Small Towns, Big Gang Issues
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Along the 450 miles of the Central Valley, an explosion of gang violence in recent years has transformed life on the wide, tree-lined streets of California’s agricultural heartland.
As jobs and relatively affordable housing in the fast-growing region have attracted families from the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, law enforcement officials say, some have brought gang ties with them, aggravating the valley’s home-grown street crime.
“What we are seeing is a migration of gangs from larger cities . . . to more rural areas,” said Jerry Hunter, who oversees state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s anti-gang units. “The gang activity . . . is a huge crisis for those communities.”
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Up and down the valley, task forces have been formed as evidence mounts that street hoodlums are committing homicides, robberies and car thefts and trafficking in drugs. Some communities have taxed themselves to pay for more police. Local, state and federal sweeps have produced thousands of arrests—but tens of thousands more gang members remain on the streets, authorities say.
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The Central Valley contains eight of the 22 counties that had the most gang-related homicides in 2005 and 2006, Seave said. And annual California Department of Justice figures show that the number of valley gang killings has accelerated, as has the number of law enforcement agencies reporting such crimes. In 1997, 50 gang-related homicides were reported, compared with 80 in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
Gang violence came with startling brutality to the Tehama County town of Red Bluff, at the northern reaches of the Sacramento River.
After a 17-year-old Sureño gang member repeatedly shot a 16-year-old Norteño gang member outside a house party, rumors of an attack on a local high school caused many students to stay home. The young gang member was sentenced last year to 25 years to life in prison for the 2006 shooting.
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The lower end of the valley has long been known as the Mason-Dixon Line of California’s major Latino gang rivalry. But now clashes between the Sureños, or southerners, and the Norteños, northerners, have migrated through the state.
“In the eastern part of the county, families are moving in from the L.A. basin,” said Kern County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Whiting. The gang members who come with them, he said, “are small fish there, but they can be bigger fish here.”
The North-South conflicts are particularly pronounced in Delano. It is territory claimed by the Norteños, whose traditional strongholds are farming communities and who have adopted as their insignia a version of the United Farm Workers Union’s Aztec Eagle symbol. But the town has Sureños too and is only seven miles from that gang’s turf in McFarland.
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Police, school officials and community groups say gang violence cannot be curtailed without prevention and intervention. Some towns teach parents to be on alert for signs, such as red or blue clothing, shoes and handkerchiefs, that their children might be drifting toward gangs. Other towns have stepped up recreational activities to keep youngsters busy.
Even when law enforcement agencies record successes against a gang, members often move elsewhere, as some may have done after crackdowns on Fresno’s Bulldogs gang. It has an estimated 6,000 members.
Police in nearby Selma are now seeing Bulldogs, with their dog-paw tattoos, standing on street corners literally barking warnings when squad cars approach. There have been drive-by shootings in midday, and police say one crime witness was wounded by gang members who shot through her front door.
The rise of gang violence “has caught us off guard and shocked our community,” said Selma Police Chief Tom Whiteside, noting that the town of about 24,000 had five gang homicides in the last three years. “Today, gang crime is probably No. 1 on everyone’s radar screen in the valley.”
Selma voters overwhelmingly approved a half-cent sales tax in November that will allow its police force to nearly double in the next decade.
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Police Sgt. Rick Armendariz of Modesto supervises the Central Valley Gang Impact Task Force, an alliance of local, federal and state agencies that exchange intelligence and keep tabs on gang members on parole or probation.
“Gang members do not heed borders,” he said. “Gang members move here but do not cut their ties.”
(Posted on February 27, 2008)
Comments
Blacks and Hispanics are import crimes to small white towns. Time for small white towns awake up and block blacks and hispanics to move in….. Tell non-whites to stay inner cities!!
Posted by james at 5:50 PM on February 27
“Bulldogs has an estimated 6,000 gang members.”
In my day a gang was three guys who chip in to buy a Buick. 6,000 members… that`s not a gang it`s almost a Panzer Division.
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 5:51 PM on February 27
“Police in nearby Selma are now seeing Bulldogs, with their dog-paw tattoos, standing on street corners literally barking warnings when squad cars approach.”
A gang calling themselves the Bulldogs.
With dog-paw tattoos.
Who literally BARK out a warning when they see cops.
Yet if Whitey should use any sort of animal metaphor when describing these gangbangers, then Whitey is “dehumanizing” them — and therefore committing Hatespeech/Thoughtcrime.
How can you dehumanize people so eager to dehumanize themselves?
Posted by at 6:43 PM on February 27
A few issues here to accept as truths:
The parents of these thugs will never be held accountable, and they’ll still receive their welfare checks as well as other federal and state handouts.
The “underage” thugs will be granted full anonymity due to their age, and they will be given about 50 chances to straighten up which, of course, will never happen. Their victims will continue to be counted, and more money for law enforcement will be taken from the wallets of the law-abiding.
Proactive policing is rejected completely by blacks and browns so law enforcement is reduced to taking victim’s statements and counting the bodies. Proactive policing is acting first before the problems grow. Don’t even think about proactive policing with minorities. They love their pain.
Any proactive efforts at stopping the carnage will be met with screams of “racism”. Of course, any regular AMREN reader already knows this.
Posted by Proactive at 7:37 PM on February 27
Ah yes! Those peaceful latinos and their children who have only come to the U.S. to find a job and work hard. Coming soon to a town or city near you.
Posted by Baron at 8:31 PM on February 27
“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed former Sacramento U.S. Atty. Paul Seave as his anti-gang chief, hoping to improve the effectiveness and collaboration of state agencies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to prevent and combat gang violence.”
If it wasn’t for blacks and Hispanics, we wouldn’t have a gang problem. And if it wasn’t for those same groups we would only have about 25% of the crime problem we do right now.
After seeing the devastation in general caused by crime, drugs, gangs, murders and rapes, throughout the West, Japan and China aren’t about to make the same foolish mistakes, so it can be pretty well assumed that we won’t see any notable immigration of blacks or Hispanics into either country
Posted by w.r. at 10:21 PM on February 27
We have put too much faith in our gov’t. and police forces to protect us. The US gov’t WON’T and the cops CAN’T. Time to secure yourself and loved ones in the old fashioned way……and you know what I mean.
John
Posted by at 12:07 AM on February 28
As a black co-worker who inherited her Mother’s home in Watts and plans to stay there rather than face a 150 mile round trip commute to work every day says “Everybody moved from Watts to West Covina to get away from the gangs and their gangster sons just came with them. We can run but we can’t escape the gangbangers, so I’m staying in my paid for 1930’s Spanish style house in Watts.
Posted by margaret at 1:38 AM on February 28
Gangs have indeed invaded smaller towns. In the Northeast, Hazleton, PA, Easton, PA, Scranton, PA are now all home to chapters of the Crips, the Bloods, MS-13 and the rest.
Posted by at 2:00 AM on February 28
Yeah, here on the East Coast, NE Pennsylvania has been hit bad by Afro-Hispanic(Puerto Ricans, Dominicans) types migrating from NYC.
Posted by Joe at 3:06 AM on February 28
‘The Bull-dogs have dog-paw tattoos and literally bark-out warnings’.
Really, one would laugh this off as pathetically childish that full-grown adolescent youths would actually engage in this puerile kindergarte behavior that most normal 7 year olds grow out of.
Only it’s not so funny when the self-same youths are legally empowered to tote guns - and they actually use them.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 6:03 AM on February 28
Alas, as my formerly mostly white college town has become more diverse, violent criminality has greatly increased and people are less friendly. Could this just be a coincidence?
Posted by Sardonicus at 7:40 AM on February 28
My husband and I are seriously thinking about moving out of our neighborhood since we now regularly see gang grafitti that was rare when we moved in about 3 years ago. We have a 5 month old and we worry about living here when she is old enough to ride her bike or play in the neighborhood.
Posted by Spartan24 at 12:19 PM on February 28
It’s happening here in Missouri, too. Wherever there is a state prison in a rural town, some of the incarcerated black man’s family moves to that town to be close by, and gang violence increases in that town. Wherever there’s a “second chance” home, to give black thugs from St. Louis and Kansas City a “better environment,” e.g. Hannibal and Lesterville, gang violence increases there.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 12:37 PM on February 28
There is gang activity in NE Pennsylvania, unfortunately the population seems to think that the answer is to be found in people like Hussien Obama or Hillary, they sit and hope for a miricle, wringing their hands as the problem grows. It’s a much easier solution than supporting Lou Barletta.
Posted by Jim at 4:44 PM on February 28
“Gang problem” is clever double speak for black and hispanic culture. How is gang behavior any different from the pathologies exhibited by a majority of blacks and hispanics? These “gang-members” and their behavior are celebrated and encouraged by their respective ethnic groups. Just look at the societies they produce without the influence of white men. In Africa today nation-states, with things like law and order, are waning and are being replaced by warring gangs. Just like it was years ago except we called them tribes back then.
Posted by Ronin at 5:13 PM on February 28
Beware—sometimes gangs are two-and-three generations deep at this point. I have a student whose pop and grandpop are Latin Kings. And they’re nowhere near California.
Posted by at 7:47 PM on February 28
Gangs have invaded smaller towns on the Interstate 5 corridor in Washington and Oregon.
Posted by at 8:36 PM on February 28
spartan wrote: My husband and I are seriously thinking about moving out of our neighborhood since we now regularly see gang grafitti that was rare when we moved in about 3 years ago.
_____—- _____ ———- _______ ———— _____
Move. I had a few neighbors start parking on their lawns, and I noticed some graffiti, and I put my house up for sale, sold it, made some money, and bought a house in a neighboring town. If the local police won’t drive gangs out, I vote with my feet. I also wrote a letter to the city manager explaining exactly why they would have to do without my property tax payments. And if it happens in my new neighborhood, I’ll move again.
Posted by at 10:34 PM on February 28
There is an influx of black families from Chicago and related activity - armed robbery, vehicle theft, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE against black and increasingly white women in my medium sized midwest town.
What does the local paper say?
“Huge increase in armed robbery” “Why?”
The real answer is never printed. Not by by statements from reporters or police who have the glaring stats
It is the big pink er, black elephant on main street and I would be dubbed a racist if I pointed it out openly!
So politacal correctness is more important than the safety of ALL citizens I guess.
Posted by at 1:54 AM on February 29
Newspapers print the partial news that fits. Lately liberal network news have been emphasizing the raft of shooting sprees to call for a ban on guns, there is no mention of liberal social experiments wrecking the nuclear family and producing an increasing number of deranged individuals. There is a snowballs chance in hell of the left calling off their agenda for homosexual unions and marriages.
Posted by Stan at 6:54 PM on March 1
Could this be because gangs are a hereditary membership?
Posted by at 7:22 PM on March 5