Gangs by Jennifer MacKay

Author:Jennifer MacKay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing, LLC.

Newark, New Jersey, police director Garry McCarthy reveals the photos of six MS-13 affiliated gang members indicted on murder, attempted murder, robbery, and weapons offenses related to the killing of three college students in Newark in August 2007.

Cross-Country Gangs

Communities that turn to law enforcement for protection against gangs usually want to see quick results. Getting gang crime and violence under control is more difficult than most people realize, however, in part because gangs and their activities often spread beyond the police jurisdiction of a single community. The extent to which gangs actually migrate from place to place or set up satellite gang groups in different cities, states, and countries is debatable, but many gangs do expand their illegal business contacts and tap into a criminal network that stretches out of their city, state, or even out of the country, often making it a challenge for local police to fully contain a gang and its activities. Hispanic gangs, for example, often have a role in the smuggling of illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine from Mexico and South America into the United States. Most gang researchers believe few U.S. gangs have enough organization or control over their members to actually operate the kind of drug cartel, or group of drug smuggling organizations, that exists in Mexico and South America, but many U.S. gangs do have a partnership with drug cartels. The cartels supply the drugs, while multiple U.S.-based gangs help move drugs across the national border and into American cities. “One gang, before being stopped by federal authorities, had a cocaine distribution that stretched across five states,”48 says youth violence researcher Elizabeth Kandel Englander. Getting control over such a spread-out gang requires cooperation and communication among many different police forces, local, state, and national, often making it a long and difficult process to address gang crime.

Gangs straddle not just the country’s southern border in states like California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, but also the border between Canada and the United States, especially where the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario meet Michigan and New York. The Canada–United States border is common territory for outlaw motorcycle gangs such as the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, and the Bandidos. These gangs are mostly nomadic criminal groups that ride their motorcycles from city to city and cross readily into Canada and back. Much of the smuggling across Canadian borders involves firearms. According to the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada (CISC) in its 2007 annual report on organized crime, “Smuggled firearms that cross the land border from the United States are a significant source of illegal firearms due in part to its geographic proximity and less restrictive gun control regulations.”49 Drugs are also smuggled regularly between the United States and Canada.

It is well known that gangs pass contraband, or illegal items, across state and national borders, but it is hard to catch them in the act, complicating law enforcement’s response to gangs and their crimes. Patrolling national borders is notoriously difficult. “A number of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.