http://www.newsweek.com

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The Most Dangerous Gang in America
They're a violent force in 33 states and counting. Inside the battle to police Mara Salvatrucha.
By Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek

March 28 issue - The signs of a new threat in northern Virginia emerged ominously in blood-spattered urban streets and rural scrub. Two summers ago the body of a young woman who had informed against her former gang associates was found on the banks of the Shenandoah River, repeatedly stabbed and her head nearly severed. Last May in Alexandria, gang members armed with machetes hacked away at a member of the South Side Locos, slicing off some of his fingers and leaving others dangling by a shred of skin. Only a week later in Herndon, a member of the 18th Street gang was pumped full of .38-caliber bullets, while his female companion, who tried to flee, was shot in the back. The assailant, according to a witness, had a large tattoo emblazoned on his forehead. It read MS, for Mara Salvatrucha, the gang allegedly responsible for all these attacks.

At the nearby headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents—many of whom live in these communities—fielded the reports with mounting alarm. But Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, wasn't terrifying just northern Virginia. "They were popping up everywhere," says Chris Swecker, assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division. "It seemed like we were hearing more and more about MS-13." Then one day last fall, FBI Director Robert Mueller called Swecker into his office. "You have a mandate to go out and address this gang," Mueller told him. Mueller declared MS-13 the top priority of the bureau's criminal-enterprise branch—which targets organized crime—and authorized the creation of a new national task force to combat it. The task force, which includes agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), aims to take on MS-13 much as the FBI once tackled the Mafia.

Composed of mostly Salvadorans and other Central Americans—many of them undocumented—the gang has a uniquely international profile, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in 33 states in the United States (out of more than 700,000 gang members overall), and tens of thousands more in Central America. It's considered the fastest-growing, most violent and least understood of the nation's street gangs—in part because U.S. law enforcement has not been watching as closely as it might have. As authorities have focused their attention on the war against terrorism, MS-13 has proliferated. In the FBI's D.C. field office, the number of agents dedicated to gang investigations declined by 50 percent. "There was a definite shift in resources post-9/11 toward terrorism," says Michael Mason, assistant director in charge of that office. "As a result, we had fewer resources to focus on gangs," though he adds that the bureau made up for any shortfall by leveraging resources from other agencies. In recent weeks, authorities have made strides against MS-13: a gang leader accused of orchestrating a December bus bombing in Honduras that killed 28 people was arrested in Texas in February, and a recent seven-city sweep by ICE netted more than 100 reputed MS-13 members. But Robert Clifford, head of the new national task force, says "no single law-enforcement action is really going to deal the type of blow" necessary to dismantle the gang. No one is more interested in busting up MS-13 than leaders of the Latino community, who live with the fear and fallout of the gang's savage actions.

MS-13 got started in Los Angeles in the 1980s by Salvadorans fleeing a civil war. Many of the kids grew up surrounded by violence. Del Hendrixson of Bajito Onda, a gang-outreach program, remembers an MS-13 member who recounted one of his earliest memories: guarding the family's crops at the age of 4, armed with a machete, alone at night. When he and others reached the mean streets of the L.A. ghetto, Mexican gangs preyed on them. The newcomers' response: to band together in a mara, or "posse," composed of salvatruchas, or "street-tough Salvadorans" (the "13" is a gang number associated with southern California). Over time, the gang's ranks grew, adding former paramilitaries with weapons training and a taste for atrocity. MS-13 eventually adopted a variety of rackets, from extortion to drug trafficking. When law enforcement cracked down and deported planeloads of members, the deportees quickly created MS-13 outposts in El Salvador and neighboring countries like Honduras and Guatemala.

Flush with new recruits from Central America, whether fleeing the law or accompanying parents seeking work along the immigrant trail, MS-13 members have set up cliques—geographically defined subgroups—in such remote redoubts as Boise, Idaho, and Omaha, Neb. In these new settings, gang culture often morphs. "Everything gets bastardized as it leaves the center," says Wes McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Association. While machete attacks might occur on the East Coast, they're rare on the West Coast. While car thefts and drug trafficking might be big in North Carolina, gang-on-gang violence predominates in Virginia. It's that decentralized nature of MS-13—with no clear hierarchy or structure—that makes it so vexing to authorities. "Taking out the heart of the leadership is very hard if there is no definitive leadership," says one federal law-enforcement official.

But that could be changing. According to a 2004 report by the National Drug Intelligence Center, the gang "may be increasing its coordination with MS-13 chapters in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia, and New York City, possibly signaling an attempt to build a national command structure." One potential illustration of such an effort: on New York's Long Island last year, an MS-13 honcho arrived from the West Coast "to try to organize these various cliques or sets into a more formal structure," says Robert Hart, supervisory special agent with the FBI. "That's a significant step in the development of MS-13." And in northern Virginia, U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty observes that "in some of the violent crimes, there seems to be a kind of approval process in some kind of hierarchy beyond the clique."

If MS-13 is seeking to create a national command in the United States, it would be emulating its model in El Salvador. There, says Oscar Bonilla, director of the National Council for Public Security, the gang is "highly organized and disciplined ... with semi-clandestine structures and vertical commands." As a result, its criminal operations are all the more efficient and pervasive. The administration of President Tony Saca has responded with a super mano dura ("super hard hand") policy, reforming the penal code to facilitate gang prosecutions. "We're not dealing with Boy Scouts or bums," Saca told NEWSWEEK. "We're dealing with true assassins, rapists."

In the United States, Clifford's new national task force, which will be housed at FBI headquarters, is preparing a hard hand of its own. Serving as a national repository for MS-13 intelligence, it will help discern trends, prioritize targets and diagram whatever leadership structure might exist. There's an international dimension, too: U.S. investigators will be exchanging information—such as a gang member's movements and associates—with their counterparts in Central America. FBI agents sitting in regional U.S. embassies will serve as liaisons with local authorities, and Salvadoran advisers will come to the United States to share their MS-13 expertise. All of which amounts to "a comprehensive international attack against MS-13," says Clifford.
  
But some kinks remain. In the recent sweep conducted by ICE, the agency nabbed a gang member whom the FBI was intensely interested in. "This was not somebody we were ready to scoop up," says a federal law-enforcement official, who complains that ICE didn't alert other agencies of its impending raid. (An ICE spokeswoman insists that all targets were cleared with other agencies. Another ICE official grumbles that "the bureau thinks it has jurisdiction over everything.") Meanwhile, down in El Salvador, officials fear the repercussions of another batch of MS-13 deportees heading their way. "Those deportations are a time bomb," says Bonilla. "When a gang member is deported from the United States, it destroys in one month what we've achieved in a year of [gang-prevention work]." For authorities to succeed in this war, they'll need to cooperate at least as well as the gang they're trying to wipe out.

They had on one of the cable 24/7 news channels the other night, that the horrific incident that happened in NJ where those kids were killed execution style. Of course they gave more details than I really wanted to know. But anyways they think that it may be this MS-13 gang since they are capable of such violence.

We know that there are gangs in the city of Schenectady already. These gangs are becoming a social problem that clearly needs to be addressed now as it seems to be spreading rapidly!

The news report of the first homicide of 2007 in Albany attributes the shooting and the subsequent stabbings of several youths to violence between the "Uptown" and the "Downtown" gangs.

So, gang warfare is occurring in our communities.  Much of this likely results from a battle for "turf" on which drugs can be sold.

What are our elected representatives doing to address this issue?

Why do we have to 'address' the gang.....take 'em out.....'Eliot Ness style'....not Eliot Spitzer style......

we need to read the writing on the wall.....dont wait for the flood like New Orleans and Katrina.....

We can go and pass 'hate crimes'....would the gangs be considered 'hate crimers'?? It is thought crime is it not??

Because if this scourge is not taken care of the sale of AK47's will go up....just from the purchases by residents in the areas,,,,talk about 'terrorists' and anarchy.....

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What are our elected representatives doing to address this issue?

Proposing a law that prohibates the sale of spray paint and markers to minors!!! Go figure!!!

Good one Bumble. Senders I also agree that the number of AK47's are going up already as people arm themselves to protect their family from crimminals coming out of the city.

http://www.timesunion.com

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Jungle Junkies members admit crimes  
  
By JIMMY VIELKIND, Staff writer
Thursday, August 23, 2007

ALBANY - Two members of the Jungle Junkies gang pleaded guilty to charges of drug trafficking and acts of violence associated with their membership, federal prosecutors said.
  
Ramaar Milner, 22, and Shabar Perkins, 20, admitted that they and other Jungle Junkies members in Arbor Hill "routinely engaged in criminal activities which included crack cocaine and marijuana trafficking, possession of firearms, and acts of assault, robbery, and attempted murder against rival gang members," U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby said in a statement.

Both men were charged with racketeering conspiracy and face life in prison. Police and federal authorities charged 30 alleged members and associates of the gang, some of whom were already serving prison and jail time, in a sweep of arrests last October. At least 10 others have already pleaded guilty.

In the initial hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian described Milner as not only a member of the gang but a higher-level crack dealer.

Milner was also quoted in a rap video as saying "Damn right I'm going to cock it and shoot it. ... Try me, it won't be hard to find out what this psycho crave."

Perkins and Milner will be sentenced in December.

I guess these gangs are everywhere now.

http://www.timesunion.com

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Violent Rochester drug gang is broken up, 13 imprisoned  
By BEN DOBBIN, Associated Press
Thursday, August 23, 2007

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- A violent drug-dealing gang known as Murder Unit has been dismantled and all 11 gang members who were picked up on federal drug conspiracy charges in 2004 have now been imprisoned, authorities said Thursday.
  
The gang controlled drug trafficking in a poor, predominantly black enclave in northeast Rochester where most of the men, who were rounded up in October 2004 after months of surveillance, grew up, U.S. Attorney Terrance Flynn said.

The self-labeled Murder Unit was involved in multiple shootings and other attacks on rival drug dealers, Flynn said. Its members wore "red bandannas around their ankles and in their pockets and were known for controlling every facet of narcotic and violent activity in that area," he said.

One by one since November 2005, the defendants have drawn prison sentences ranging from five years to 20 years for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and crack cocaine between 2000 and 2004.

The last defendant, Shermell Prather, 31, drew a 12-year sentence last week, and the gang has been "completely dismantled at this point," Flynn said.

Two other men linked to the group were prosecuted on state weapons charges and sentenced to up to two years in prison.

The investigation was triggered by complaints from residents, and "this is a shining example of what can happen when people in the neighborhoods do come forward," Monroe County District Attorney Mike Green said.

"We used information from this investigation to help solve several homicides and hold people responsible in state court for many of the homicides," Green added. "There were many violent acts, including killings, associated with this group."

Drug-dealing gangs have been implicated in the bulk of killings in Rochester, which has earned the unenviable title of New York's murder capital over much of the last two decades.

Largely mirroring a national pattern, killings here dropped from a peak of 68 in 1993 to a 17-year low of 29 in 1999 before climbing again to 54 in 2005. Already this year, 33 people have been killed, including a 25-year-old woman, Shalonda Simpson, who was shot outside a school in a suspected robbery early Thursday.

http://www.dailygazette.com

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Baseball caps with colors, icons of gangs pulled by maker
The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — A lineup of team logo baseball caps that critics denounced as tailor-made for gang members was removed from store shelves by its manufacturer Friday after complaints from baseball officials.
   “It has been brought to our attention that some combinations of icons and colors on a select number of our caps could be too closely perceived to be in association with gangs,” said Christopher H. Koch, CEO of New Era Cap. “In response, we, along with Major League Baseball, have pulled those caps.”
   The three styles in question used colors and symbols linked to three gangs: an all-white cap with a blue bandanna, the trademark of the notorious Crips; an all-white cap with a red bandanna worn by the rival Bloods; and a black cap with a gold team logo and an embroidered crown, a symbol favored by the Latin Kings.
   “We encouraged and now fully support the decision of cap manufacturer New Era to pull these caps and any others that feature offensive or concerning symbols,” said an MLB statement. The New York Yankees had joined an antigang group, Peace on the Street, in denouncing the hats.
   Both MLB and the Yankees insisted they were unaware of the symbolism in the cap designs, with the New York team noting they were never given a chance to review the new hats until they were already for sale.
   The team was “completely unaware that caps with gang-related logos and colors had been manufactured with the New York Yankees logo on them,” said a Yankees statement. “The New York Yankees oppose any garment that may be associated with gangs or gang-related activity.”
   On Thursday, protesters demonstrated about the new caps outside several Manhattan stores carrying the merchandise. The stores were selling a version of the hats bearing the familiar interlocking “NY” logo of the Yankees.
   New Era said it would increase its efforts to ensure it had a better working knowledge of gang symbols, names and locations. The Buffalo-based company has produced hats for Major League Baseball since the 1930s.  

  
  
  

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New Era said it would increase its efforts to ensure it had a better working knowledge of gang symbols, names and locations. The Buffalo-based company has produced hats for Major League Baseball since the 1930s.

So was New Era really innocent here? Or were the well aware of the gang symbols and were trying to make some bucks off of them?  

Get the money and run.....perfect tactic.....greed and social stigma lets this kind of crap go on.....NIMBYs.......We can use the stock market and say "we didn't know"........we do live in a crazy world........

there is a thread of mental illness that is woven through the human race and it has many names.....greed, covetousness, lasiviousness, murder, etc etc....