Also by Richard Valdemar

Following the horrors of WWI, American culture descended into the "almost anything goes" attitude of liberal Europe. Scantily clad "Flappers" and dapper gangsters got high on drugs and booze and danced the Charleston to brazen jazz bands.

I remember riding with another L.A. Deputy Sheriff in an East Los Angeles gang car in 1975. To me, it was a privilege working with a special gang suppression unit, but my partner complained that he hated working gangs because it was useless. But he was wrong.

Not everyone is graced with the skills necessary to identify and develop gang informants. It's like the ability to strike up a conversation with a stranger of the opposite sex when dating; some people just have that flirtatious flair, and some don't.

Why do the otherwise productive anti-gang programs of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia not work in Los Angeles? Why do these same cities seem overwhelmed by the flood of Southern California gang members? 

The dynamics of Los Angeles and the Crip and Blood gangs of the 1980s presented certain criminal entrepreneurs with to opportunity to control the drug trade in large sections of the city, and the L.A. drug lifestyle provided an unlimited consumer base for expansion; it was supply and demand economics in its most vicious form.

Throughout history gangs have developed, multiplied, and mutated into many forms. Today one of law enforcement’s biggest problems is the inability of law enforcement intelligence to accurately estimate the number of gangs and gang members. There are several reasons for this, but the key one is that we have no universally accepted definition of a gang.

The traditional gangs are those that are territorial or claim turf. This would include your Hispanic “Cholos,” the African-American Blo

Take a close look at the recent media coverage of the rioting in France, and you will see that those young French men of Arab and African descent are wearing identifying tattoos.

One afternoon about five years ago, I was summoned from my desk at the detective division of a major Southern California urban sheriff's department and asked to meet one of the staff drill instructors at our academy gymnasium.