On the first night of TREXPO West 2009, four gang experts sat on a panel moderated by FOX 11 Los Angeles investigative reporter Chris Blatchford to discuss the challenges gangs pose for law enforcement.
Drug money is so corrupting that the drug lords have bribed both police and soldiers at the highest levels of the Mexican government.
The truth is that the state of American law enforcement is a very fluid thing.
Ride around the streets of Salisbury, N.C., and you'll see graffiti that looks out of place. Gangs in this Southern city have splattered once-pristine walls with messages pledging allegiance to gangs in Los Angeles and New York City.
In cases involving gang violence, get to the scene quickly, find the witnesses, and document who these witnesses are and what they say. Then if gang members do change their version of events, at least it can be explained why this person did what he or she did.
Back about 20 years ago when gangs in Los Angeles were shooting at each other in drivebys and hitting a lot of innocent bystanders, I was fond of saying that I had a solution for the gang problem: marksmanship lessons.
They may seem disorganized, they may act stupid, they may look really young, but they are deadly and cunning as sharks.
Tactical consultant John Giduck used a lot of humor in his six-hour two-day keynote presentation at TREXPO West. And that's a good thing because Giduck's presentation is about Islamist terror attacks on children, especially school children. So if his audience of veteran cops and soldiers didn't have some comic relief, they'd probably start crying.
In a Broken Windows crime model, graffiti is one of those foothold crimes that leads to a neighborhood's decay.
"This war has the potential to last beyond our children's lifetimes and to be fought mostly on U.S. soil." —Michael Scheuer, "Imperial Hubris"