In this part of the chapter we will review some of the difficulties gang unit officers face when dealings with gangs. Efforts to find solutions to the gang situation in a community should address and resolve these difficulties.

Click on the topics below or  continue reading down the page ... Difficulties Related to: The Police Department   Internal Conflict   Promotions   Working Shifts   Measuring Effectiveness Other Law Enforcement Agencies Resources Danger Politics Gangs Cultural Barriers In Closing

Difficulties Related to the Police Department

While there may be other inner-departmental difficulties related to gangs, four appeared to me to be quite common: internal conflicts, promotions, the impact of when shifts are served, and how gang units measure the effectiveness of their efforts.

Internal Conflicts

Difficulties in the police departments I observed ranged from the inter-personal to those related to policy. According to one Hispanic patrol officer, "Our so-called Hispanic gang unit specialist is an asshole. He's not even Latino, he's white!" That remark was representative of similar remarks about gang unit members dealing assigned to gather intelligence on specific minority gang members. In another community, the Asian gang specialist was a white man referred to within the gang unit as "The White Dragon." It was a play on words referring to the fact he was Caucasian; Dragons are symbolic of some oriental cultures. His nickname in the rest of the department was less honorific.

I learned that conflicting relationships between different units in the same department can undermine the work of a gang unit when it was on the losing end. An example of this may be found in the following Field Note.

Field Note: I interviewed the supervisors of both the Gang Unit and the Youth Unit. Despite the fact that the two units are under one supervisor, I was told "There isn't much communication between us." This was confirmed by several different gang unit officers later in the day.  I asked where the Narcotics Unit was in all of this and the supervisor of the gang unit replied "That's a good question. There's a problem there, too. Narcotics is so tied up with going after the [drug] cartel that they won't work on lower level cases - like some of ours. It's all about money. They want forfeitures and seizures and the money they bring into the Narcotics Unit. If the gang-related drug case isn't big enough, they won't touch it."

Years of working with police has convinced me that patrol officers are the key to the success of any police department's efforts. Typically the first at the scene of a crime, if they fail to gather sufficient evidence and take statements from witnesses at that time, the case may not make it to court - and if it does, it is likely to fail. Detectives, coming to a case much later, will have little to work with that would give the case prosecutorial merit.

Patrol officers are often the first law enforcement officers on the scene of gang-related crimes. If they've been well trained in the police academy, and if the gang unit has had an opportunity to share its intelligence with patrol officers on an on-going basis, they may handle gang situations in such a way as to facilitate the work of the gang unit when they eventually enter the case. Matters can become complicated if the training and on-going intelligence sessions are missing.

Field Note: The gang unit supervisor told me that patrol officers are viewed as not being helpful - but not on purpose. "They just are not trained to see what the gang unit sees and they aren't trained to provide information to us. More than anything, they don't develop relationships and communication with people on the street." (See another example of this problem.)

Another of the inner-departmental difficulties faced by officers in gang units was highlighted by a comment a gang supervisor made to me one evening. He said "If you care, you get dogged - you know, put down by fellow officers." It makes working gangs a little more difficult.

Promotions

Field Note: The Chief told me "Promoting and moving an officer from one unit to another helps expand his knowledge of how the department operates and it helps prevent any resentments within the old unit which might result from having been promoted."

When promoted, it is common practice in law enforcement agencies to move the promoted officer to a unit other than the one in which he or she was serving when promoted. This is sometimes done to reduce conflicts which may arise within the old unit and to ensure up-and-coming command personnel get experience in many different units throughout the department. Depending upon what you believe, promotions may or may not have a deleterious effect on a gang unit (or any unit, for that matter). 

The loss of a seasoned gang unit member, however, may also mean the loss of gang-related intelligence, valuable contacts in the community and within the gangs, working relationships with other law enforcement officers, and more. What follows is a Field Note concerning the impact of a promotion on a gang unit. It speaks to a problem I saw repeated several times during the last three years. 

Field Note: The new gang unit supervisor shared with me some of the frustration he has experienced since taking over the gang unit four months ago. He said "There's just been too much change at one time. The old head of the unit was promoted and sent to another unit. But three of his members of the gang unit stayed on with me. Jim is one of them and he goes about conducting himself just like the old supervisor did, and the old supervisor was removed because he was handling the street situation very poorly. He was about to get the department in a lot of trouble. The old supervisor was threatened by the prosecutor with possible prosecution because he was violating suspects' rights.  "Two of the old gang unit members finally left the unit because they don't agree with the way I want to go about doing things. They've been replaced with new officers. I approach the gang situation very differently from the old supervisor. I'm not as confrontational, and Jim, who's still in the unit, doesn't like that. He's undermining my efforts with the new officers to bring the entire unit around to a different way of dealing with the gangs. I mean, I just don't know how much longer this can go on!"

Working Shifts

I rode with gang units that worked in three different shift configurations: nights only, days only, and 24 hours a day in three different shifts (the most common format in chronic gang communities). I hadn't thought about the difficulties shift assignments might inject into the situation, but I was soon to find out.  

Gang units which work over all three shifts (24 hours a day) are in contact with both the gang members on the street and the rest of the police department. Gang units which work nights only or days only will either have more interaction with gangs (nights only) or more interaction with the department (days only) - but seldom both.

Field Note: One problem associated with this city's gang unit is that it only  works nights - from 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.. Systematic interaction with the rest of the department during the day is, according to the gang unit supervisor, "rare, so information is more difficult to gather and share with other officers and units in the department."   On the other hand, another city's gang squad works only during the day - from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.. They interact with the rest of the police department but have little face-to-face interaction with gang members when gang members are more active ... at night.

Measuring Effectiveness

More and more, social agencies are expected to prove their efforts have been effective. Police departments are social agencies and are feeling the crunch of having to show whether their efforts are producing desired results. Police gang units have a difficult time measuring the effectiveness of their efforts. They are sometimes unsure of just what effect they are supposed to have and, as Howell (2000) reminds us, "Police should not be expected to assume the sole responsibility for youth gang problems. Broad-based community collaboration is essential for long-term success." (Howell, 2000, p. 54) One should not, therefore, expect gang activity to decline over the long-term just because the police gang unit officers have made a lot of arrests.

How does a gang unit measure its effectiveness? One city's gang unit uses the number of drive-by-shootings as a measure of its effectiveness. Fewer drive-bys is taken as a measure of the gang unit's success. Another city's gang unit measures its effectiveness, in part, by the amount of graffiti being thrown up in area neighborhoods. Some use the number of arrests for motive-based offenses - a very difficult and unreliable measure.

The real difficulty lies in determining what "success" is. Is it a reduction in drive-by-shootings? The number of arrests made for gang-related crimes? The commission of fewer gang-related felonies? Fewer calls for service from residents concerning gang activity in their neighborhoods or schools? In order to measure the gang unit's effectiveness the goals (outcomes) of the unit must be clearly articulated and measurable. Measurement of effectiveness begs the question as to what the mission or goal of the gang unit is. These are two of the difficulties gang units are facing today - defining their mission and identifying measurable outcomes.

Webb and Katz report that, in the four police departments they studied, officers and command personnel "identified several problems with their gang units. They cited shortcomings related to such issues as unit size (number of officers assigned to the unit), insufficient communication, lack of proactivity (very few preventive measures were taken by any of the gang units studied), deficiencies in intelligence gathering, the need to decentralize the unit to area command, and organizational isolation (when gang units are located off-site from the rest of the police department)." (Katz and Webb, 2004, p. 353)

Difficulties Related to Working with 
Other Law Enforcement Agencies

Field Note: I asked about the relationship of his unit to other law enforcement agencies in the community and the gang unit supervisor said "There's a lack of communication between law enforcement agencies about gangs."

Law enforcement agencies at all levels of government (international, federal, state, county, and city) have responsibility for working gangs. While some of them work on gangs together through various task force groups, their relationships are not always harmonious and there may be disagreements over the most basic issues.

Field Note: While attending the meeting of a gang task force consisting of representatives from several different law enforcement agencies, one of the gang unit supervisors, thoroughly frustrated at the way the conversation at the meeting was going, exclaimed "I don't like the term 'wannabes' because it's inaccurate. I prefer to call them 'peripheral members' or 'gang affiliates.' We can't even agree on terminology!"

Some gang unit members were clearly aggravated with other law enforcement agencies and accused them of failing to participate in supposedly collective efforts.    

Field Note: At another gang task force meeting a local police gang unit officer complained saying "There are billions of dollars moving from the United States to Mexico as part of the illegal trafficking in drugs but law enforcement in this country is doing little about that. While our city knows it has an illegal alien problem related to Mexico, neither the INS [U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service] nor the FBI [U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation] will do anything about it."

When multi-agency task force meetings are held, some departments failed to attend. Some of those who were repeatedly absent represented towns with no identifiable gangs - attending was not important to the officers. Others didn't attend because they were in denial about their community's gangs. Attending a task force meeting was viewed as paramount to announcing the fact that one's community had gangs. Some law enforcement agencies sent representatives who were obstructionist in their approach to the work of the task force or attempted to control the agenda. While most officers who participated in task force operations seemed to work well together, there appeared to be difficulties related to working in a multi-agency (many different law enforcement agencies) environment.

Some of the difficulties agency personnel experience in working with other agency personnel has to do with claiming territory. Every agency or officer wants credit for a good arrest or seizure, so a conflict may erupt over who is going to get the credit. Inter-agency issues are sometimes personality-based. Officers from different agencies simply didn't work well together. Regardless of the source of the difficulty, if law enforcement officers are hindered in their work - by their own agency or others - the gangs win and the community loses.

Difficulties Related to Resources

Field Note: A long-time member of the gang unit said "The worst thing about working in the gang unit is the fact that there are simply not enough resources to do our job as well as we could do and as well as it needs to be done."

The most common complaint expressed by the officers I interviewed had to do with a lack of adequate resources for doing their job well. Like some of America's schools, the juvenile- and criminal-justice system in many areas of the country lacks sufficient funding. This results in a shortage of personnel and equipment when it comes to working gangs. 

Having to reply upon suppression only:
Gang researchers and police know a reactive-only approach to gangs will not reduce gang activity and youth violence in the long-term. By reactive I refer to incident-oriented policing - reacting to calls for service when a crime is reported, waiting around until a crime occurs then reacting to that incident. Instead, a pro-active approach, in conjunction with reactive policing, is what is needed.

Proactive policing supports the notion that police have a role to play in the community in efforts to identify the root causes of gang formation and in working to eradicate those causes. But in a resource-poor environment, proactive policing is a luxury. In fact, it's difficult enough to be successful at reactive policing given all the calls for service police are experiencing. Arrests are what most communities want to see, and police have to satisfy that demand. In summary, one of the difficulties of having too few resources is not being able to provide sufficient proactive policing. 

Too few police:
If there were more police working gangs, we might be less likely to hear what one officer said when he told me "The most frustrating part of my job is that I don't have time to work with a troubled child and his or her parents." Instead, gang unit officers, like patrol officers, find themselves either running from one gang-suspicious incident to another throughout their shift, or they are tied up in one incident for hours on end -  particularly in chronic gang neighborhoods.

Field Note: The gang unit officer said "The most difficult part of my job is finding time to do my job. Instead, one case can eat up all my time!"

Equipment Needs and Technological Issues:
Many of the gang unit personnel I observed either didn't have the right equipment, or the equipment they had was obsolete or inadequate. In a city of nearly 500,000 inhabitants, when a gang unit officer wanted to make a telephone call, he had to use one of the locked metal call boxes the department had attached to street posts scattered about the community. No cell phones had been issued. The officers were frustrated and concerned about their safety around the telephones at night. As one of the gang unit officers said, "We're illuminated targets here!"

Field Note: I arrived at the headquarters of one of the best known, largest, and oldest gang units in the United States. It was housed in a trailer on the grounds of the police department! The wheels were still attached. Pointing to the trailer, the gang unit supervisor who was taking me to his office for an interview said "This is how much they think of the problem we're facing. The administrators of the department give us shit to work with and these shit trailers. We don't even have a computer!"    Inside the trailer is what the unit called the "Murder Board" - pictures of 100 to 200 youths lying in their own blood at the site of their deaths. "Even a dog was murdered," he pointed out. "Shot through the mid-section." Field Note: After six months in the gang unit, one of its members has yet to be issued a pager. There's no phone in the car - no cell phone. Instead, the police make calls using the dispatch microphone. Several times during each evening, the officers with whom I rode had to drive to dedicated police phones locked in small metal boxes which were locked and bolted to street light poles. That was their primary means of communicating with one another. Another gang unit member said "Our administrators tell us and the public that the gang problem is serious. Then they turn around and give us no support! We need more manpower, more equipment, and more support!"

Problems surrounding computer-based data on gangs were abundant. They included a lack of computers and a lack of funds to pay for Internet connections. If the department had the equipment, then there were wasn't enough time to build gang databases, too few or no staff to input or maintain the data in them, a lack of consistency (in format and content) across various federal, state, county, and city gang databases, an unwillingness for some agencies to share the data they have, or difficulties involved in accessing the databanks.

Field Note: According to the detectives I interviewed "There is a database of gangsters on the computer, but the system is seldom used because, in order to access it, you have to be in the office. All of the department's patrol cars have a computer, but none of the gang squad cars have computers. Figure that out!"

Self-inflicted loss of personnel or work time:
The difficulties of working gangs sometimes results in officers leaving the gang unit. Added to rotating command personnel (due to promotions), this undermines the work of the unit, lowers morale, and requires the continual training of new gang unit officers. Training takes away from time needed to conduct surveillance, collect and analyze intelligence, conduct investigations, make arrests, and carry out proactive activities regarding gangs.

Field Note: The Sergeant of the gang unit told me "It takes about two years for a gang unit officer to be worth his or her salt. After two years they will know the M.O.s [modus operandi - the way people operate or behave] of the various gang members, who they are, what they look like, where they live, who they hang with, who their parents are, what cars they drive, who their girl friends are, and their monikers. They finally have a good feel for it after two years. The trouble is, given the difficulty and frustrations of this work  - you know, we have limited resources, the law works against putting these guys anyway, judges are too lenient, stuff like that - most of our gang unit members leave after two or three years and we have to start all over again! It's a real problem."

The following Field Notes was written while riding with a gang unit in a U.S. county with 550,000 inhabitants. 

Field Note: I asked the officers if they felt there was any hope of reducing the gang problem. They said "Only if the department puts more resources into dealing with the problem. We are the only two gang unit officers on duty tonight and it's a Saturday in the middle of summer. We need more officers. And we need more equipment - like computers. We need more training. So do the patrol officers. Maybe the chief could use some training, too." There are only four full time officers in the gang unit, plus the Sergeant and the Lieutenant. There is only one car dedicated to the gang unit, and it's a marked car. The officers are required to wear full uniforms, and there is no computer in the car nor in the unit's office. There's no shotgun in the car. There's no protective security screen between the front and back seats of their car.

Seeing police gang units work by the seat of their pants due to a lack of needed equipment helped me understand why so many officers were frustrated in this line of work.

I am convinced some of the resource-related issues resulted from a denial of the community's gang situation by police administrators who then determine how funding in their department will be allocated.   

Field Note: "The gang unit is a political nightmare." The gang unit supervisor said that several times. "If a city has a gang unit that means there are gangs, and gangs are not a politically desired problem. So, while the gang unit is needed, it's shoved under the carpet, so to speak. It isn't well supported, it's understaffed and it's up against the community and the police administration at the same time."

Lack of resources in the community:
As mentioned elsewhere, police gang unit personnel are sometimes involved in prevention and intervention efforts with at-risk youth and gang members. While some police provide these services, I got the distinct feeling most of them would have preferred they be offered by community-based agencies. The problem is that many communities lack the interest, ability, or funding to provide enough community-based prevention and intervention programs.

Difficulties Related to Danger

I was riding with the Sergeant of the gang unit through the inner-city of a community of 400,000 people at three o'clock in the morning. He turned to me and said "I usually ride alone. We're only five people in the unit and the other four drive in teams of two." I asked him how he felt about driving in these neighborhoods alone. "If I see something that looks wrong," he said, "I call for back up and wait for them to arrive. I do not get out of the car. I just won't do that."

I think that Sergeant was the toughest man I rode with over the entire three years of my research. He was big, strong, an experienced officer, and very aggressive. But he wouldn't get out of his car alone. "Why not?," I asked.  He immediately replied "It's not safe! ... wadda ya think!?"

Field Note: A seasoned probation/parole officer with dozens of gang members on her case load told me "There's a neighborhood here called the 'Armored Car Area' because no police will enter it with just one officer in the car."

Danger is present in nearly every situation in which police work. As one officer told me twenty years ago, "In every situation I walk into, there's a gun." I thought he was paranoid until he said "Mine."  In the year 2000 in the United States, 134 police officers lost their lives in the line of duty. Fifty-one were murdered and another 83 deaths were accidental. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2001) It's a dangerous job and getting out of a car in the middle of gang territory at two o'clock in the morning could be a mistake.

Nationwide, 51 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2000, according to preliminary statistics released today by the FBI. This number is an increase of 9 from the 1999 total of 42.

In 2000, firearms were again the weapon most often used in the slaying of officers with 33 officers slain with handguns, 10 with rifles, and 4 with shotguns. Two officers were slain with their own weapons. Additionally, 3 officers were killed by vehicles, and 1 officer was killed with a knife. Thirty officers were wearing body armor at the time of their deaths.

Twelve officers lost their lives in arrest situations: 6 were serving arrest warrants, 3 were investigating drug-related situations, 2 were trying to prevent robberies or apprehend robbery suspects, and 1 was attempting to prevent a burglary or apprehend a burglary suspect. Another 13 officers were murdered while enforcing traffic laws, 10 while encountering ambush situations, 8 while answering disturbance calls, 6 while investigating suspicious persons or circumstances, and 2 while handling prisoners.

In addition, preliminary statistics indicate 83 officers were accidentally killed in the performance of their duties in 2000—an increase of 18 compared to the 65 accidental deaths in 1999. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2001, italics added for emphasis)

While riding with the officers, I had a loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun drawn across my face and, in another incident, a gang member attempted to commit suicide in my presence. I heard bullets from his rifle tear through the leaves of trees on both sides of me. I quickly learned to appreciate the danger in which gang unit officers work.

Field Note: A gang unit officer said "In our gang unit, we always have to be ready for the worst. Gang bangers try to ambush us by luring us out of our patrol cars to conduct a chase. They shoot at us, throw things at our cars, threaten us, and kill us. Three officers were killed in this city last year alone. They were executed! You won't read about that in the newspaper. We can't let anyone know about that. We certainly can't let the gang members read about it."

Difficulties Related to Politics and Law

Field Note: It's 7:45 in the evening and time to report for my ride-along with the gang unit. Two of the gang unit officers met me at headquarters and told me there had been another drive by shooting. This one took place at a nearby city park. The suspect is already under arrest and being held in one of the department's holding cells. One of the officers said "Of course, we're not going to hear anything more about this." "Why not?," I asked. He replied "If the suspect has been arrested and there is every likelihood that the case can be closed, then the Crime Investigation Unit (which made the arrest) will take credit for it. They want the statistics, you know. Makes 'em look good." I asked if there was any gang involvement in the case and he said "Yes. But the Crime Investigation Unit said there isn't, so there isn't. I mean, if there is, then they would have to give the case to us - but they want the case. I hate the politics of it all."

The issue of "politics," as in many job settings, has to do with personal, departmental, and community politics as well as the "real" political structure in the community (legislators, mayors, etc.). You've already read about some of the problems gang unit officers experience in their relations with officers and units in their own department and with other law enforcement agencies. What follows are representative comments from gang unit officers regarding other political aspects of their gang work.

Field Note: "Ask most of the officers here what their biggest concern or fear is and they will tell you it's the department. They are on us for everything, and all this in response to political things. We have to be so careful, complete so much paper work. We're almost afraid to enforce the law for fear a citizen will file a complaint or the press will come down on us."

Political correctness, concern with their image in the community, and pressure from police administrators complicate the work of police. As if there weren't already enough difficulties related to working gangs, the issue of racism and profiling have once again emerged. The issue is faced by gang units officers in the United States as well as other countries.

Field Note: The British gang unit administrator said "The police are hamstrung by the liberal establishment in that they can not respond as needed to conflicts with non-whites. We have to walk softly with minorities. Blacks are mostly responsible for thefts in London. But the police can't do much about this because it is now politically incorrect to identify them as the problem."

I visited a part of London known for its Afro-Caribbean-led crack trade and stood in the midst of an outdoor market watching crack dealers selling their drugs only twenty feet in front of me. I was standing with three plainclothes officers all the while this was going on. About 15 minutes later we observed a white male in his mid-twenties walking up an exterior staircase looking as though he were smoking something. The officers immediately took off running after the white man. They ran up the stairs and caught him. As I walked up the stairs I looked down on one of the steps and saw a clear plastic water bottle with some aluminum foil wrapped around its opening. He had thrown the bottle down when he ran from the police.

The aluminum foil had been perforated and a hole about the diameter of a pencil had been created in the side of the bottle. He had allegedly placed a rock of crack cocaine on the foil, put his lips around the hole on the side of the bottle, lit a match, and used the bottle as a bong (a pipe-like device used for smoking). 

I brought the bottle to the scene where the officers were now searching a canvas athletic bag the suspect was carrying. We learned he was a part-time employee at a nearby bakery and he admitted he had just bought and smoked some crack. The officers cautioned him against smoking crack saying "You know what this will do to you, don't you?" They chatted with the man for a while then sent him on his way saying "Don't come back here to buy any more drugs. We know who you are now!"

When all was said and done, I asked the officers why they pursued the Caucasian user and didn't do anything about the Afro-Caribbean dealers we had been watching. That's when I was told about the Stephen Lawrence case - an African-British man who was beaten to death by several white gang members in the Greater London area. An inquiry into how the Lawrence case was handled (the police apparently botched the investigation and the case was lost in court) resulted in a finding of incompetence and racism within the police department. The public outcry against the police from the minority community produced a situation in which offenders of color are now often bypassed as police focus their attention elsewhere.

As to working in a politically charged environment, police must be responsive to several audiences - including the political leader of the city for which they work (i.e., Mayor, City Council, City Manager). These political figures are pressured by individual citizens and vested interest groups in ways which may eventually impede upon the police (usually through pressure put on the police administrator by the city adminstrator). 

If the Mayor, for example, is pressured by the local Chamber of Commerce to downplay the presence of gangs due to their potential impact on tourism and sales revenues, the gang unit ends up the at the brunt end of the deal. On the other hand, if a residents' association in a gang neighborhood gets the ear of the police administrator, it may be able to beef up the gang unit presence. The point is that much of what a gang unit ends up doing is influenced by politics. Few of the gang unit officers I interviewed approved of that way of creating their work agenda.

There are also difficulties in relation to implementing gang-related laws in the United States. In another portion of Into the Abyss are examples of legislation directed at gang-related behavior. Often referred to as "enhanced legislation," it provides for stiffer penalties for offenders convicted of committing gang-motivated or gang-related crimes. Police must have a well developed case against the accused addressing all the fine points of the law in order for an enhanced sentences to be imposed. That is a major difficulty. 

Building a case for enhanced punishment is not an easy task and requires a thorough knowledge of the law (both state and federal) and the ability to build a case which satisfies it. In addition, the intimidation of witnesses further complicates the work of police as well as prosecutors.

Difficulties Related to Gangs

As the new millennium begins, hybrid gangs are flourishing and their changing nature is making it more difficulty to study and respond to them. Today, many gangs do not follow the same rules or use the same methods of operation as traditional gangs... (Starbuck, et al., 2001, page)

I learned it may not be easy to determine if a gang is present in one's community. Or, if there is a gang, it may be difficult to prove their existence in court or that any given suspect is a member of the gang. This also makes the work of gang unit officers more difficult.

Field Note: The officer told me about the intersection of Hollister and Delmar in his community. "Lots of drugs and violence. But we and the community got on it so the drugs and violence have moved elsewhere."

The very nature of gangs complicates the work of the police. Where a gang has been detected, and a suppressive effort is carried out by the police, it is not uncommon for the gang members to move their operations elsewhere. The phenomenon the officer was talking about is called gang displacement - the movement of gang members and their illegal activities from one place to another. It solves nothing.

Some gang members have more than one moniker or two or more gang members may have the same moniker. Sometimes two or more gangs in the same community have the same name, or a gang changes its name. That make the work of the gang unit more difficult.

Field Note: "In this city there are two gangs with the same name and they're on two different sides of town. They don't know of each other, but to lots of us it looks like one huge gang."

I asked if the Deputies in the gang unit ever talked with non-gang members in the community, "just to find out what they think is going on." I was told "If we talk with someone like that we might be marking them for retaliation by a gang. The gangs don't know what we're talking about and they may think the individual is ratting on them."  

Once a gang has been discovered, there's no assurance its members will be living or operating in the same neighborhood tomorrow. As one gang unit supervisor said, "The mobility of gangs makes tracking their members nearly impossible." They change their name, switch cars, they even use "crack rentals" - renting guns, cars, and other things in exchange for crack. It can be a very confusing universe and can cripple police efforts to thwart the gangs.

Even city public transportation policies, originally designed to make the movement of shoppers through the city convenient and free, can thwart the work of the gang unit. I was told "Having a free bus zone downtown has complicated enforcement efforts because gang members and their clients begin their transactions on the street, complete them on a bus then get off the bus. This makes observing and following them impossible!"

Street sales, too, can be done in stages. A gang unit officer who had years of narcotics experience in the department told me "The buyer and seller agree in one place on whether the desired drug is available, they determine how much it costs in another place, the buyer pays for the drug in another, and gets the drug in yet another! If this is spread across enough blocks, we can't follow them and the mobile unit can't keep up because of difficulties with traffic."

Gangs operating in a neighborhood may only be there for brief periods of time, making detection nearly impossible. One of the gang unit supervisors told me "One of our bigger problems is groups or gangs that come into town on Friday and Saturday nights and commit crimes. Then they go back to their hometown - it's only a few miles down the road. This makes it very difficult for us to do follow up investigations. These individuals are not known here. It's almost impossible to catch an O.G. (original gangster) today. They're either not in the business any more but are teaching other people how to do the business, or they have a group of juveniles running guns and drugs for them. We hardly ever catch an O.G. red-handed. They have the juveniles do the dirty work 'cause, if they get caught, not much is going to happen to them. They're juveniles!"

The supervisor's frustration was obvious as he described members of a gang who, he said, say they are "Bloods or Crips, or half say they they're one and the other half the other. Because of this, our intelligence becomes outdated quickly. The point is, as the gangs and the gang situation changes, law enforcement has to change. At least that's the situation in our area."

Some gang members talk with gang unit officers in order to rat (provide information) on other gangs and gang members. A Canadian gang unit officer mentioned this as evidence that some gang members are comfortable coming in to talk to his unit. "The problem is," he said, "sometimes they do this just to get rid of some competition on the street. They rat on someone, we bust 'em, and the competition is gone."

As if the situation weren't difficult enough already, among the more common expressions of the police I interviewed was "This week's witness was last week's suspect and a victim the week before that.  And it's back and forth like that over and over." For hard-core gang members, I was told, "The code of silence among gang members makes investigations difficult."

Cultural Barriers and Difficulties 
Related to the Larger Community

"The ability of Asian gangs to operate with impunity in many Asian communities depends on a lack of trust in the criminal justice system, residents' unfamiliarity with the English language and American law, and law enforcement's difficulty in overcoming these cultural and linguistic barriers." (Finn and Healey, 1996, page)

In Seattle and Vancouver I learned that older Asians sometimes don't understand how the American system of justice works. They fear the police in the United States as they did in their homeland. For this reason they seldom call the police to report a victimization. If they do report a crime, they see the suspect arrested and taken to the police department. Then they hear that the suspect paid money to the police and was released. 

They don't know that the suspect is paying bail and they don't know what the word "bail" means. They think suspects are arrested then buy their release. That is another reason why some older Asians fail to report their own victimization or that of others. In one community I visited, a newly hired Asian police officer was spending his first year on duty explaining how the system works to elderly Asians and attempting to gain their trust and compliance in reporting crimes. 

Illegal immigrants from other cultures may be reluctant to contact police in their host country because they are vulnerable to the threat of deportation. This is a significant barrier to the work of gang unit officers since it stops the flow of information needed to build intelligence.

Field Note: The leader of the Asian gang unit told me "In Asia, law enforcement is ruthless. Asians see the American police as playing by the rules - not nearly as ruthless or rough with the population. So Asian criminals feel free to violate the law and anticipate minimal resistance from the criminal justice system. They see our system as so much different. So Asian offenders, including gang members, have no fear of it."

Some immigrant youth are at risk of creating gangs or joining existing ones as a result of failed attempts at integration or assimilation. I learned that lesson over a period of two years observing gangs in Amsterdam (Netherlands).

Field Note: I learned that approximately 50,000-60,000 Moroccans live in one small community adjacent to Amsterdam. I was told "Ninety-five percent of them are no problem at all, but about 5% are criminals." Later I was to learn that, at their present level of immigration and birth rate, minorities in general will constitute about 75% of Amsterdam's population within the next few years. I was told by police that "This is a fact and we have to find a way to respond to it in a good way. We don't want what has happened in the U.S. We need to emphasize community-oriented policing. Government spending must be shifted from use for external security to internal security - money for schools, communities and police." Until a year ago or so, police were not part of the conflict in Amsterdam. It was between Moroccan parents and their Amsterdam-born children and between the schools and those children. Now the police are involved because the youth are violating the law.

I recently attended an annual meeting of the Western Social Science Association. One of the categories in which presentations were being made was called "Borderland Issues." The presentations dealt with conflicts taking place between people whose nations or regions bordered one another.

There are borderland areas in conflict throughout the world. The problem is that some people have migrated to their new locations and brought their borderland conflicts with them. One example of this may be found in the nature of relations between Hindu and Muslim residents in north London who, daily, see their youth in conflict with each other. Their conflict is, in part, an extension of the borderland conflict between Pakistan and India.

Field Note: The British intelligence specialist told me " Sikh youth are, from birth, socialized into the reasons why Muslims are to be hated. Remember the 1947 partition of India by the British? We divided Pakistan into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered. This is one reason for the hatred. And the Sikhs are a fighting culture." This borderland conflict plays itself out as a Hatfield and McCoys situation between the Sikh and Muslim youth living in the greater London area.

These confrontations sometimes take on the flavor of gang activity as differing factions wear their religious group's colors and do battle with one another. The borderland conflicts also express themselves when a young man from one group asks out a young woman from the other, or if a perceived slight or act of disrespect occurs. Examples of other borderland conflict areas include the United States and Mexico, China and Taiwan, and Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam, to name a few whose conflicts are played out as gang activity on the streets of some American cities.

In Closing

All aspects of policing are potentially stressful and problematic, working gangs included. Either because of the difficulties identified above or because of the nature of some police or of policing itself, the response of police to these difficulties can sometimes be less than honorable. That takes us to the next topic -  police who "cross the line."