Of Mice and Men: Gangs, Narco-Terrorism, and the USA

[slapout9]

MikeF, this is real close to how I was taught. This was posted awhile back by SGMGRUMPY. Well worth the read.

http://www.sandiego.gov/gangcommissi...bernardino.pdf

[ODB]

In that wrongly wired portion of my brain I have my own thoughts on ending gangs very quickly. Small group of well armed men with big balls. Put us in the worse part of town, walk up to the first gang member you spot and shoot him in the face. Then follow that up with an ambush at his funeral where you eliminate the rest of them in one quick swoop. Suddenly they would get the hint we aren't playing and would quickly change their ways. Play the game they know.

Seriously though it needs to be a multi dimensional approach, IMO it starts with the adults, the parents and spreads from there.

[reed11b]

This is an unpopular opinion, but as I sit in the youth crisis shelter office and watch the kids idolize the "rappers" on TV that sell nothing but materialism and glorification of petty violence for the sake of petty violence, I can't help but think that finding a way to de-power these so-called artists would help greatly.
Reed

[davidbfpo]

Mike F,

Coming in late to ths thread and UK policing has some experience with policing gangs, mainly when inter-gang shootings attract attention, sorry invariably black on black deaths (see Operation Trident by Met in London) and some of our Northern Ireland experiences were gang related (or para military activity).

Leaving aside the problems of political will, inter-agency working and resourcing here a few points:

1) Establish what is actually happening? LE stats and media stories provide only signposts.
2) What level of community engagement exists - with LE & LG. Is there any information from the community?
3) Establish robust methods for the community to provide information in confidence; Crime Stoppers has much to offer.
4) How effective is Local LE? That will affect community views and expectations. I base this on the contrast between New Orleans and Dallas policing - from an article I posted here sometime ago.
5) Specialist task forces have a role, possibly only short term, so ensure all LE have a role.
6) What are the key vulnerabilities of the gangs? I suspect LE will not know and will be reluctant to acknowledge that. In the UK LE there is little understanding of markets and business.

[John T. Fishel]

Mike, on the macro level, see Max Manwaring's work on gangs from SSI (online - Google SSI). Also his just published book from OU Press.

Note: MR 13 and 18th Street - two of the biggest Salvadoran gangs - started in Los Angeles and were deported home. In CENTAM, gangs are a mjor problem in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras - not so much in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Of those countries, the only one with a largely Mayan speaking population (27 Mayan languages) is Guatemala. The rest are mestizo, mixed populations with the principal indigenous language being Nahuatl, the Aztec tongue. Mexico is obviously the other major gang problem country. One of the things Max does is tie gangs to larger political and criminal trends.

JMM, good on ya regarding Alinsky. Reveille for Radical should be required reading for all folk engaged in advisory efforts, SFA, COIN, etc. One doesn't have to accept Alinsky's ideology to make use of his techniques and his analysis of the woes of a particular population.

Cheers

JohnT

[Jedburgh]

Monterey County Herald, 3 Feb 09: NPS joins with city to fight crime

Salinas will be ground zero for a study on street gangs by federal and military security experts who have backgrounds dealing with terror cells, militant groups and other threats.

Though a collaborative effort announced Monday, faculty at the [URL=http://www.chds.us/Naval Postgraduate School[/URL] and city officials will work together to look at the root causes of gang violence and contributing factors.

Officials said it is the first time a city has reached out to high-level advisers in homeland security and military conflicts to help with a local gang issue. The result it may have is unclear......

The Californian, 3 Feb 09: Navy school takes on Salinas gangs

Federal violence and terrorism experts from the Naval Postgraduate School, who deal with the likes of Al-Qaida, have been recruited to help fight the deep-rooted gang subculture in Salinas. And agents of the federal office of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have been assigned to gang-busting duty in the city.

“We need to break the back” of gangs, Mayor Dennis Donohue said as he announced the double-barrel help at a Monday press conference at City Hall. “Frankly, after three or four decades, we’re no longer interested in coexistence side-by-side with this subculture that has become embedded in our community,” Donohue declared. The mayor and other city and police officials have been under increasing pressure to deal with violence that has left 31 people dead since January 1, 2008, mostly in gang-related killings.......

[MikeF]

To compound the deteriorating securtiy situation, the local police are having a public relations issue in response to some police shooting civilians.

Few details in Salinas police shooting
BY JACK FOLEY • The Salinas Californian • February 6, 2009

Police opened fire on an unarmed couple during a routine traffic stop late Tuesday night because one officer "thought he was shot," a high-ranking Salinas Police Department official said Thursday.

"He saw what he perceived as a threat and thought he was shot, and based on that both officers discharged their firearms," said Dino Bardoni, commander of investigations.

No one was hurt in the 11:24 p.m. incident at North Sanborn Road and Freedom Parkway, but the couple's SUV was riddled with bullet holes and its rear window was shattered.

Police are releasing few details about the incident or case and have characterized it as a "priority investigation," Bardoni said.

It's the fourth officer-involved shooting in the city in the past seven months, two of which were fatal.

Two issues in this specific case so far:

1. Escalation of Force. The civilians were unarmed.

2. Markmanship. The cops fired multiple rounds into the victim's car, but they did not injure the civilians. It was more suppressive fire.

v/r

Mike

[Bob's World]

One of the "Big Ideas" we are developing at USSOCOM is that in a world freed from the Cold War and accelerated by factors of globalization there is in effect a "Competition for Sovereignty."

Essentially attempting to describe an environment where, while the State remains the primary holder/employer of sovereignty; that populaces are empowered as are non-state actors in new ways that change the old dynamic in significant ways.

One manifestation of this is populaces turning to non-state entities for things and services that their state is either unable or unwilling to provide. The rise of narco-gang activity in Mexico is an example; as is the rise of AQ to be able to conduct an effective UW campaign in the Middle East to leverage several diverse nationalist insurgent efforts, united by those things they hold in common.

The rise of gangs in the US mirrors this syndrom. As the economy worsens one can expect more and more of those segments of the populace that feel excluded or underserviced by the functions of the legitimate sovereign to turn to illegitimate alternatives for what they need.

[PK=COIN]

Firstly, I came upon this thread in search of conversations pertaining to insurgency and gangs. Coming from the thread titled "Commonalities and lessons learned between gangs and insurgencies"...

My thought was to find some leads as I try to compile reports, etc on possible lessons for COIN from anti-gang efforts. It has been really thought provoking to see a thread essentially going the other way and looking at how to bring COIN lessons to anti-gang efforts. Upshot for me...clearly many people who know better than I think there is sufficient commonality and potential for lessons learned, so I'm going to keep looking into this...any help is always appreciated, btw. Meantime, I'm going to follow some of the leads mentioned in this thread and read reports linked or referred to...

With regards to the questions surrounding the war on drugs, what has really happened in Colombia, etc, I thought the recent Economist has some pretty interesting stuff. (They contend COIN victory in Colombia, failure at anti-drug goal.) I don't have a dog in this fight, or perhaps more accurately I'm gonna keep my dog out of the fight. But the contention that many of the problems discussed here in this thread get fixed by starting with legalizing drugs...it is an idea seemingly dismissed out of hand. Is that a good thing?

Failed states and failed policies: How to stop the drug wars
from The Economist: Full print edition

Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled. ...