How Best to Combat Criminal Gangs – Buz Blog

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”
― Mickey Mantle

With the deportation of illegal immigrant criminals by the Trump Administration, the subject of young hoodlum gangs is again in the headlines. For dozens of years, the most heinous criminal gang was MS-13, (Mara Salvatrucha). This is a gang that originated in the country of El Salvador and immigrated to Los Angeles and then throughout the United States. They are noted for their savagery in killing, robbing, raping, and torture. Not to be outdone, Since 2022, a Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, was virtually imported to our country by Joe Biden’s open border policies and the Venezuelan government’s decision to empty its prisons.

With the new Administration in Washington, President Trump and his cabinet are naming these gangs and the drug cartels as terrorists. It looks like these illegal immigrant gang members will be caught and deported. But that still leaves hundreds of thousands of our own homegrown gangs that victimize our population. What is the best way for local and state law enforcement to attack these still vicious thugs in these gangs?

For seven years in the 1990s, I worked in the Gang Detective Unit and the Gang Enforcement Section of the Long Beach Police Department. I attended training regarding Hispanic gangs, Black gangs, Asian gangs and White gangs. Although my experience and training is somewhat dated now, I believe many of the effective actions we took back then, are still working today.

The first tool to attack gang crime is to have a unit of officers dedicated to addressing primarily gang problems. (It should be noted that the number of officers in a gang unit depends on the size of the gang population and should not take officers away from answering calls for service. Nothing has a more negative effect on police community relations than a slow response time to citizens’ calls.) These gang officers should be encouraged to stop and talk to any gangbangers they come across and to file Field Interrogation, (F.I.)cards on them. These F.I. cards should list the gangbanger’s name, his gang affiliation, tattoos, scars and other identifying physical elements. The F.I.’s should also include the time and location and any other gangbangers and/or associates with the gang member.

Two of the best weapons to use against gangs are search warrants and associate search warrants. With a search warrant obtained after a gangster has been identified as a suspect of a crime, the suspect can usually be arrested. Evidence of that crime and other crimes, as well as weapons can be confiscated. This can often lead to added criminal charges and possible violations of probation or parole conditions.

Associate search warrants are even more effective. The courts, (at least in California), have ruled that gang members will often hand off weapons and evidence of crimes to other members of their own gang. As a result, if a single gangbanger is identified as a suspect, the investigating officers can not only obtain a search warrant on that suspect, but on any other gang member in that same gang, if the investigators can show a connection to the suspect gangbanger.

If the suspect was arrested at one time with other gang members, Huey, Dewy, and Louie, the officers can get search warrants on those three, also. If the suspect was stopped and F.I.’d and Donald, Daisy, and Scrooge were with the suspect, those three can also have search warrants issued for them. In my experience, the identification of a single suspect could result in as many as 12 or more search warrants. The proper use of these associate search warrants can completely emasculate a small gang and put a dent into the criminal capabilities of larger gangs.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove to Long Beach for an awards ceremony. I spoke to an officer who had worked in the gang unit. He told me that when the recently defeated woke District Attorney, George Gascon, was elected four years ago, he had stopped issuing associate search warrants. With the election of a law and order DA, Nathan Hochman, the gang unit was hoping to again have the ability to obtain associate search warrants.

The gathering of intelligence on gangs is another effective tool. Many believe that gangbangers will not give law enforcement any information at all. While this may be true when speaking to a gang member about his own gang, they will often tell gang investigators about what they know about crimes other gangs have committed or what they may be planning. Interviewing gangbangers in custody, either locally or in state prison, can get information that can solve some crimes and/or aid in the prevention of future crimes. If federal law enforcement is successful in deporting illegal immigrant gang members and local and state law enforcement use all of the tools available to them on our home grown gangs, there will ultimately be a significant lowering in the crime rate.