Twelve Months of Gang Related Behavior: Top Gang Stories of 2014
These stories were gathered based upon their impact on the nation as it pertains to street gangs. The stories impact all areas of the country and are just a summary of the individual stories. In order to read the entire story click on the source link at the end of the summary.
January 9, 2014
24 San Diego gang members indicted for sex trafficking
SAN DIEGO — A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday names 24 alleged North Park gang members in a sex trafficking conspiracy involving dozens of underage girls and women.
According to the federal grand jury indictment, the local suspects are part of a nationwide gang involved in prostitution in 46 cities across 23 states. The racketeering conspiracy also involved murder, kidnapping, robber and drug crimes, according to federal prosecutors.
The nation organization is known as BMS, a combination of “Black MOB” and “Skanless” gangs, according to the indictment. It is affiliated with local street gangs including the Neighborhood Crips, the Lincoln Park Crips and the West Coast Crips, the indictment said.
Source: Fox 5 News San Diego
Source: Fox 5 News
February 15, 2014
Cop arrested in N.J. gang sweep
ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- Longtime rival street gangs teamed up with a rogue police officer to terrorize the city's streets and profit from crimes, including gun running, drug trafficking and shoplifting, authorities said Friday.
In announcing charges against 31 individuals, including a city police officer and three fugitives, authorities said members of longtime rival gangs the Bloods and the Crips worked together to thwart police investigations into their activities.
"The individuals here are some of the worst of the worst," said Michael Pasterchick, chief of detectives for the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office.
Patrolman Keith German is alleged to have worked with gang leaders by tipping them off to the investigative techniques being used against them, said acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni. He has been charged with official misconduct and unauthorized access of a computer base.
Source: USA Today
May 1, 2014
Homeland Security arrests over 600 gang suspects
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 600 suspected gang members have been arrested in the Homeland Security Department's largest crackdown on street gangs, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officials said Thursday.
ICE agents, along with local authorities in 179 cities, arrested 638 suspected gang members over a monthlong period in March and April.
ICE said 78 suspected gang members were arrested on federal charges while 447 others currently face only state charges. ICE arrested 113 others on administrative immigration charges.
More than 400 of those arrested had violent criminal histories, including seven people wanted on murder charges.
Source: Yahoo News
July 9, 2014
Insane Clown Posse Loses FBI Lawsuit Over Juggalos 'Gang' Classification
DETROIT (AP) — The federal government can't be blamed for any fallout from a 2011 FBI report
that put a gang tag on fans of the music group Insane Clown Posse, a judge said.
U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland dismissed a lawsuit by the rap-metal duo and fans, known as Juggalos, who said they've been targeted by police because they have jewelry or tattoos with the group's symbol, a man running with a hatchet.
Cleland said the U.S. Justice Department is not responsible for how authorities use a national report on gangs.
Source: Huffington Post
July 11, 2014
Violent gang taking advantage of immigration crisis, using border as recruiting hub
Nogales, TX - The infamous gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is reportedly taking advantage of the immigration crisis along the U.S. border.
“They’re now using the Nogales processing center as a recruitment hub for new members to come in,” Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich reported Friday. “They’re trying to recruit other teenage boys that are sharing cells with them and they’re using the phones that the Red Cross has set up. They’re supposed to be using those to call back home or to call family members in the United States. They’re also using those as a way to communicate with gang members already in U.S. cities.”
Miss Pavlich’s information came from a Border Patrol executive summary obtained by Townhall.com, which confirmed that at least 16 unaccompanied illegal minors have been identified as members of MS-13.
Source: Washington Post
January 9, 2014
24 San Diego gang members indicted for sex trafficking
SAN DIEGO — A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday names 24 alleged North Park gang members in a sex trafficking conspiracy involving dozens of underage girls and women.
According to the federal grand jury indictment, the local suspects are part of a nationwide gang involved in prostitution in 46 cities across 23 states. The racketeering conspiracy also involved murder, kidnapping, robber and drug crimes, according to federal prosecutors.
The nation organization is known as BMS, a combination of “Black MOB” and “Skanless” gangs, according to the indictment. It is affiliated with local street gangs including the Neighborhood Crips, the Lincoln Park Crips and the West Coast Crips, the indictment said.
Source: Fox 5 News San Diego
***
February 15, 2014
Cop arrested in N.J. gang sweep
ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- Longtime rival street gangs teamed up with a rogue police officer to terrorize the city's streets and profit from crimes, including gun running, drug trafficking and shoplifting, authorities said Friday.
In announcing charges against 31 individuals, including a city police officer and three fugitives, authorities said members of longtime rival gangs the Bloods and the Crips worked together to thwart police investigations into their activities.
"The individuals here are some of the worst of the worst," said Michael Pasterchick, chief of detectives for the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office.
Patrolman Keith German is alleged to have worked with gang leaders by tipping them off to the investigative techniques being used against them, said acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni. He has been charged with official misconduct and unauthorized access of a computer base.
Source: USA Today
***
April 15, 2014
Gang with DFW presence called worst in Texas
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX - Tango Blast, the most significant and rapidly growing gang in the state, has a heavy presence in Dallas-Fort Worth, according to the Texas Gang Threat Assessment released Thursday by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
More than 4,600 gangs have been identified in Texas, and the number of gang members may exceed 100,000, the annual report said.
“Gang violence and crime are a chief threat to public safety in Texas, and protecting our communities from these criminals remains a top priority,” DPS Director Steven McCraw said in a statement.
“This assessment provides detailed information about the gangs operating in our state, which will enhance the ability of law enforcement to combat these dangerous organizations and their associates.”
Tango Blast and its loosely affiliated cliques, with an estimated 8,200 members, are considered a top threat in all six regions of Texas, according to the report.
Source: Star Telegram
***
Homeland Security arrests over 600 gang suspects
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 600 suspected gang members have been arrested in the Homeland Security Department's largest crackdown on street gangs, Immigration and Customs
ICE agents, along with local authorities in 179 cities, arrested 638 suspected gang members over a monthlong period in March and April.
ICE said 78 suspected gang members were arrested on federal charges while 447 others currently face only state charges. ICE arrested 113 others on administrative immigration charges.
More than 400 of those arrested had violent criminal histories, including seven people wanted on murder charges.
Source: Yahoo News
***
June 13, 2014
Chicago 'Heroin Highway' Bust Shows A 'New Face Of Organized Crime'
Chicago, IL - Authorities say they've broken up a major heroin and crack cocaine distribution ring in Chicago.
A joint federal and local task force that includes the DEA, FBI, Chicago police and other law enforcement agencies arrested and charged more than two dozen gang members who allegedly
supplied a significant amount of heroin to customers coming from the city and suburbs.
The increasingly easy availability and lower street cost of heroin has led to a surge of heroin abuse not only in the Chicago area but in many parts of the country. Court documents associated with Thursday's bust show how readily accessible the drug can be and give a glimpse into gang culture in Chicago, a city with a notoriously bad street gang problem.
Among those arrested Thursday was 47-year-old Kenneth Shoulders, also known as Kenny Shannon, who federal prosecutors say is a high-ranking leader of the Conservative Vice Lords street gang.
According to federal prosecutors, Shoulders controlled the drug trade in a 12-block area on Chicago's West Side, just off what's known as the "heroin highway" — the I-290 Eisenhower Expressway.
Authorities say Shoulders' operation used several stash houses as distribution centers and corners as retail locations to sell heroin quickly to customers getting off the expressway. Those customers, many of them from the western suburbs, could exit, pay at one location, pick up the heroin at another and be back on the expressway in a matter of minutes, as if it were a fast-food drive-through.
In making the arrests, authorities also seized several weapons — including an AR-15 assault rifle — approximately $140,000 in cash, nearly a half-kilogram of heroin and some cocaine.
Also among the 27 people arrested and charged Thursday by federal and local authorities were Shoulders' 49-year-old sister, Sandra "Penny" Shoulders, and his 29-year-old son, Kenneth Williams, aka "Lil' Kenny."
Source: NPR News
***
July 9, 2014
Insane Clown Posse Loses FBI Lawsuit Over Juggalos 'Gang' Classification
DETROIT (AP) — The federal government can't be blamed for any fallout from a 2011 FBI report
U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland dismissed a lawsuit by the rap-metal duo and fans, known as Juggalos, who said they've been targeted by police because they have jewelry or tattoos with the group's symbol, a man running with a hatchet.
Cleland said the U.S. Justice Department is not responsible for how authorities use a national report on gangs.
Source: Huffington Post
***
July 11, 2014
Violent gang taking advantage of immigration crisis, using border as recruiting hub
Nogales, TX - The infamous gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is reportedly taking advantage of the immigration crisis along the U.S. border.
“They’re now using the Nogales processing center as a recruitment hub for new members to come in,” Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich reported Friday. “They’re trying to recruit other teenage boys that are sharing cells with them and they’re using the phones that the Red Cross has set up. They’re supposed to be using those to call back home or to call family members in the United States. They’re also using those as a way to communicate with gang members already in U.S. cities.”
Miss Pavlich’s information came from a Border Patrol executive summary obtained by Townhall.com, which confirmed that at least 16 unaccompanied illegal minors have been identified as members of MS-13.
Source: Washington Post
***
August 20, 2014
For St. Louis Gangs, Ferguson Has Become a Recruiting Tool.
Ferguson, MO - As they ran through a cloud of tear gas during demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday, Andre Ellis, 17, linked arms with Graig “Shine” Cook, a self-identified Bloods gang member who’d befriended him two nights earlier.
“What we doing now that they gassed us?” asked Ellis, the Bloods’s newest recruit, half his face covered with a red handkerchief traditionally worn by the gang’s members. “Should we go home?”
“Nah, we going to get more batch,” said Cook, using a slang term for the mixture of gasoline and nail polish remover that a handful of protesters had used to make the Molotov cocktails they’d hurled at
police. “Then we coming back on them bitches.”
Ellis followed Cook down a side street littered with spent bullet casings. There, half a dozen Bloods members and their friends had stashed the flammable “batch” mix. “We all about hitting them [police] hard tonight,” Cook, a St. Louis resident, told the others. “This a war right now.”
“Word,” said Ellis, a Ferguson native, grabbing one of the freshly assembled Molotov cocktails. “"I’m down for whatever with y’all.”
That exchange illustrates a little-noticed outgrowth of the unrest spurred by the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer. Amid the widespread anger and heightened racial tensions here, several dozen young men, including Ellis—most between the ages of 16 and 19—have joined up with the Bloods, the Crips and other criminal gangs in the St. Louis area, according to several gang members, police officers, community activists and local residents.
Source: Newsweek
For St. Louis Gangs, Ferguson Has Become a Recruiting Tool.
Ferguson, MO - As they ran through a cloud of tear gas during demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday, Andre Ellis, 17, linked arms with Graig “Shine” Cook, a self-identified Bloods gang member who’d befriended him two nights earlier.
“What we doing now that they gassed us?” asked Ellis, the Bloods’s newest recruit, half his face covered with a red handkerchief traditionally worn by the gang’s members. “Should we go home?”
“Nah, we going to get more batch,” said Cook, using a slang term for the mixture of gasoline and nail polish remover that a handful of protesters had used to make the Molotov cocktails they’d hurled at
Ellis followed Cook down a side street littered with spent bullet casings. There, half a dozen Bloods members and their friends had stashed the flammable “batch” mix. “We all about hitting them [police] hard tonight,” Cook, a St. Louis resident, told the others. “This a war right now.”
“Word,” said Ellis, a Ferguson native, grabbing one of the freshly assembled Molotov cocktails. “"I’m down for whatever with y’all.”
That exchange illustrates a little-noticed outgrowth of the unrest spurred by the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer. Amid the widespread anger and heightened racial tensions here, several dozen young men, including Ellis—most between the ages of 16 and 19—have joined up with the Bloods, the Crips and other criminal gangs in the St. Louis area, according to several gang members, police officers, community activists and local residents.
Source: Newsweek
***
October 2014
How Gangs Took Over Prisons
On a clear morning this past February, the inmates in the B Yard of Pelican Bay State Prison filed out of their cellblock a few at a time and let a cool, salty breeze blow across their bodies. Their home, the California prison system’s permanent address for its most hardened gangsters, is in Crescent City, on the edge of a redwood forest—about four miles from the Pacific Ocean in one direction and 20 miles from the Oregon border in the other. This is their yard time.
Most of the inmates belong to one of California’s six main prison gangs: Nuestra Familia, the Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Northern Structure, or the Nazi Lowriders (the last two are offshoots of Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood, respectively). The inmates interact like volatile chemicals: if you open their cells in such a way as to
put, say, a lone member of Nuestra Familia in a crowd of Mexican Mafia, the mix can explode violently. So the guards release them in a careful order.
“Now watch what they do,” says Christopher Acosta, a corrections officer with a shaved head who worked for 15 years as a front-line prison guard and now runs public relations for Pelican Bay. We are standing with our backs to a fence and can see everything.
At first, we seem to be watching a sullen but semi-random parade of terrifying men—heavily tattooed murderers, thieves, and drug dealers walking past one of five casual but alert guards. Some inmates, chosen for a strip search, drop their prison blues into little piles and then spin around, bare-assed, to be scrutinized. Once inspected, they dress and walk out into the yard to fill their lungs with oxygen after a long night in the stagnant air of the cellblock. The first Hispanic inmate to put his clothes on walks about 50 yards to a concrete picnic table, sits down, and waits. The first black inmate goes to a small workout area and stares out at the yard intently. A white guy walks directly to a third spot, closer to the basketball court. Another Hispanic claims another picnic table. Slowly it becomes obvious that they have been moving tactically: each has staked out a rallying point for his group and its affiliates.
Once each gang has achieved a critical mass—about five men—it sends off a pair of scouts. Two of the Hispanics at the original concrete picnic table begin a long, winding stroll. “They’ll walk around, get within earshot of the other groups, and try to figure out what’s going down on the yard,” Acosta says. “Then they can come back to their base and say who’s going to attack who, who’s selling what.”
Source: The Atlantic
***
November 13, 2014
Gangster Disciple pleads guilty as city pleads for peace
Chattanooga, TN - A man whose gang has been targeted in Mayor Andy Berke's Violence Reduction Initiative pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal gun charge after police found a gun under his car seat earlier this year.
Ronald Harris, who according to police is a validated Gangster Disciple and a convicted felon, stood before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bill Carter in a yellow jump suit, his hands shackled. He then pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge that will likely send him to a federal prison for about three years -- his first time in a federal penitentiary.
The Violence Reduction Initiative offers a second chance for felons if they choose to turn their life around but brings down the full measure of the law if those in gangs or groups that are warned choose to ignore the message and keep shooting.
But the gang killings in Chattanooga are not decreasing. There are already more gang-related killings this year than all of last year.
The police are targeting the Gangster Disciples, the Bounty Hunter Bloods and the Athens Park Bloods, documents show. These are groups who have been warned but continued to act violently. Police Chief Fred Fletcher said the police are focusing efforts on the most violent gangs.
Source: Times Free Press
***
December 14, 2014
Feds: Gang lured schoolgirls to sex trade.
SAN DIEGO — A federal indictment unsealed Thursday accuses San Diego gang members of running a cross-country sex-trafficking ring that preyed on teenage girls from East County schools and used violence and drugs to coerce them into prostitution.
Twenty-two gang members and associates are charged with a racketeering conspiracy for their alleged roles in what was described as a lucrative operation, authorities announced Thursday. Most were arrested in a series of predawn raids.
About 100 victims, some as young as 12, were identified during the two-year investigation, officials said. Some girls were ensnared by promises of money and a lavish lifestyle, while others were forced through violence or threats to sell sex, according to U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. Vulnerable victims, such as runaways and girls from broken homes, were ideal candidates for recruitment, the court records stat
Source: UT Sandiego News
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