Patrol officers are an essential source of gang information and usually make up the front line defense against gangs. Through field contacts and observations, they can supply confirmation of an individual's gang membership.
Dallas Police Officer Cat Lafitte found a creative way for graffiti vandals who have been painting pillars under the freeway at Deep Ellum to greet officers.
"All black people are their enemies," Deputy Dist. Atty. Gretchen Ford said in the murder trial of two Latino gang members. "Really innocent people could die for no reason other than the ridiculous ideas of this gang."
Sureños can be found in every major city in the U.S. They can be found in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and South America. The big transnational super gangs such as Florence, 18th Street, and Mara Salvatrucha threaten the stability of some Central American nations.
Mark Anthony Villasenor, 16, is accused of fatally shooting 40-year-old Ronald Barron, who confronted Villasenor for tagging a wall in the Mid-City area.
The Collective Eye offers this tutorial on how to understand gang graffiti symbols, handshakes and codes, using as an example the distinction between People versus Folks in the Chicago-area gang lexicon. Excerpted from The Heart Broken in Half, an anthropological documentary about a Chicago street gang, the Latin Kings.
Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich wants to give police the ability to arrest "taggers" simply for hanging out together, without having to catch them in the act -- raising thorny constitutional issues as he lays the groundwork for a campaign to tackle the city's vexing graffiti problem.
Graffiti continues to be used as a written form of communication between street gangs. An observant patrol officer can read graffiti and collect valuable information about past, current and future gang activities. Graffiti can be used to mark off turf boundaries, give insults to rival gangs, act as a warning of impending death, list fallen comrades, announce the presence of a gang in a certain area of the city or show gang alliances. Editor's Note: Images contain profanity.
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 a Broken Windows crime model, graffiti is one of those foothold crimes that leads to a neighborhood's decay.
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