Gangs Investigation

Aggressive police anti-gang activity in the late 20th century can be dated to the mid-1970s, when the law enforcement campaign against gangs called Total Resources Against Street Hoodlums (TRASH) was initiated in East Los Angeles. This movement toward a robustly proactive approach to street gang crime represented a shift from the social controls traditionally used for dealing with juvenile violence, particularly in urban areas, since the turn of the century. Such a shift in tactics mirrored a hardening in attitudes across local, state, and federal governments toward gang populations in the post-1960s period as gang violence and crime increased dramatically across the country. As a progressive, reformist phase of U.S. history waned, an era of neoconservativism was fully instituted with the first Reagan administration at the beginning of the 1980s. During the decade that followed, the generalized belief that the increasing crime rate, often attributed to the very real signifying elements of gangs, drugs, and violence, was indissolubly linked to the pathological character and cultural deficits of the inner-city poor. This became an ideological mainstay behind calls for more aggressive law enforcement, particularly with regard to urban street gangs.

This change in national politics is the foreground to some of the anti-gang initiatives witnessed in recent years, but it is also important to note the background factors. In the final two decades of the previous century, the United States saw a massive downsizing of its social safety net, including sustained government cuts in welfare, housing, health, and public education. During the same period, the National Youth Gang Center reported that at least 21,500 gangs operated across the country and that more than 731,000 members were active nationwide. To manage the increase in the numbers of criminal activities in the inner city and the suburbs, the areas from which gangs draw the bulk of their recruits, sharp increases in the budgets and resources of law enforcement and correctional institutions have been the rule.

Numerous studies over the past two decades, difficult to overlook, point to the very real crimes of violence perpetrated by gangs in large urban centers all over the country. Also, such gang violence has moved to suburban locations as well. The National Alliance of Gang Investigators Association reported that membership in gangs permeates American society, cutting across all socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial groups.

There is no denying that gang members are responsible for a large number of serious crimes, especially drug-related and violent offenses. In general, gangs account for much more crime than nongang criminals, and that gang-related crime and[Page 202] delinquency are much more violent than nongang delinquency. Criminologists in numerous longitudinal and other studies focusing on such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, St. Louis, and other locales found that gang violence and homicides were more likely to involve minority males and the use of firearms, and that gang members committed more delinquent acts and violent crimes than non-gang members. For example, one study found that gang members accounted for 79% of all violent juvenile offenses committed in Denver, and that 35% of the city's homicides were gang related. These studies also found that criminal activity declines when a member leaves a gang. It is in this political and historical context that the need arose for antigang actions among both planners and practitioners of law enforcement.

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