do with all the money. They've got so much. WADE: The kids who are making a lot of money can't go out and buy things themselves. They can't go into a legitimate dealership and plop down fifteen thousand for a car. So they recruit and buy legitimate people to make these major purchases. You know what bothers me is that we're still looking at our lower level, the kids--the juniors, even the seniors in the gang. They'll get shot. There will be certain doctors that they go see. The police and hospitals won't know anything about this. JACKSON: One thing you should do when anybody is forming a unit. When you do get your young victims, not only talk to them, but profile them. Do a background on them, even though they're a victim. One of the things we're starting now is fingerprinting kids as young as 12 years of age and below that, at 9, 10 or 11 if they're involved in a Part One crime, because they use several identities. McBRIDE: Our security in county hospitals are now county policemen. We ran into some serious problems with shootings in our hospital parking lots between rival gangs. Guys on both sides end up in the same hospital. And they continue the battle there. We need more identification of gang members and potential gang problems, when they do go to the hospitals. PLEINES: We're not involved in that here. We have a program with the Board of Education which is a one-day seminar on gang awareness. It includes a booklet on identification of street gangs, as far as colors and symbols, so that teachers can be aware of whether or not a gang member is in their classroom and what gang he belongs to. They're starting to enforce dress codes which helps to eliminate inter-gang conflicts within a school. We also visit every high school in the city twice a year and talk to the principal and the disciplinarian about what gangs and what leaders of those gangs are in that school. So we know who's in a school and what the gang problem is. One of the most positive things in Chicago has been the start-up of the Gang Prosecution Unit by the States Attorney's Office which follows a vertical prosecution model. Our clearance rate is around ninety some percent of all gang killings in Chicago. And the Gang Prosecution conviction rate is running in the 90% range. At one time last year, excluding death and natural life sentences, the average sentence for a gang homicide was thirty-seven years. It's been a good program for us. SPERGEL: You say "it really helped us to have the vertical processing and the increased conviction rate." But before you said that the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County Prosecutors get more and more convictions, more arrests, more sentencing, longer jail terms, and the gang problem in Chicago is not changing. PLEINES: I'm referring strictly to the gang homicides here. Taking shooters and putting them in jail helps alleviate the shooting and the violence problem within the gang. The other types of cases are what is increasing our gang population. Murders are a very small percentage of gang problems. McBRIDE: Does your vertical prosecution start at the inception of the arrest or does it go through the criminal court first before it's referred to you? DALEO: We have a unit in the State's Attorney's Office which is called Felony Review. Our prosecutors in that unit work twelve hour shifts, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We always have six prosecutors on the street going to police stations, reviewing cases, talking to witnesses, talking to victims, trying to get statements from offenders, and then ultimately deciding whether there's enough evidence to charge a felony. Because my unit is so small, all my staff are on beepers and available to assist the normal Felony Review Unit in gang crime homicides. We usually pick up a case from the preliminary hearing stage. After the case is charged by our Felony Review Unit or with the help of one of my assistants, the case goes to Violence Court at 26th Street. My assistants pick up the cases there and they vertically prosecute at that point. They decide either to put on a preliminary hearing or to indict. And then they make contact with the witnesses. Another part of our job is witness relocation. That is what has made, I think, our unit so successful in prosecutions. Previously a case would just go to the Criminal Division and the assistant states attorneys, because they're so burdened with approximately two hundred cases on their call, would only get to the murder cases when they were getting ready for trial. Now we see them from the inception. We make contact with our witnesses. We relocate them, get them out of the neighborhood where otherwise they're going to be running into the same gang that they're going to be testifying against. WADE: We have vertical prosecution in Miami, too. But when the case comes to court, nobody shows because of intimidation. PLEINES: One thing that Ms. Daleo didn't say is that felony review comprises new attorneys who are often not sensitized to the gang problem in the city. When we know we have a gang leader involved in a homicide, or one of those people we had designated as a target because of his shooting, her unit will be called and she can override these felony reviews and get a conviction. My people call her people all the time for advice on how to handle a case. McBRIDE: We have so many homicides in L.A. that it has bogged prosecution down. They've added attorneys recently and that's gonna help. Now we can start going to them for our non-homicide cases. We also use them for search warrants and for advice. DALEO: When the State's Attorney took office in 1980, he targeted gangs and narcotics. We have worked with the Police Narcotics Unit and the gang crimes specialists to put together operations of gang crime narcotics. The intent was to take down the gang drug dealers, and put them into our criminal justice system. PLEINES: One other thing I'd like to bring up is the Gang Crimes Section not only works with the State's Attorney's Office, but with the federal government, the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA. They have some tools that we do not have. And they have money. MILLER: Some of the speakers seem to be indicating that if you could get rid of the leaders, the gang would diffuse. Is that true? PLEINES: I don't think that's true. It would have been true in the past. But today for every narcotic gang member you put in jail they're ten waiting to take his spot. Because with the narcotic profit and the type of distribution that they have going in the major cities, taking the leadership away is a short-term fix to at least maintain some control over an area, to keep it from becoming a major conflagration of criminal activity. MILLER: Even in the forties and fifties, if you pulled a gang leader, someone steps in to take his place. I think that was mostly kind of a myth that some police departments set up because it would make gang control so easy. PLEINES: To compare gangs today with gangs of the forties and fifties is like night and day. There wasn't that much criminality going on. I remember when we used to get guys, Jimmy paid his fifty cent dues and so and so paid twenty-five. That's gone. MILLER: I agree with you completely. All I was saying is that the idea that if you knock out the leader means you knock out the gang, wasn't any more true in those simpler days than it is today. PLEINES: Years ago you could take the leadership away and the gang would dissipate. But the gangs have changed. You have a looser leadership system. You've added the narcotics problem. BOYLE: I would say in Philadelphia that it was more true than in other places. It was not only removing the heads of the gangs, but it was also doing a lot of other intervention with the gang workers. Removing the heads in Philadelphia in the late sixties and early seventies ended our youth gang problem per se. But the juveniles nowadays are more sophisticated. You have 17 and 18 year old juveniles riding around in limousines with two or three people carrying portable phones. And they're not just into narcotics. They're selling gym shoes, the newest latest fashions in clothes at prices that, I been working all my life and, I couldn't afford. And when you tie it back to shootings and the incidents they all lead back to these 21, 22 year olds in these businesses. MILLER: It sounds like we're not talking about street gangs. WADE: No, we're talking about that other level. GALEA: I think we would be remiss if we didn't indicate that all of the departments are dealing with the organized gang or organized criminal element. Some of us just don't call them the same thing. We have just about every kind of unit you could possibly imagine that's operating in New York. They're actually out there making all kinds of arrests. They're dealing with the problem. They just may not call it the same thing that someone else might call it some place else. ______________________________ AFTERNOON SESSION KANE: I viewed the material you submitted and pulled out some common elements in the definitions used in your cities. Basically, you all are in agreement that a gang is a group of people. Everybody ducked the age of those people. Your definitions also agreed that gangs engage in some type of illegal activity. Those are the only two elements that are common to everything that everyone has said. There were some other characteristics of gangs that different folks proposed: 1) a recognized leader and some followers but with a fairly loose structure, suggesting it wasn't a very tight structure. GALEA: Change that number one, make it plural, leaders. More than one person. That seems to be what we're getting in New York and other places. We have these groups but if they, they're not given a name, then they could fall into all of these categories and still not be called a gang. If they don't have a name, then they don't fall into the category of gang. KANE: One word that came up in several of your definitions was "identity." But that doesn't always say you have to have a name, just that you would closely associate with a certain group of people on a recurring basis. Right now let's leave name as a factor, then. 2) Violence was mentioned by a number of you. There is some participation in acts of violence, not just illegal activity, but violent acts. 3) Turf came up a couple of times. MILLER: Is it necessary for the illegal activity the gang engages in to be violent for it to be considered a gang? Some type of assaultive activity has to be included within the repertoire of illegal activity. Can you have a gang which is purely predatory? WILSON: We had groups that weren't violent in nature. All they did was use a scam on young ladies to get attention; also, during the summer they would snatch gold chains or jackets. They wouldn't be violent in nature because most of the time they would be hit and run. And they wouldn't have confrontations. "Illegal activity" is a broader definition than violence. I think violent gangs get more attention. I think that's what brings them to the forefront. KANE: Wouldn't we define grabbing a chain off of someone's neck as robbery? JACKSON: In LA it would be grand theft from a person, if there's any violence at all, like jerking it. WADE: In Miami too. WILSON: If you snatch it without any violent confrontation then it's larceny from person in Michigan. Any time there's some force applied, it would become robbery but not armed. They engaged in larceny from persons, and they avoided confrontation. It was subterfuge, hit and get. If they use weapons, it's robbery armed. McBRIDE: You don't have to have violence in the group to be a gang. But I can tell you we won't work them unless they're violent. Because we have such a problem with violence, we'll let somebody else handle the non-violence. WILSON: That's what brings them to the forefront and labels them "most active." You have groups that engage in car theft. You have groups that engage in larceny from persons. You got groups that don't want the violent confrontation. They're just strictly into making a profit without a violent confrontation. However one of them finally got a gun and robbed and shot a state police officer who was attending one of the festivals. Then the City and State Police came down on them and we dismantled them. Until that time, other than targeting individuals, you would never target them as a group. Because they were not a violent group. KANE: For purposes of the work that we're undertaking, I'm assuming we should include violence as a characteristic. SPERGEL: Should we use it as a priority? In other words, look primarily, or at least first, at promising programs that deal with violent street gangs, and then secondarily with this whole range of illegal activity. What illegal activity of the group makes it gang- related? MILLER: I think that if you're talking about developing a nationwide program, violence is a element which brings a priority but does not have to be a necessary element or factor to combat that particular problem. Suppose you have a group of kids from 14 to 18. There maybe one adult who is handling fencing arrangements and so on. These people are engaged in extensive breaking and entering, which is a secretive, non-public kind of activity; they account for hundreds and hundreds of burglaries. They want to stay away from violence as much as possible. They don't want anybody to catch them or see them, and the violence brings down the attention of people. They're organized, they may have a name. Do you want to exclude them from consideration? PLEINES: Intimidation may be a more viable general element than violence on a national basis, because a lot of them intimidate without violence. KANE: What about turf? We definitely seem to go the whole gamut on this one. WADE: We're finding the Latins are more turf-oriented in terms of the graffiti and writing their symbols to indicate who and what they are. Violation of that becomes a time for war. KANE: So there definitely are some cities where turf is a factor. But there are other cities, apparently, where turf is not. PLEINES: Turf becomes wherever the gangs happens to meet and get into a confrontation. KANE: It's a fluid concept. They carry it with them. "Whenever I am is my turf." PLEINES: I think the gangs have a turf somewhere, how broad it is is something else again. As Mrs. Wade said, Latin gangs tend to mark off four corners and say "this is ours. Nobody else can come in." Other gangs that are engaged in narcotics would have a broader concept. We do run into conflicts in Chicago with dope dealers trying to expand their trade into other gangs' turf. McBRIDE: Look at the Skinheads. They primarily aren't claiming turf. They're claiming a philosophy which is in fact a kind of a turf for them. We've got a small group here we prosecuted. I wouldn't really classify them as a street gang either. PLEINES: We didn't either, at first. But we have some now that for all intents and purposes are street gangs. KANE: Violence is clearly something that we need to be tuned into. Turf is something we need to be tuned into. But both may not be present. WADE: It could be because the gangs are so mobile now. MILLER: The classic example of the non-turf gang is the type that we decided this morning we aren't going to be talking about--the motorcycle gang. They are united by their mutual interest in Harley-Davidsons and everything that goes with them. And as the years have gone by, the area from which motorcycle gangs draw their memberships is getting wider and wider. I think there are other kinds of groups that have mutual interest in drugs and burglaries and things of that kind, which also have very little turf. PLEINES: One of the things that all gangs have in common, is unity. There's some sort of unity between members and their group. How strong it is depends upon leadership. SPERGEL: Do you have any gangs in New York? Your groups don't seem to have any leadership or unity. GALEA: They may not have the leadership but there's certainly commonality there. They group together for a criminal purpose. But they may not have a leadership structure. SPERGEL: There's no social dependency, no communal purpose. McBRIDE: Many of these gangs serve that function. They've got emblems, they're proud to be in the gang, and they'll die for it. GALEA: I think we had that years ago in New York and I think that's what Miami is doing right now. WADE: We don't have colors. We went from colors to beads. Now we're into haircuts a little bit. SPERGEL: Is there pride in membership, for example? GALEA: Our groups tend to be small. They don't have any sort of relationship to any large groups, except for maybe the 5% nation. They could care less about the group down the block. SPERGEL: It's an interest group. GALEA: It's more individual than what you would call an organized group. WADE: You just have crews, don't you? One or two or three people together. KANE: What else have I missed that you would consider a general characteristics of gangs? WADE: Probably something that we should consider is organized crime--be it the mafia, Black mafia, Cuban mafia, what have you, and age. Are you going to include that also? PLEINES: That's about the same percent as Chicago. KANE: At what point do you become not a youth but an adult? McBRIDE: Legally it may be 18. We specifically eliminated the word "youth" from our definition. GALEA: Now according to that definition, we would have to handle the Mafia. And we certainly could not do that in New York City under the same concept. MILLER: There's two pieces to that. One is the organized crime piece. The other one is the age piece. You don't have to look at them together, you know. PLEINES: When you develop programs you have to consider age. One program will work if we're dealing with street gangs between the ages of 8 and 18, but it won't work if we're going to use it with gangs that are between 18 and 30. In Chicago we just call them street gangs. McBRIDE: What about an Asian group, the Babu gang. You have a bunch of guys 17 through 20 years that don't have turf, they don't have a corner. They are involved strictly as enforcers. They collect the money from the restaurants, whatever it is. Is that a youth gang? Or is that really a part of organized crime? PLEINES: I would designate that as organized crime. But, we would probably investigate it under street gangs. MILLER: You have to draw some lines. I've never liked the idea of juvenile gangs. In Chicago if you pass the age of 17 or 18 you're technically no longer a juvenile gang member. But do you also throw out the notion of youth gang if you only take kids from say 10 or 12. Now some of you may be saying, "we've also thrown out the notion of youth gangs because so many older people are in the gang, and not only that but there are ties to adult crime and criminality." So you use the word street gang instead. Let's use street gang because street gang doesn't say anything about age. It can be any age at all. Could you talk a little about non-street gangs? Where do you draw the line between street gangs and other kinds of gangs? PLEINES: An example of what you're asking would be the El Rukins. The membership of the El Rukins runs from the early 20s until the 40s and 50s. They're not into graffiti, they're not out recruiting on the street. They recruit from within. They're really an organized gang of criminals. We have them in gang crimes because they used to be under our Intelligence Division. SPERGEL: There may be a problem with that. The El Rukins were in fact a real street gang on the south side of Chicago in the Hyde Park-Woodlawn area years and years ago. So they have a street background, although they've evolved since then and are essentially a type of crime organization today. PLEINES: Milwaukee has them. Miami has them. Minneapolis has them. SPERGEL: With the same sort of background and leadership and cohesion and history? WADE: Yes. MILLER: My question is what is a type of non-street gang that doesn't fall within your area of jurisdiction and you're saying let's take the El Rukins as an example. Then you gave me the reasons why you do take them into your jurisdiction. But you said that logically they should not fall in your jurisdiction. PLEINES: And I say that logically because we all started out as a youth gang operation. It's just that over the years, with the narcotics, we've expanded the age limit of the people we're dealing with. When you develop a program for youth it isn't gonna work with the El Rukins or any of these other street gangs. And I can name factions of Vice Lords or Black Gangster Disciples that fit the same pattern as the El Rukins. But there are other factions of the Black Gangsters or Vice Lords that are youth oriented. KANE: "Gang members"--you define them in one or both of two ways: 1) either you identify them because they're wearing colors, they are associating with known gang members, or a number of other criteria; or, 2) as someone who is self-disclosed. Some departments seem to lean toward one, some toward the other, and some will accept either one. I don't think we need a lot of discussion. That's probably fairly simple. PLEINES: One of the things I would add is symbols, tatoos. KANE: There are a number of ways. But apparently, as more people are not wearing colors and they're not flaunting their memberships so much, it gets a little harder. That's an issue for us, I think, in terms of data collection. "Gang incidents" is interesting because you've come up with three basic definitions. Nobody seems to be blending these too much. 1) The motivation--where motivation is tied to the gang somehow. An offender is committing the theft of the car because it's part of what your gang is into; 2) it's any criminal act committed by a member of a gang, whether or not he's doing it for some reason associated with the gang. Or, 3) the most narrow definition, a criminal act between gang members. PLEINES: It gets even more complicated. Because this is at the conceptual level. Operationally it can vary. KANE: How do you know? How do you articulate it? Do you somehow intuit it? PLEINES: It has to be shown in the follow-up investigation. SPERGEL: Take the vice category. When guys are arrested on a street corner together, and in possession of narcotics, the marijuana or pills they have may be for their own personal use. But the incident comes up as gang related. Right? Is Chicago expanding its definition a little? JACKSON: Right now number two--any criminal act committed by a gang member--probably fits ours more than anything, although with some leaning toward one. Three is totally out. I used to have a lieutenant that ran around trying to say that if it's not five on one side and six on the other it's not a gang incident. That doesn't work. Back in the early seventies Wes and I had this same discussion. We couldn't get five people working gangs to agree on what gang- related was. What we adopted was violent crimes committed by gang members. We don't measure "gang-related." The closest we've ever come to gang-related" would be gang versus gang. But that would be a sub-category of what we do. Now we're also breaking down gang motivated within the same category. We haven't changed since the early seventies. Now we can break the violence down to more detail. Also we only measure selected violent crimes. PLEINES: Can't you do it the same way we do it here by changing your case report? Just add a box--is this a gang-related crime? McBRIDE: I worked West Hollywood and I wouldn't have known a gang member if he bit me when I was there. We just didn't have gangs in that area. Occasionally they would pass through. I knew a motorcycle gang member because they drove Harleys and they had these funny looking jackets on. And it was always yes sir and no sir when you stopped them. So I knew them. But I wouldn't have known a Crips or a Mexican gang member at that point. We just don't have a box. In fact, we thought and thought and finally got a box on our field interviews, our FIR reports for gangs. The officers will not, we ask them, but they will not use it on our reports. JACKSON: I think they're just resistant to change. PLEINES: Ours is a result of media influence. Newspaper people get the reports right after we write them. And we don't want to bring any more alarm to the community or any more recognition to the gangs. They accept our count on a monthly basis as to how many gang-related incidents took place. BOYLE: We had a big gang problem and we had a very narrow definition. Because we had such a big problem we narrowed the definition down to a gang incident and then also just a gang member arrested. So the incident and the arrest didn't have to be one and the same. Because we don't have the problem that we had before, I had to broaden that definition so that we could get more incidents. MILLER: I think what you say is very important. The fact is that gang activity is a very elastic kind of a concept. It expands and contracts depending on the seriousness of the gang problem in a given area. And the more serious it is, the more it contracts to get fewer and fewer cases; the less serious, the more it expands so that you can then include more. JACKSON: One of the difficult things that we had to face in LA was that at times if you allow the statistics to go to the various stations, or the various subunits, the statistics may be somewhat self serving. If they need people, the stats go up. If they have to show production, the stats will go down. And over the last sixteen, seventeen years I've been working with it, we have maintained some form of consistency. PLEINES: In Chicago any officer can classify a report as gang related or not. Once he does, a copy is sent to gang crimes section and the analytical department there reads the report and categorizes where it fits in the gang problem. JACKSON: I'm looking forward to doing something like that. I have a squad of eight people that go through violent crime reports that we monitor. They go through around 1500 reports a week. KANE: Now we need to know what you've done with the resources you have. And what's the effect of it all. What did you do before? How have you changed things? Clearly there's a lot to be learned from your experience, in terms of your city's responses to gangs. Let's start in Chicago. How are you organized to handle the gang problem and how is it different from before? PLEINES: We have a strong enforcement policy in the Chicago Police Department. I have three gang units that are geographically spread about the city. Each unit is commanded by a Captain. Each Watch Commander is a Lieutenant. We work seven days a week. We have gang crimes specialists in each unit and we have tactical officers in each unit. We utilize these tactical officers either in uniform or plain clothes depending upon the type of directed mission they are given. Every day they're told you will go to this location between here and there and you'll find the Latin Kings, the opposing gangs in that neighborhood, or so and so. Here are their signals, their colors. And they go out and do tactical work. The gang crime specialists do more investigative follow up of crimes. They prepare cases for trial. They write reports which are a narrative of a gang's history, the membership, the age group that's involved. We issue a monthly report based on our stats which shows every crime committed during the month--the type of crime, the location of the crime, and the district it occurred in. That report is sent to every deputy chief and every district commander, so he can see the amount of crime being committed by gangs in his area or span of control and where within that area he can deploy his forces to be most effective. Every district commander is responsible for all types of criminality within his district. We are there to assist him with any information we have on gangs and to supplement with personnel in a given situation. But, we have found that our enforcement activity and prosecution and convictions and incarcerations are not the deterrent that we would hope for. While we take ten off the top, or out of the middle or wherever, the community is supplying forty or fifty into the gang structure from the bottom. In that regard, we're doing several things. We have a superintendent's gang crime program run by the Police Department, where we try to get jobs for some of these gang members. In fact this program deals with the fringe members of gangs, not with hard core members. But again, that can stop the influx of people in from the bottom. As McBride said, you don't know a gang member when you're starting out. We had the same problem here in Chicago where police officers assigned to the detective division or the patrol division are not aware of gang problems in their particular district or on their particular beat. We have created a one-day seminar on gangs today which is really an awareness program to teach officers on the police department what to look for to determine whether they have a gang problem. Each officer that goes through gets a guide to the identification of street gangs which tells them what hand signals mean, what colors mean, etc. We also have an intervention program where bilingual police officers go out and address community groups throughout the city to make them aware of the gang problem. We also have a similar program with the Board of Education to make teachers aware of what to look for within the schools, to indicate they have a gang problem, and what they can do about it. We also target gang members through our records division so that any time any of them are arrested we bring it to the attention of parole or probation. We then make sure that the proper authorities are contacted to get them back into jail. We also work very closely with Department of Corrections. We notify them when we're sending a bad one in. They notify us when a bad one comes out. Years ago when we sent somebody to a penal institution they dropped out of the gang structure. The trouble today is when we send the same individual away he merely enters the gang structure within a penal institution and it reinforces his gang affiliation. He comes out worse than he went in. We have a community speaking program where we continually go out and address community groups. We're trying to tie our strong enforcement policy to the community. We're not going to solve this problem without the mothers and fathers getting involved in it. And quite frankly we're not being very successful. We're reaching a lot of people but they're not actively involved and as a result of that we have instituted in Chicago a program like Philadelphia, CIN, although it's not quite the same type of program. Until we get the community involved and until people stop using drugs I don't see much change in the gang problem. DALEO: In Chicago we have automatic transfer laws which involve 15 and 16 year olds. For "normal" type of heinous crimes--armed robberies, aggravated batteries--they're treated as juveniles. They go to juvenile court. But if we arrest a 15 or 16 year old for murder, rape, things of that sort, we can have them automatically transferred into the adult system. And we prosecute them. We have a couple of cases pending in our unit right now where five, six individuals are involved in a murder. The ages of those kids range from 12 to 17. Now the 12, 13, 14 year olds can be 702'd. That means they go to a hearing and the judge will decide whether they're going to be transferred to the adult system. The 15 and 16 year olds automatically come to us. One of my prosecutors is going to be involved in the juvenile case as well as the adult cases because we're not confident that the judges at juvenile court will transfer the 12 through 14 year olds over to us. That's one of the very rare times when we get involved in the juvenile system. My unit is just not big enough. We can't handle the adult crimes going on. We mainly deal with the murders. We do have some rape cases. We do have some armed robberies and some attempt murders. KANE: So you only take a case involving a juvenile when it's either an automatic transfer or where he crime is very violent. DALEO: Where we have this across the board thing--where we have a murder, a bunch of gang bangers jumped into a van, drove to a particular location and beat this kid to death, we'll handle it. It's going to hurt us too, because the juvenile system is totally different from the adult system. We have to push those cases to trial so all our witnesses go on paper. Then we have to deal with the paper created in juvenile court when we go to trial in the adult case. KANE: What are you doing in Miami? Do you have anything promising? What's working? WADE: We have a youth service network which is comprised of all the criminal justice and youth service agencies in Dade County whose representatives meet quarterly to take a look at kids who may be on their case load and who may be identified as gang members. These are representatives from parole, probation, juvenile, and social service agencies. The school board is involved. We also have the multi-agency gang task force, which is a task force that works directly on the streets with the kids. I am involved in that. We go out in time of crises. When the uniform officers can't put down situations, then we pull them out, and we go in to get information. We also provide training, do the lecturing on gangs. There is also the county-wide gang task force which is comprised of all the municipalities in Dade County. It meets once a month to share intelligence and can be activated at any time for selective enforcement when we feel that there is going to be a gang problem. And then of course I monitor three programs. One is called the drop-in program. The program is for gang members who've dropped out of school, dropped backed into school. After we've taken a look at his deficiencies, we do innovative educational teaching with that kid. We have 12 kids. We've only lost one. We take one or two of those kids twice a week out of the class, which is part of his little deal with us, and he goes to a program with me called KICK, Kids in Communication with Cops. We spend an hour on Tuesdays and Fridays teaching police officers how to communicate with gang members. We sensitize them. We do active role playing to diminish the hostility between police and gang members and hopefully to eliminate police-gang confrontation. The other one is called the Respect program. This program is at an alternative school. We have seven gangs involved in that and we've taken the same gang dynamics that are used on the streets and had the kids identify the problems that they were having and that's used as sort of a merit. They're given merits if they don't commit any of those things, e.g., wearing gang colors, doing gang signs, disrespecting people, speaking Spanish, you know, when others around you don't understand it, sucker punching, tapping the little Hispanic girls on the derriere, which sets off the Latin guys. And it's done very well. We have 35. We haven't lost one. We lost three after they left the school and we found out that they could not function in a normal school setting. They have a special advisor and they sit down once a week and talk about the problems and they police themselves. SPERGEL: What is the age group of the people that use these programs? WADE: The kids who are in my program are from 7th to 9th grade. Most of them are 13 to 16. In the Respect program and the Drop-in Program they're from 12 to 17. And the KICK program they're normally the older gang members. By the way, all who are in the KICK program have been in leadership positions at one time. They're 17 years of age and they're going to be turning 18. SPERGEL: These older gang members are teaching the police how to communicate with gang members. Is that what you're saying? WADE: Yes. Interaction. We find the need to desensitize because the Latin gang members are different. They don't take threats. Latin police officers are very tough on Latin kids. And there's a lot of embarrassment at the fact that the Latin kids are causing the majority of the problem down there. And I tell you, it's helped tremendously. We don't have the kids being macho and swearing at the cops any more. SPERGEL: So you are doing a rather complicated job then. You're teaching both groups how to get along with each other. To some extent you're accepting the legitimacy of the existence of the gangs, but not necessarily their illegal behavior. You're saying kids may be busted by the policemen they were friends with two or three days ago. WADE: Right. And then I have another program. This is businessmen who are ex-gang members who have money. They are requested to bring me five people each who are also in businesses and we have the shadowing program. Each person is assigned a kid and works with them, places him at a job, and watches him until he reaches that age where he has become a viable person in the community again. KANE: The kids that are being targeted. Would you consider them to be hard core? Would you consider them to be kind of fringe? WADE: Hard core. I went right after the hard core. KANE: And you feel you've been successful in diverting them from their gang activities? WADE: No contact with the police or the court. KANE: How do they respond then to their former peers? WADE: First of all we don't ask the kids to get out of the gang. We expose them to a number of different options. Out of that the kids see good role models. For example, they watch me and want to dress like me. SPERGEL: You don't have any parent involvement? WADE: No, we hook the parents in through the kids. Once we get the kids, we automatically have the parents. I make home visits. SPERGEL: You don't do gang group activities though? All this work is with individual kids. You don't have the gang coming in. WADE: No. The whole gang comes in. We decide what neutral turf is. We say Jackson is neutral turf, there'll be no fighting there. We don't have fighting there. SPERGEL: Have you ever contacted some professor down there at the University of Miami or some other place and said, "Hey, come on over and examine these programs and see how much good we're doing." WADE: We're going to have Dr. Albert who said that there were no gangs in Miami. He's into institutional denial right now. SPERGEL: They you've got him on board? KANE: Sgt. Williams. What are you doing in Jackson? WILLIAMS: We have a teen center trying to educate the drop outs or those who have been expelled from the public schools. We work closely with the kids and the teen center there, monitor their activity at night and also do surveillance on some of these kids. And we have been talking with the professor at Jackson State about a serious habitual offender program--which he is working on. And we have been meeting with the churches, community groups, as well as the schools. We also go out and meet with the boy scouts, girl scouts, and try to educate them about the gang activities That's about basically what has been going on in Jackson. KANE: Are you pushing enforcement type activities very hard? WILLIAMS: Yes we are. SPERGEL: Identifying these kids? Trying to arrest them? WILLIAMS: Yes, we are identifying them. KANE: How large is your unit? WILLIAMS: One sergeant and six detectives. And we have two part- time patrols that we call in to assist when we need it. SPERGEL: Do you have any special liaison or contacts with the prosecutor or the judge or schools? WILLIAMS: We have liaison officers in the schools and we're also working with the youth counsel and those youths that are in trouble. We try to keep check on those youths. KANE: Is there also a youth division within the department? WILLIAMS: Yes there is. KANE: How do you work with them? WILLIAMS: We work closely with them as far as investigation goes. If a youth is involved in some type of burglary or other activity such as assault, we follow up the investigation with a youth investigator. KANE: Do you have the same kind of transfer laws that we have in Illinois so that if a young person of a certain age commits a very serious crime, his case is handled in adult court? WILLIAMS: Yes. If a youth is involved in robbery, homicide, or rape, he is automatically bound over as an adult. If he's a continued repeat offender, he can be certified as an adult by the judge. WADE: I forgot to mention that Dade County has an habitual juvenile offender program. And we flag our cases directly on the front page "gang member" so that our state's attorney will see them right away. And the judge sees them. KANE: Is the police department operating the teen center or is the city doing it? WILLIAMS: It's the city operating the teen center. KANE: So you stop by and spend some time there or just keep an eye on it or? WILLIAMS: We stop by on a weekly basis. They have a recreation area. We kind of monitor that area there. KANE: Questions? ...Forth Worth HERNANDEZ: My unit's rather small. It's me and three officers. It was originally organized under a state grant to monitor juvenile gangs only. That posed a problem. Some of the people originally identified were 16 years old. By Texas state law they're adult at 17. So we had a large group of 17-18 year olds no one had been keeping any statistics on. What they've been trying to do is monitor new members. Consequently the figures that we have for gang affiliation and participation are very deceptive. What they were doing at the inception was going out and trying to knock heads with these kids and trying to get them under control. That didn't work. I took over the unit a year ago. Now we're working with adult probation, juvenile probation, and a lot of the community centers. They are asking us for information. I spent two days talking to adult probation about gangs and I gave them a list of all of our adult gang members. Within a week I had criminal histories, probation information, they in turn passed that information on to parole. They gave us additional information. They told me who's been in the joint, who recently got out, who's on parole, who's not, who's on probation, all the stuff that we didn't have access to in the past. We found out many of these were wanted at the time by various agencies. We had no idea. We in turn passed this information down to our fugitive squad, to patrol, and made a number of arrests. So it's been helping tremendously with enforcement. We established a good rapport with juvenile probation. We don't have anything formal as far as flagging them for enhanced prosecution or anything. However, because of our liaison with them we informally flag the ones that are in fact gang members, especially the more violent ones. And they take further steps to try to keep them in or instead of releasing them immediately to their parents as is so often done. They will keep them a little longer, try to adjudicate them quicker, have them sent up, whatever it takes. Community programs. They had one started several years ago under a grant as well. It was called YO SOY, which is Youth Organized Serving Other Youth. They tried working with the hard core members, according to them, were incorrigible. They had quite a bit of success with the fringe members, the Wanna Be's, the guys that are out there that are high risk groups. The YO SOY group operate mostly in the north side of Fort Worth were you have most of the Hispanic gang concentration. They took a lot of these kids into educational programs after school. They provided them with cultural programs of all kinds to give these kids an idea of what is out there. When the unit was started we contracted with the schools for a gentleman to develop programs within the schools. Unfortunately he was very naive and not very streetwise and he got conned by the gang members that were still in school and he was very ineffective. I tend to think that if we had hired somebody who was more streetwise he might have been a little more effective. Our elementary school program was started strictly as an awareness program, safety education for the elementary schools. Two officers would have six target schools each. It wasn't intended to combat the gang problem. However, we use it to identify some of the high risk kids that are possibly are going to wind up being recruited. And they take a special interest in them and show them alternatives. Mostly now we're set up as a support service for the rest of the department. We investigate crimes. We don't participate in too much enforcement. The rest of the department comes to us for information that may be pertinent to the case. Often times we're called upon to identify suspects for them. We've got a pretty large data base established now. We're got a pretty large data base established now. We're in the process of trying to get a better computer, or at least enhance what we've got and so we can keep up to date a little better than we have in the past. And on occasion we do participate in targeting. As I said before we don't have all the gangs active at one time. We're very fortunate there but we'll have flareups. One or two gangs will be the most active, more visible at a given time. We come out whenever they're active, sometimes in shifts. You know, we wake up with them in the morning and put them to bed at night. And they were terribly intimidated by us being with them all the time. And it curbed their activities somewhat. That's been rather successful in at least stopping some of the violence, because we're there with them. Of course you can't baby sit everybody all the time. But sometimes you can. A few of them anyway. KANE: Then you put a lot of emphasis on the intelligence gathering and dissemination within the department. HERNANDEZ: With four of us, there is no way we can get out there and really file all the cases. Especially now that we are tracking more the adults instead of just the juveniles. We are organized under the juvenile division and so it's easy to get information about arrests that come through the youth section. But getting information from the CID on the adults has been difficult. KANE Wes, what works in L.A. County? McBRIDE: To get into our unit's a long drawn out process. The applicant has to pass a background check. We go to his commanding officer, we have to have written statements from three of his supervisors. He has to take a written examination on gangs, pass that and then go before an oral board of three supervisors. From that he's placed on a list. We don't have a numerical list, but you're either acceptable or highly acceptable or unacceptable. And in fact if you're not highly acceptable you don't come. We have so few openings we can be choosy. Therefore we hand-pick all of our men. We're looking for someone who can talk to a gang member without breaking his arm every time he sees him. We find you have to have somebody that can communicate with the gang member. You have to have some feeling for him. You have to understand where they're coming from and maybe some of their background. We're not social workers. Our main job is to take them to jail, but police have to be a little bit of a social worker. We are our own detectives in the gang unit. We investigate the crimes committed by them. We also provide plain clothes suppressive patrol. We provide training for other police officers, for community groups. We put on a forty-hour gang school every quarter for county police departments. We cooperate with our vertical prosecution unit. That has been very successful. We work with the gang probation people. We have our investigators association where we spread the word about what's happening. We work with the community based organizations quite a bit. We're very careful about teen posts. We went through a period of teen posts. All we ended up with were gathering places for gang members. One gang would look around and say, "We got our own gang worker, we got our own teen post. What do you guys got?" "We got nothing, but we'll put holes in yours." We do work with our CBOs. Because I personally believe in it and it's the department's philosophy that, if there is an answer, it got to be at the prevention end. We have to stop the kids from going in the gangs to start with. We can write off the hard core. By and large, some of them will get out. Some of them will be productive citizens. But there's very few of those. KANE: What do you do with community based organization? McBRIDE: We'll lecture to them. We will divert gang members, light weight gang members. We don't divert those who commit violent crimes. We use our community gang workers. If we see a problem developing, we'll let them go in first and see if they can diffuse it. And we exchange information with them. Lot's of times they'll bring a guy to us and ask us to talk to him. We will talk to parent groups. I have a little problem with parent groups in that usually the parents that belong to the group aren't a problem. Their kids aren't a real problem because they're involved. The parents that aren't involved are the problem. We had a thing in our department called a summons. It's not worth the paper it's written on. It says "The Sheriff commands you to appear" and people think it means something like a subpoena. We'll summons parents in and we'll lecture them. And they'll sit there and deny their kid's a gang member. We'll show them pictures of a gun. And he says, "Oh, that was a toy gun." "Why is your kid wearing blue shoe laces?" "Because he likes them." "What's this word Crips?" "I don't know but he's not a gang member." That type of stuff. "Well, you're on welfare. How come he's got four VCRs?" And they lie and deny. Those parents you can't get involved. We don't have a good remedial education program for a lot of these kids. We have nothing to teach them to be parents. A lot of these kids have become parents before they're 15, 16, 17 years old. They have no idea how to be a parent. It's just a perpetual cycle. I do believe that if we can keep them from going into gangs, the gang will die down. SPERGEL: How do you keep them from getting into the gang? McBRIDE: We have some school prevention programs in the City of Paramount that were pioneered by Tony Ostos. Paramount is a small community and away from some of the other communities. At third grade, students begin going into classes showing the bad effects of gangs. He gives them alternatives. You can tell a kid all day what what's bad about gangs. But if you don't give him any alternatives, you're wasting your breath. They provide alternatives to regular class room or academic education. I've known thousands of gang members and their I.Q. level is probably about the same as any population. One of our gangs, called Arizona, is dying out. A lot of them got killed off. But the fact is the older brothers got killed off and the younger ones started looking at something else. We have these parent programs. They talk and nobody listens. The kids don't listen to them. But they make nice copy. But I'm very pessimistic that anything special or that might work is going to happen. That takes big bucks and the government isn't going to put up the money. We've talked about all the prevention programs that must be in place, but you also have to provide a heavy police presence. You have to make it unattractive to be a gang member. On the other hand, you can't just make it unattractive and not provide something. I think we can control them, but I don't think we'll do away with gangs. SPERGEL: So you're emphasizing the value of prevention and especially some sort of school program, getting them pretty early. McBRIDE: You've got to start almost at kindergarten. We have SANE which is Substance Abuse and Narcotic Education. They are starting to bring in a gang component to that. I don't think sports takes kids out of gangs. But I think it stops a lot from going in. But again, it's got to be balanced with something else. You can't just provide some basketball courts and think that's going to solve your problems. You have to have counseling and job alternatives--a wide spectrum of approaches. WADE: We've ignored this problem for so long by just giving it to the police. The police keep arresting the symptoms but the disease is always there. We're into second and third generations. The influence of the home is terrible in some instances. PLEINES: We seem to think we should start to work with these kids when they're fourteen and fifteen. You have to be into grammar schools. You have to stop the gangs from intimidating young kids into joining in the second and third and fourth grade. We're down to eight years old where they're active in gangs and they've probably been under pressure for a year or two before that. SPERGEL: As you said, we've been attacking the symptoms for many many years and not the primary causes. But there is a reason for that. It's not just because we're neglecting it. It's something that used to be called primary prevention. It is enormously expensive to gear programs to that particular level. There's been so little major effort in that area. It's a huge job. PLEINES: I think that we can't afford not to get involved. Because we're losing generations of our children. SPERGEL: I agree with you. PLEINES: And we've got to start somewhere. The only thing hard core members understand is to be locked up and that's what we're going to do to them in the hopes that we can dissuade others. But we have to get up programs when they're younger. HAYES: We are focusing on areas that are identified as high gang areas. Every community's problem revolves around parenting. We always say it starts with the kids at an early age, but we feel there is nothing we can do there because we don't have the funding. So we have to start at 15 and talk about the arrests that we make. SPERGEL: One has to put priority on primary prevention. Yet, you know, we speak of former gang members. In other words, even some of the older guys do stop at some point and can be constructive. Not a lot of them. In general it doesn't pay to put all your resources into those hard core guys. But there are a few of them you can peel off. I'm not always clear just who those guys are, but they're there. HAYES: Concentrate on the hard core communities and see what happens. How many do actually turn out right. We're going to get those that we have to say are criminally active individuals. These folks are not going to change and we have to be able to tell them that's what they are. If they change, "Hurray!" But, identify them. Say that's what we have here. And accept it. Then, for those that do what to change, the opportunity is there. GALEA: I think a lot of times what we do is focus in on a problem, such as drugs or such as gangs, and we should certainly get these kids at a early age. But we may be making a mistake. We focus on a program like SANE or DARE, which goes to the schools and introduces drugs to these kids. We actually make them aware. Some of them know more about drugs than we know. There are a lot of them that don't know. And we emphasize drugs. And I think we shouldn't do that. Maybe emphasis should be on the alternatives, rather than the fact that it's anti-drug program. Some of these kids know a lot about drugs. But we are the very ones who are teaching them. We have got to get away from emphasizing the things we don't want them to do. As long as they have that in their minds, I think it's very difficult to sway them away from it. SPERGEL: Do the school prevention programs work? McBRIDE: The Paramount program has produced some pretty good statistics. Our statistics back up the program. But Paramount was a very active gang area. And the gangs died out. It's starting to come back, but it's coming back because of kids coming from the Linwood area which has a very high preponderance of Crips gangs. But, yes, they have produced some results. They were certainly insulated, which helped. SPERGEL: What kind of results are you talking about? McBRIDE: Well, they dropped from having 8, 9 murders and several hundred assaults a year to maybe having one or two murders and maybe a hundred assaults. KANE: Was there a reduction in drug activity as well? McBRIDE: No. It was directly related to gang rivalry with almost no drug involvement. The paramount program addresses joining the gang to start with. It doesn't even attempt to take a kid out of the gang. They approach them in the grade school level, stopping them from going in. Kind of writing off the older guys. And those older guys continue their gang banging. That's not saying they won't have a juvenile delinquency problem. But it stopped the ganging mentality. And, better to have a thief than a killer, I guess. KANE: Have you seen anything promising in Phoenix? COTA: Nothing that hasn't been mentioned before. It's the same things that we've all discussed already with different titles I guess. The bureau I work for is called the Community Relations Bureau. It's divided into two sections: the Public Information Section which is neighborhood block watch programs, DARE programs, things of that nature. And we have the Human Relations Section which includes a Police Activities League, detectives working with inner city youth, getting them involved in different things, revolving around after school or activities and during summer time just general all around activities. We have a Confrontation Unit that works in the inner city high schools and they are there as a liaison between the schools and the department. And then we have us, the Street Gang Enforcement Unit. It's basically the enforcement blade of our bureau. We don't have any community programs addressing gangs, but we do have programs addressing narcotics and substance abuse, programs addressing violent reactions, attitudes, teenage pregnancies, all those issues that kind of fall around it. They started a repeat offender program that the RAND Corporation is looking at. We're channeling some of our hard core gang members into that program. Our County Attorney's Office is looking at instituting a gang attorney. We did have one for about five years and because of the slowdown in Hispanic activity he disappeared. And we're thinking of reinstituting him for the Black gangs that we have now. Juvenile court centers have an intensive probation-parole program, which is basically a house arrest program. They have probation officers assigned a case load and they stay on top of these guys, making sure they're not out after certain hours, not associating with certain people that they got in trouble with, things of that nature. And if they violate the agreement, they're back in custody. So those are the promising programs that we have right now. Other promising things: There is more awareness and the networking is being established. There's a lot more communication going on now and it's a lot better that way. One of the things we're attempting to accomplish in the department is education, not only just for our department and different details in it, but for all of the surrounding agencies. The other agencies don't realize that when we go over there doing search warrants in their jurisdictions. They get riled. But we say, these guys need attention. And so we are educating other agencies, we're educating social service agencies about the problem, and then finally the schools. I'm one of the only ones who does this type of program in the schools. I go to different schools and talk about gangs. The next thing that we're trying to do is identify the gang members. I'm in the process of looking at each person that's ever been classified as a gang member and trying to substantiate why he's a gang member. I've been with the unit for three years now and for the first year we didn't have anybody looking at why people were called gang members. For the past year and a half I've been trying to substantiate why we call somebody a gang member and I'm half-way through the process. I've probably got around 2500 other names to go through. And that might be why our numbers are going down. We've tried to target gang members before but it just wasn't done effectively and we didn't see anything happening as far as gang activity. It was still happening no matter how many guys we took off the street. So, those are some of the things we're attempting to accomplish. KANE: What about Minneapolis? What's workin' there? SCHOEBEN: We have two people in our gang unit. Our emphasis has been on intelligence gathering and dissemination of information to our own department and outside agencies. We work very closely with probation, parole, and the correctional facilities in the state. We've had a lot of success gathering information out of the prison systems: when these people are going to be released, who they're associating with in prison. We've had an extensive program of community involvement this past year, going out, giving lectures to just about any group that's interested in combatting gang crimes or gangs in their community. We have a Crime Prevention unit with thirteen officers. We've been working closely with them the last six months. They go into a community area with gang problems or any other type problems and get the support of the community people themselves. We have a saying that gangs can only be as strong as the community will allow them to be. We've also initiated a program of targeting the hard core gang members, the upper echelons. We use that in conjunction with the gang major offenders program with juveniles. We got a law passed last year for double sentencing of gang members for violent crimes. It's been quite successful. We were attached to community relations. We've just been transferred from community relations to the criminal special investigations unit. Now we'll have about ten officers to do more extensive investigative work. That will have some impact in the future. KANE: You were bragging a little while ago that you took care of your gang problem in Evanston. Shooed them all back to Chicago. GRESHAM: We were successful in reducing the numbers, primarily because we utilized every possible agency we could find that would help us. Evanston became very interested, actually made gangs their number one priority, when gangs had taken over all the parks, had taken over the streets. For the first time in history, Evanston residents were afraid to walk and shop in the streets where they pay pretty good taxes. We got involved with the gang prosecution office, the Chicago Gang Crimes Unit, the State Intelligence Unit, and we began a program of strict enforcement, strong community involvement. We targeted gang hot spots and saturated them with manpower. Four investigators and one supervisor are assigned full time to the Gang Crimes Bureau. We've worked with several community groups. Probably the main one we've worked with during the hot times was the organization called Co-Pops, Co-Mons, which won the Governor's Award last year. This is a group of men and women, who after the tragic death of a young man back in a gang-related incident in 1983, formed a group and decided to take the streets back. They formed their own patrols, worked along side the police, had their own radios, even CB's. They would hit gang hot spots, notify police when things were brewing, and assist the police as far as trying to quell potential problems and at the same time identifying the trouble makers. Today Co-Pops has a reputation. When parties are given in the community, the kids call the Co-Pops organization or some community organization or the police let Co-Pops know the kids are having a party, a house party or something so that someone could come thee to keep the gangs away. I think there's a very high anti-gang climate in Evanston today. The kids are more involved in other things and they're trying to get away from this gang involvement. They tend to separate themselves from gangs in the schools and other activities. I think that's been successful for us too. I don't know what created that environment, other than maybe the strong community sense of wanting to keep things safe there. We go into the grade schools and talk with the kids and discourage them. We give them talks about gangs. The majority of the kids who ask questions about gangs are those who have family members who are in gangs. We found in doing a survey of kids on the street in the summer that a large amount of kids are unable for one reason or another to get out of the city of Evanston during the summer to participate in any type of program, be it the zoo or the museum or places like that. We started a summer camp sponsorship program through the police department where police officers sponsored kids to go to summer camp. The officer would visit the kid while he is in camp, check on his progress and things like that. That's been working for two years now. It's been successful. Last year I think we sent 200 kids to camp. We have found it very advantageous to hold seminars for the judges in our district. We utilize any law that's on the books. We found that after talking with the judges, they tend to level the stiffest fine or penalty that they are allowed. Our philosophy is to keep the gang member involved and tied up in the system for as long as we can. If he's busy worrying about his case and how to pay his attorney, usually he's too busy to be on the street creating problems for us. We've had several sting operations that were designed and geared toward gang members. We've been able to target and arrest several gang leaders through those operations. Our last sting operation had about a ninety percent conviction rate. The reason we target the hard core and the leadership is to take them off the street even if it's for a short term. We work with an organization called FEM, Fellowship of Afro- American Men who form basketball leagues during the summer for kids. There's a Police Explorer group that's handled out of our Crime Prevention unit to target young men of high school age and older. They do various things around the city. They're involved in just about anything you can name that helps the community. We work very close with the clergy. We go into churches and give speeches. We know that the majority of gang members have at least a mother, father, or uncle, aunt. The majority of these people are in churches. Those are the people we try to get to give us a hand in trying to keep their little Johnny out of trouble. We maintain high visibility. When there's something brewing and there's a large gathering of gang members, we usually just put our people on the corners. We use various city ordinances to defeat their wearing gang apparel. We will take hats, garments from them, confiscate them, take them to the station. And if the parents come down and want them then we'll return them. It eliminates a problem at the time when the mere turn of hat or the wearing of colors can antagonize a group to retaliate in some way. When we have incidents where innocent kids have gotten shot, we do sweeps. If the Disciples are identified as being involved, then we'll sweep up as many Disciples as we can. We work very closely with Vice and Narcotics. We don't work that closely with Juvenile. For some reason we just don't communicate. Not as well as we should. I couldn't tell you right now if they have a juvenile list of gang offenders. KANE: Philadelphia! A city of vast improvement in this area. BOYLE: I'll tell you what worked, and tell you what we're doing now. Initially when we had all the turf-related gang murders in Philadelphia, we expanded the gang control unit to about ninety police officers. We saturated the areas where the gangs were active sending the same people to the same places all the time. So it really was based on an individual effort. The police officers would get to know who the gang members were and what they were doing. If they caught them carrying a knife or something like that they'd take the kid aside they'd just take the knife off him. They wouldn't arrest him for it. Consequently they built up a rapport with the kids. They developed a basis for intelligence information. Back in Philly then you had to be a gang member or you simply couldn't exist in these particular neighborhoods. You got kids who really didn't want to be gang members, but as a necessity they joined gangs. Kids like that would call the Gang Control officers and tell of an impending fight, because they didn't want to get involved in the fight and they didn't want to get shot. But they had to go out anyway because the gang said you have to go out and gang fight. Though we would like to take credit for doing away with all the gangs or a large number of gangs, or controlling the gangs, it wasn't just the Philadelphia Police Department but a multi-faceted approach to the problem. The mayor really took the bull by the horns. He decided that all the other city agencies, including the District Attorney's Office and the court system and all the social agencies would be brought to bear on the problem. All the parents of a lot of the kids who were getting involved in the gangs and getting murdered decided that they had had enough. A lot of the mothers of the gang members started turning up at the gang fights. The kids would inadvertently tell their moms there was going to be a fight here or a fight there, so the moms would show up. A little while later, as a result of the moms showing up, the dads or the boy friends would also show up. It became unpopular in Philadelphia to be a gang member. And as a result they dissipated and stopped gang fighting as much. Also the courts cooperated. When a gang leader or the check holder or the war lord got arrested we made sure that he did time. And that took him out of the picture. The gang, as a result, just was leaderless. Word started getting around. They didn't like the idea of spending time away from home. The kids didn't like getting locked up and spending hard time. Consequently the problem abated. A couple of different organizations were also created. CIN, Crisis Intervention Network, takes a sociological approach to gang fighting. When the police department moves out, Crisis Intervention Network moves in. A lot of the people that work for Crisis Intervention Network are old converted gang members. They go out and they talk to the members of the gangs now. They talk them out of gang fighting etcetera. So it's a multi-faceted approach. The police department reacted as predicted. As less and less gang murders happened we pulled back on our manpower. As computers became more popular we computerized all that information. So we had a good data base with names of people and nicknames. The individual officers, in 1969 and 1974, had their own gang books before we had computers. So if you had a gang job in a certain location, you'd ask Officer Jones or Officer Washington. He'd come in and get his book out. You told him Crips did it. He'd look up who Crips was and you'd go out and scoop Crips up and bring him in. And that was kind of the end of that problem. Today the preventive patrol unit is part of the Juvenile Aid Division in Philadelphia. It's different than a lot of the other cities. Juvenile Aid Division is broken down to the Line Squad. They investigate all juvenile crimes with the exception of murders and robberies. The Detective Division investigates those. Part of the Juvenile Aid Division is also our Sex Crimes Unit. They investigate rapes and sex offenses and crimes against children such as abuse and neglect. The Preventive Patrol Unit also assists those other two parts of Juvenile Aid Division. If they run out of manpower then we investigate also. So we have cross training. Preventive Patrol Unit is broken down into several subsections. We have two line squads. These are the guys that go out and investigate gang incidents, gang fights or gang assaults, whatever is determined to be a gang job. We also investigate all escaped prisoners from secure and non-secure facilities where kids are committed. In Philadelphia we don't have enough room to put the kids in secure facilities. I think there's a ceiling of 105 kids that we can keep in the study center. So we then place the other kids other places. And as kids do, they just walk away from the places. And then we get notified and so we have to try to apprehend them. The line part of Preventive Patrol Unit works well with Crisis Intervention Network. If they hear something's happening, because they're out there dealing with the kids, they call us and let us know. So, if there's an enforcement problem, we dispatch manpower out to that particular location. Like some of the other departments we target specific locations. Then we go out and concentrate on those areas. The district commanders, if there's a problem with a gang incident or any kind of a gang problem or undertones or concerns, call Preventive Patrol Unit and request that we service that particular area. So we have a lot of different ways of getting information. The individual police gang guys go out and they have a rapport with a lot of the currently active gang kids. The Preventive Patrol people also get intelligence information. We also have an anti-graffiti team. It's just two guys. Until about two years ago, we didn't have any response to graffiti. It seems like graffiti is kind of linked with a lot of the gangs. They go around and write on walls and stuff like that. So we have an anti-graffiti police team that works with the mayor's civilian anti-graffiti network to abate graffiti. The kids during the summer time were hired by the city and they go around and clean up the graffiti. What we've done is established intelligence information about who they are. When we see stuff written on walls we identify the writing with the individual and we make arrests. Also a part of the Preventive Patrol Unit is the Habitual Offender Program which targets kids who are convicted for more than three felonies. This includes certain narcotics violations. We have a computerized data base that identifies these particular kids. And the last thing that we have is a liaison function. Members of the Preventive Patrol Unit are assigned to 7 detective divisions. In other words, we have a juvenile aid preventive patrol officer assigned to each detective division. We have a man right on the scene. We also have people detailed to our Narcotics Division and also people detailed to the Homicide Division. And they get back to us if there's any kind of a problem so we can answer it. Commissioner Tucker has identified a different approach to policing than was traditional--community oriented policing. It's really the things that we've been doing for quite a long time. We just never thought about it. We've been crime fighters. Now he wants us to really zero in on the community. By doing this we have to get a lot more information from the community. We're also trying to decentralize our function. We used to have 8500 people. Now we're down to around 6500 people. By doing this he hopes to have the resources available in geographical areas under the local commanders, the inspectors in the divisions and then the captains in the districts. Also we're trying to involve all the other agencies. As our resources diminish we have to tap into other resources. So instead of using policemen to get things moving with the gang members, we get social agencies to go out and kind of do that for us. SPERGEL: Philadelphia is one of the few cities that has shown a dramatic decrease in the count of gang related homicides. You hit a peak in 1969 of 44 or 45 killings and by 1974 there were one or two homicides reported by the police department. And that has continued for the last 13, 14 years. Something happened in Philadelphia that stopped gang violence. You've outlined various police department programs, cooperation with community, and so on. Nothing that you have said has actually seemed all that different or all that special from the kinds of programs discussed in other cities where there has not been a dramatic decrease in the number of gangs and the amount of gang violence. MILLER: What do you think it is about the Philadelphia situation that has produced such a marked decrease in gang violence that you don't see in other cities? Was it the character of the police program? Was it the nature of the relationships? Was it Benny Swans and this CIN group? BOYLE: I think it's a combination of everything. We tried everything at one time. We threw all the eggs into one basket. It was a total commitment between '69 and '74, to doing away with the gang violence. And that worked out. Around the same time they started busing a lot of the kids into other areas. The kids no longer really had to belong to a gang. If you had to go to a school in the same area that's controlled by the gang, you had to belong to that gang. But if you take those kids and put them into a different school, then there wasn't as much reason to belong to the gangs. The schools that they sent the kids to weren't geared towards gangs. And they kind of suppressed that as much as they could. A lot of other things happened that probably impacted on it also. Philadelphia itself has changed dramatically over the past ten years or so. The population went from around 2 million to a million 600 thousand people. The city, the universities, the hospitals sort of came in and took over a lot of the property. And, that caused a decrease in gang members, I guess. It became unpopular to be a gang member in Philly, I suppose if you look at it very simplistically. Otherwise I really don't know why. I lived through it. I was in juvenile as a line officer in '69. I was in homicide as a detective in the seventies. And it just happened that way. I really can't explain it. PLEINES: Was the decrease in gang homicides also reflected in your general homicide figures? BOYLE: I would say the homicides were running around 450 or so, in the early '70s. And, they dropped off, I guess to around 350 over the next ten years or so. There was a dramatic decrease in the gang homicides. The regular homicides didn't show as much of a dramatic decrease. PLEINES: Was there a change in the definition of a gang homicide. Or, did the definition that prevailed before keep going? BOYLE: No, it remained the same. Basically the type of gang homicides that we were experiencing then were turf homicides. Somebody would jump out and start shooting. And then somebody from 2-5 and Allegheny would come out the next week and start shooting and say 2-5 and Allegheny. It was just a really good time to suppress gang activity I suppose. And that's why it happened. Not because of one hundred percent of what the police department did. But because of all the agencies. And because of the people in the community too. PLEINES: Well, I know you got a lot of support from the newspapers and city government for your programs there. And I think that helped unify the whole community. SPERGEL: Two another things seem to be unique. You may have reduced the gang violence problem but Pennsylvania has the third highest number of gang members in prisons, based on a recent national report. So you haven't gotten rid of the gangs for sure. And number two is, I was impressed when I visited there for a few days, there's a real positive quality that people have about gangs. Gangs are part of the neighborhood. Even the police were communicating there's nothing wrong with being in a gang. Except don't get involved in gang violence. I don't know if that makes any difference. BOYLE: I don't think that's my perception. I think we always said that it was bad to be in gangs. The community apparently earlier felt it was a good thing to be in a gang. It gave you somebody to identify with, somebody to pull with. You'd go to school you'd be a big guy. You were one of those particular people. Then later on, it just became unpopular. It wasn't a great thing to be in a gang any more. SPERGEL: Why are there so many gang members in the prisons of Pennsylvania? BOYLE: Well, like I said, we worked with the District Attorney's Office and also with the courts, so when it became time to sentence these particular people, we would identify the gang members. If the gang member was arrested for anything, then they went to court. Having identified them we would send a gang control officer to court. After the person was adjudged delinquent, if he was found guilty, then the gang control officer at the time of sentencing would tell what he knew about that person. He is a gang member, an active gang member, etcetera. The judges as a result of that decided to take them out of the street. That's what you asked them to do and that's what they did. Whether it would work well today I don't know. Probably with the way the laws are it wouldn't work as well. SPERGEL: It could be those data include a lot of motorcycle gangs. BOYLE: Yes, but in Philadelphia, we responded to the motorcycle gangs by developing a task force approach. We had highway patrol police officers and we had major crimes auto squad officers attack the motorcycle gangs. They took the motorcycles away because they were all stolen. That was the end of the gangs. SPERGEL: New York also had a major decrease in gang violence in the same period without such a program. I don't know if the structures of the gangs were the same. It could be that the change in Philadelphia had nothing to do with community or police activity or CIN. Maybe there was some other force involved, same as the factors in New York City that made for change. Your decrease came about the same time, '73-'74. GALEA: We find it's cyclical in nature. Every 10 to 15 years there's an upswing and a downswing. Anybody that wants to take credit for it just can go out and take credit for it. Any agency that's working with any kind of youth group can take credit for it because they were working with these groups during this particular period. Certainly the police department, which has not abdicated its responsibility as far as criminal activity is concerned, has been and will continue to lock up these individuals when they commit crimes. Certainly they will take part of the credit for diminishing some of the gang problem. But there are other things that also contribute--New York being a port of entry, people coming in and people leaving at the same time, going to the outer boroughs in different places, different things starting to happen, different fads coming in to the city, the break dancing and things of that nature, kids turning their attention to different aspects of youth group behavior. And before you knew it, they were just gone. And the narcotics became a very important part where the addiction rather than what's happening now with the crack became very prevalent and helped diminish the gangs also. So everybody really could take credit for it if you were in the arena at the time. SPERGEL: Maybe the gangs just got smaller in New York and Philadelphia and they wanted to make a dollar rather then get involved in violence. KANE: What's promising in Detroit? WILSON: Basically we don't have a gang problem. Our unit was started in 1973-74 in response to traditional gangs that had leaders that were identified by uniforms such as the gangster Barcelona hats, the different trench coats, and other types of uniform items that they could identify with. The gang squad was created and really came to a head in 1976 at a downtown concert where the youths migrated from the neighborhoods and actually took over a concert. There was no weaponry involved but it was with umbrellas and strongarm tactics and rapes. Up until that time between '74 and '76 the major had been trying to utilize the community approach to turn it towards a positive type of thing rather than eradicate it. However with the incident occurring in downtown, along with the layoffs of the police department, he immediately turned that around to a strike force type of enforcement. Upon taking that strike force approach it was take the streets back. And again anybody identified wearing gang uniforms, the various hats, or whatever the different signs, the standing out in the middle of the streets with the little things were immediately targeted and enforcement actions were brought down upon them till the gangs were eliminated and eradicated from the city. Our unit is now called the Youth Crime Unit. Identification, watching trends, analyzing and enforcement against any gang activity or youth group activity as we call it now, is still our responsibility. However in addition we have responsibility for investigating and enforcement in and around public schools. Any school weapons offense, any school violent offense, falls within our bailiwick. Additionally we participate with the Board of Education in school sweeps for weapons and other contrabands on a random unannounced basis. Another major function that we took on in February of '86 is the investigation, handling, and the compiling of information relevant to all non-fatal shootings of any juvenile or any person under the age of 21 by a perpetrator or victim under the age of 21. We have five different elements in our unit: intelligence, surveillance, enforcement, investigation, and the administration which provides command and control and a repository for information. We select areas. We go into those areas that are having high youth group criminal activity, be it gang related, youth group related, or just high incidence in particular. We use every means available, every municipal code, every state statute, every federal statute that we can use to take youths and other hanger-on's off the streets and out of the system. That includes loitering, disorderly conduct, liquor inspections of hangouts, and video inspections of video and party stores, where these youths hang out, applying aggressive and effective enforcement to these areas. We cover all aspects of street crime. I place out anywhere from four to ten units on the east side of the city and four to ten units on the west side of the city on two shifts. We work from 9 to 5 and 5 to 1. In the daytime we pay attention to the school areas and the corridors to and from schools. And at night we patrol those street corners, parks and any other event or function where a great number of youths are gathering. I'm not a social agency. I don't have anything to do with the youth section. I have just started interfacing with the Police Athletic League, the Junior Police Cadets, the various community and church organizations. I am strictly a strike force enforcement arm. And my job is to take those locations back or to prevent those locations from coming under the influence of criminal activity. We have to have effective intelligence to identify the areas and we don't apply pressure to groups. We are the civilian or plain clothes strike force for the city of Detroit. We have a Tactical Services Section that we work with. Our officers go out in blue jeans. They wear the troop jackets. We also put out a uniform unit in those areas. But we go out in the attire of the area that we're working. We're strictly a strike force and utilize any legal means to lock that area down. We're trying to get to the mode where we're more preventative and we're just getting to that point because of the influx officers and just becoming experienced enough to profile and selectively enforce the laws against those persons that are potentially criminals. KANE: What about Seattle? Have the gangs gone back to Los Angeles? HAYES: Most of our programs stayed in place: programs that were designed to work in the schools, and work with juveniles. So when gangs came up from L.A., we were able to use each of those units without setting up a real new program. The only new program that really developed is our unit. And that is to collect the information on gang related incidents and individuals that are coming up to Seattle. I think we spend most of our time calling L.A. and L.A. County to verify who certain individuals are. We've been able to stay on top of it as well as getting a lot of their format for how they handled these particular individuals. The other thing that we started was to include the patrol officers in the education of what are gang related individuals. Instead of trying to make it a big secret, we just said we have some of these folks coming up here. We didn't have any gangs in Seattle that originated as a Seattle gang. We had kids that were doing the smash and grabs. And it started with the incident of some of the L.A. Crip folks coming up there showing them how to do it I guess. The teenagers would fly in on one of the different plane routes, come into Seattle, do a smash and grab, get right back on the airplane and be back in L.A. All in the same day. And, it took a while to get that together because we thought it had to be someone that's local. Pretty soon we found it was organized in California. Once the publicity hit we started getting our own kids doing those type of things. Now there's a need by some of the kids that are known for their troublemaking or just kinda get kicked out of school to do these type of things. They want to get involved with this Crips and Blood thing. And they're doing what they can, but nothing to the extent that many of you are experiencing. We've been able to keep a hold of it, discourage a lot of it, and the other part is that it just doesn't click as well. We don't have territories to set up. We don't have the population of kids that are willing to do some of these activities. We don't have the big black ghettos. You go four or five doors and that's about it. We have the busing situation as well. Where the kids are going all the way to the north end that are living in the south end, and they have to cross this lake, that bridge. So the organization isn't there as well. It's hard to build a territory when you're going to another area and you gotta be friends with the kids you're in school with, let alone the kids that you're in the neighborhood with. HAYES: We find that our graffiti, cause we don't have territories, are just names. So if it's Ski, or Jawbones, whatever names they decide to pick, that's the only thing they use and that's how they identify themselves. But that's all they can put on the busses or on the walls. WADE: That's their tag. HAYES: In essence that's just their little tag deal. Some kids in the neighborhood tried having a party so they put out all these flyers on the telephone poles saying Crips Party, Forty Ouncers and on and on and on. So what happens? Our assistant chief gets a copy of it. Not only are we visiting the house and knocking on the door to see if we're invited, but the chief is there as well to knock on the door and see if he's invited. Well that took a lot of the sting out of the party. People that are coming in from L.A. are getting high bail. If you possess so much narcotics, you know you got a thousand dollar bail. Okay, that's easy enough to make. But they're getting like $125 or $50 thousand bail just because now we can identify them as gang related individuals. They can't get out. So, therefore, since you only have five of these folks to run around in a particular neighborhood and three of them got picked up on narcotics and they cost $125 thousand, that means they can't get bail set up. It puts a real negative thing on them and they can't get established. As far as juveniles, I mentioned earlier we have the juvenile repeat offender project. That is designed to focus on those that are really active criminally. And we have probation, school, parole, the detective units, officers. There's one other unit in particular--the screening unit, that allows the individuals into detention. We have the criteria for admission. Each individual that's on the project has to fit the criteria for the project, let alone fit a criteria for admission into detention as well, whether it's involving school, violations of conditions of release, or parole officer hasn't seen the person for one reason or another. We get that information when we meet once a month. We have current court updates on these individuals. And we're able just to go out and pick them up right away. Not only do we pick them up but none of them get released right away. That's been effective for those gang individuals who want to stay active. That's it in a nutshell. KANE: That's an interesting use of detention. What about Los Angeles? What works in the city? JACKSON: We could break down what we're doing in Los Angeles into two basic general areas. One would be repression of gang activity. The second is to increase community awareness and involvement. First of all, as far as repression of gang activity we're in the process now of a redistribution of our gang personnel. Which means when we first started, all the gang cops were decentralized in the various areas of the city, along the same lines as beat cops. When somebody messed up in a given area, the beat cop knows who it was. He knows the brother. He knows the parents. And that's who's going to help you identify him, and solve the crime. We then went to a certain amount of centralization on a bureau basis. We have four bureaus in our city, responsible for a number of areas. They had uniform people that would handle the on site repression and activity of the gangs itself. Certain detectives would handle the cases that were within the crash unit. Our gang cops were not ever able to handle all of the violent crimes in the city. Not enough people for the number of crimes we're dealing with. Our section, the gang activities section, since the early seventies, was primarily intelligence, surveillance type activity, a support section, statistical analysis, and crime analysis. Our activity has been basically the same with a few modifications for the better part of ten years. Most of the modifications revolve around our support activities: whether or not we go out and make a lot of field arrests, whether we handle it on an intelligence gathering and information dissemination basis. We also handle the coordination with outside agencies, the inter-agency task force, probation-parole, immigration. Any special projects that come along will normally be filtered through our office. A lot of them have been successful on their own terms, but we haven't found the big key to curtail overall gang violence. In addition, during this recent decentralization we have our CRASH unit, an acronym for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, along with two of our bureaus going back into the local areas. The officers from the bureaus are allotted to each individual area commanding officer. One of the ideas was to make the area commander more responsible for the gang violence in his own jurisdiction. If it's a Vice caper, we have Vice cops to handle it. In our case it was a Gang caper. We have Gang cops to handle it so the uniform officers shied away from the activities of the gang members. And this can't be tolerated because there's too many gang members for the amount of gang cops. So the chief in an effort to get everybody on board started to decentralize. So we're going to have not only CRASH officers knowledgeable and aware in the area, but it should also increase the awareness and activity of the regular beat cops who now have a CRASH unit in their own division. In addition to that we have an area gang coordinator in each area of the city who is responsible for not only knowing the gangs in the area, but also for putting photographs up in the roll call room of the ten most active gang members in any given area. This will also increase the awareness of the officers as to who the bad guys are throughout their area. These gang members are flagged in R & I, in our records bureau, so whenever they're contacted, the information goes to the area and not until they are incarcerated for an extended period of time will their photographs be removed. Whenever a gang is involved in a violent crime, that gang and the victim's gang will receive all pressure humanly possible by our personnel. In other words, if one gang shoots at another, both the gangs of the intended victim and the shooters will have squads of Metropolitan Division and our CRASH officers in their neighborhoods arresting gang members for every violation of law that occurred. I don't know that such pressure would normally shut the entire gang down, but it certainly turned the suspects over in a hurry. On an on-going basis our section directs a platoon of metropolitan officers, which could either be from SWAT or our normal visiting dignitary activity to any gang area throughout the city. As of the last six months, which was when we started that program, they haven't left our south bureau. When there was about a forty-six percent decrease in the violent crimes one month, we pulled them out. It's creeping back up but it did have an initial effect. We're talking about up to 200 arrests a months by this squad. We also work very closely with youth gang services. I think Wes McBride touched on YGS, which would be the group that walks a line between law enforcement and intelligence. If we need somebody to go into an area to find out what's going on or to defuse an ongoing battle, funerals are frequently the type of situations that seen to draw shootings, this group can go in and defuse the violence because they are able to talk to the gang members. This is comfortable for us because it leaves us out to do the enforcement work. We also use a California Gang Investigators Association to exchange information on a one-to-one level. We avoid all these other artificial barriers and work with the detectives at various agencies throughout the state of California on a one-to-one basis. That also seems to work because when you need something done, you call an individual directly who you already know or already dealt with. There are a number of programs operating in the community. Some of these I think are very important. One of these is our DARE program. I'm very strong on that, especially as it's intended to give potential gang members other viable options to membership. In other words we're exposing them to something beyond the gang, showing them whether it's athletic leagues or whatever else that the schools or the churches or the parks have to offer. It's giving them other opportunities. We also have a gang hot-line for citizens within the community. If they see gang activity there's one number for them to call. We have a Gang Awareness brochure that gives brief but concise information on gang activity that goes out. Anybody wanting to know about gangs in a general nature can get that brochure, along with a phone number to get additional information. We also put all of our uniformed officers through a gang awareness training. I don't know whether or not we're going to be able to solve the problem. We have to have the community involved, to say okay this is the line, I've had enough of this stuff. We want proper protection but we are here to help the police department. The police department can't do it alone. We have to have public support and the public has to get involved more. We're starting to see groups being formed that are saying we want our communities back. If that catches on, if the press can keep it going, I think we're going to see more than just a leveling off of gang activities. We are going to see it down to a level where we can handle it. KANE: New York. GALEA: Right now in New York we're trying to keep things simple because it seems that works. Actually, we're really crisis oriented and we don't have the problem that we once had with the organized youth gangs. Therefore, we treat it quite differently. Just recently, in 1986, I was fortunate to increase my staff by 50%, and I got one officer. We're not really targeting gangs. We're targeting criminal activity so that the police department's focus is on what these kids are going criminally, or what people in New York are doing criminally rather than what street gangs are doing criminally. As far as programs are concerned, we have 73 youth officers in New York City and they are actually youth gang workers on a part time basis. Each precinct is a different community altogether and they're responsible for programs within their particular precinct or community. There's no mandate that you must do this or you must do that. There is a mandate that each precinct must have a youth council or be part of their community council. The programs will differ from precinct to precinct, because the communities differ. It certainly doesn't make sense to put a program in one community that will not work in another. We have programs that are active in the schools. The SPECDA program, which is the School Program to Educate and Control Drug Abuse, operates from the third through twelfth grades. We have a New Immigrants Unit. We target the immigrant population coming into New York through our community affairs unit. There are many different kinds of oriental groups that are coming in. We have a lot of officers assigned to that. As far as gangs are concerned, we're really not doing too much in the police department. I have United Neighborhood Settlement Houses and another group called Inner City Round Table of Youth which are both very interested and trying to put together some proposals as related to these youth groups. And we will be meeting soon to see whether or not they can find some money from a public or private source. SPERGEL: Are they concerned with gangs? GALEA: They want to be concerned with gangs because they realize that there is a potential problem there. Right now 20-23% of all crime that is being committed by the ages of 7-20 and 28 % of all the felonies are committed by these particular groups. It's a problem. Crime in New York City has not gone down because we don't have the traditional youth gang. The other thing that I've spoken to the Chief of Patrol about is the fact that we really have to rethink and redefine what we term a youth gang and to beef up our unit so that we can better record what's going on in the city, monitor it more carefully as it relates to different trends and get that information to the other units out in the field. That's about it in New York City. SPERGEL: I'm delighted with what's happened. You've worked very hard. You've provided us with a wealth of information which we will try to organize and get back to you. We'll also keep surveying the literature. it looks as if there are factors operating within particular cities that are not in other cities and that may determine your somewhat different approaches. You seem to have excellent programs for your particular city, but I'm at a loss at this point to determine what it is that one city here should do that another city is doing. There is such a range and yet many similarities. We've got some idea about structures and programs of experienced departments. It's a good beginning. KANE: I think you were all looking to problem solve, to share collective wisdom, and perhaps come up with alternative strategies that you can take back and apply. Now you know what some of the other approaches are like. PLEINES: One of the questions we didn't ask here is what do you think is needed within your city that you don't have to help you do your job? I can think of many laws we would like to see passed here, especially on overhearing devices and things of that nature that would be good tools. We mentioned the Safe School Act which I think could be a very positive thing. And I'm sure there's some other legislation floating around here that we're not aware of. I've also found when we go to community meetings of 400 to 500, that people are afraid to talk but ten minutes after the meeting, I find out more about what's going on in that community than I did during the meeting. WADE: We need to deal with the barriers. One of the barriers that we ran into in Miami is Chapter 39, which deals with the juvenile act. It says that police officers cannot share information with any kind of school board. That was the first thing that we had to attack. And let me tell you we almost went to blows before we could all sit down in a room. We had to finally get the Criminal Justice Counsel to mediate it. But now we have it working. MILLER: I'd like to say there's two ways which I think this particular gathering could be expanded on at a national level. As you pointed out, this is a very small group really and a select group. You're selected for specific reasons. At a national conference presumably one of the objectives would be simply to get the maximum publicity to at least let the people in Washington know there is a major problem here and to bring in as many people as you could. It would really be a different context. It would be much more of a PR oriented kind of affair. Two areas of expansion. First of all this is a law enforcement group. And in fact even with law enforcement it's pretty well restricted to police departments. But many other criminal justice agencies outside of the police are also heavily involved in gangs. We're talking about probation of course and corrections, parole and youth authorities and so on. The other is I would estimate that there are somewhere between 50 and 100 additional cities in the United States that are currently experiencing gang problems sufficiently serious so that they would be interested in coming to a conference. Milwaukee for example is in the Chicago orbit. I went to a conference in Milwaukee a while back. I could not believe all the towns in Wisconsin, that are within the general zone of Chicago. And the same in Los Angeles. If you draw a circle around Los Angeles, you'd get scores of cities that have gang problems. So that's another area of expansion. You could widen the scope geographically and you could also widen it as far as types outside of the criminal justice system, youth serving agencies, all kinds of social work programs that have been mentioned here. Enormous efforts are going on. I presume that a national conference would not be confined to law enforcement personnel, but would include everyone who is working with gangs in whatever capacity, including citizens' groups. Legislators and news media. COTA: I know that there are things that I've picked up here that some of you are doing that I am going to bring back and implement in my own way. JACKSON: I would have liked to see this be 2 or 3 days. And I'd like to see a DOJ conference that the politicians hear. Also somebody somewhere needs to be putting money into sending people from agencies to different seminars to get that training. And it's badly needed. You can only pick up so much OJT. I learned a lot today here. Things that might work might not work, some things that we might not have tried had we not heard about it. WADE: My program is not costing money. Come to think of it, not a dime. Most of your programs don't cost you money. It's just utilizing the resources you have. KANE: Thanks very much for coming.