The FBI’s released a report entitled 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment – Emerging Trends. I’m not quite sure about the “emerging” part. That assumes that readers didn’t know that gangs are a major problem that’s getting majorer. Click here for the inside dope on the dope-fueled criminal conspiracy. Our man Eric drilled down to the key passage . . .

Gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90 percent in several others, according to NGIC analysis. Major cities and suburban areas experience the most gang-related violence. Local neighborhood-based gangs and drug crews continue to pose the most significant criminal threat in most communities. Aggressive recruitment of juveniles and immigrants, alliances and conflict between gangs, the release of incarcerated gang members from prison, advancements in technology and communication, and Mexican Drug Trafficking Organization (MDTO) involvement in drug distribution have resulted in gang expansion and violence in a number of jurisdictions.

Where the “gun violence” lives. Where the idea that you can control crime by cracking down on the supply of illegal guns gets all the respect it deserves (i.e. none)—at least from the people who know the problem from the inside.

You want to tackle firearms-related crime? Lock-up the gang bangers and legalize drugs. It wouldn’t solve the problem. Nothing can. But it would be a hell of a lot more effective than gun control laws. And a lot safer for American democracy, to boot.

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35 COMMENTS

  1. Forget gang control, focus on ending the War on Drugs. It doesn’t take a genius to realize what the root of the problem is. By criminalizing intoxicants, we have forced an extremely lucrative market into the hands of criminals.

    • Gangs are criminal conspiracies looking to peddle a product. The product might be drugs, protection, prostitution, tax evasion, violence for hire. Drugs are just one very lucrative item on their menu. Legalization is all about weakening the gangs by taking away their best income producer. The gang is still the root of the problem.

    • You can justify legalizing a lot of things [products?] gangs use to gain power… drugs, prostitution, etc.

      But at some point you run out of things you can justifiably leglalize.

      You can legalize pot… sure… but what if the crime is extortion involving vandalization [i.e. you pay us for protection or your windows get shot up…] or possibly murder [or your gradma gets capped… etc]?

      The real problem is that you have a bunch of guys out to make a profit by doing something that people who follow a decent moral code (forget laws… we’re also breaking mores here) would consider wrong, immoral, or illegal… and have no problem following through with violence or murder when they don’t get their way.

      It is Ironic that they follow the sin of Cain… who slew his brother Abel to sieze the latter’s flocks.

  2. This is a good example of how Govt. really cannot solve anything. It is easier to go after gun owners and spin a story of stopping crime because gun owners will comply but gangs will not. To the sheep it is a facade that something is being done, in reality nothing really gets solved except good people loose more of their rights.

    However, this is where Govt. is required because there is no economic incentive otherwise to clean up these areas and curruption is rampant as well (See Camden NJ).

    The problem is the whole issue is too hard for politicians to deal with and they rather take a softball approach. If you legalize drugs, then the drugs have to be cheaper than what can be had on the streets to eliminate the financial incentive of the gangs — this also runs into its own moral hazard of perhaps creating more drug addicts.

    There is not enough funding for drug addiction programs and they are expensive and success is never 100%. There is social-economic problems in many of these areas where education, jobs and oppurtunity are lacking and the family component is also missing.

    More money has to go into these areas so that the drug gangs are less attractive and there are job opportunities but it requires a lot of money. For example, for many in these areas they can only find jobs as far as the public transportation system will take them thus limiting where they can work. Improving transportation would help some.

    The “Broken Window” approach in many of these areas is needed but in addition, containment so that the gangs do no spread either.

    There is the “High Point Strategy” but as you can see in this article, most police depts are against it even though it seems to be working in Providence, RI (http://www.digtriad.com/news/article/195456/1/Cities-Rethink-Crime-Fighting-With-High-Point-Strategy

    )Nothing will be a 100% cure but doing nothing will not make things better either.

    Nobody has the political will nor willing to take accountablity for cleaning things up and in many cases, there is incentive for keeping things the way they are so dirty politicians can keep their jobs as well.

    In short it is a mess and it is easier to impose more gun restrictions that clearly do not work than solve the real problem.

    • Thanks for the link. It seems like one of those too good to be true deals, but I reckon it’s an excellent alternative to traditional policing. As far as drug addiction, I reckon it’s genetic. Cuts across all social strata. There’s not a lot that can be done to “prevent” it.

      • If it’s genetic, then we need to allow evolution to weed it out.

        1. Any evidence of influence of any substance counts as an aggravating circumstance. Drive and kill someone, it’s murder 1 and you go to the chair.

        2. No one is required to have any relationship with an addict. They can be fired, refused for rental, denied government benefits, and denied hospital care.

        Until legalizers agree to let drug use consequences fall only on the user, legalization is a non-starter.

        • I support your recommendations, since the only real way to stop drug addiction is to make sure addicts hit bottom as swiftly as possible, at which point the survivers finally decide to quit, and the others help the gene pool by dying. But drug legalization is still useful, even without your changes, since it at least gets the criminals out of the supply business, and lowers the price enough that many addicts can afford their fix without crime.

          But there is a pretty easy experiment to test legalization right now, fully legalize pot. It is low risk, because pot is nowhere near as dangerous as other drugs, and in fact is not any worse than tobacco and alcohol. And after legalzation we can test the predictions of each camp. Will legalization decrease pot related drug crime, as legalization supporters claim? Will it significantly increase usage, as legalization foes claim? The resulting answers can then inform us on whether further drug legalization could work.

        • This isn’t going to work very well for a few reasons. The biggest is that a lot of people who become addicts don’t do so until late enough in life that they might very well already have had several children. Another is that while there is almost certainly a genetic component to addiction there are also a lot of environmental factors. So many people with a genetic disposition toward addiction will not become addicts, but their children might.Also, the effects of addiction vary a great deal from addict to addict, and drug to drug. My guess is that over 50% of the US population is addicted to some legal drug. But caffeine addiction, for instance, is not a big deal for most people. Nicotine addiction mostly hurts the nicotine addict. Alcohol is, by far, the drug that does the most harm to both addicts and others. But outlawing it didn’t work out very well.On top of all that genetics is not as simple as you think. You can express traits that your parents don’t exhibit because they exist somewhere in your ancestry. You might be able to wipe out addiction by engaging in an extreme form of eugenics over quite a few generations, but I’d say that that cure would be quite a lot worse than the disease.

          Addiction is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. We ought to look at ways to minimize the harm it does. I think legalization is one way to do that. There are other measures we could take that might help too.

    • Perhaps a Hi-Point strategy (e.g. getting more firearms into the hands of responsible citizens) might be worth trying.

      • Here,Here! Considering where I live, (withheld) I run across this sh#@ everyday. Most of my neighbors carry, and we DO NOT TOLERATE this behavior on our block. We tried ignoring it last year, and the result was one dead, two wounded. Now, there are cameras on private property, increa

  4. Proponents of drug legalization are under the illusion that legalizing drugs will put the gangs out of business. Ending Prohibition did not put organized crime out of business in just gave them a legal revenue stream. The wholesale liquor trade is still controled by the Mafia in many areas. Legalize drugs and the gangs will still be making money off of drugs and still be engaging in criminal activity and turf wars. Gangs existed before drugs got big and they will exist afterwards.

    • “Ending Prohibition did not put organized crime out of business in just gave them a legal revenue stream.”

      There are two fundamental issues that the so-called “war on drugs” entails; The original intended goals of reduced usage, and a reduction in violent crime. The first of these goals has been successful at least to a degree, the latter has most demonstrably been a failure. The real question is whether we, as a society, value reduced violent crime, or reduced usage of drugs.

      • Gang violence has become so ingrained in our “urban” subculture that legalization will give rise to more addiction without reducing gang related violence. The root cause of gang violence is not drugs but the breakdown in civil society caused by the welfare induced disintegration of the family structure. Gangs flourish in neighborhoods that have fallen back into the state of nature.

        • The root cause of gang violence is not drugs but the breakdown in civil society caused by the welfare induced disintegration of the family structure.

          I don;t think that welfare is the only factor that caused the disintegration of the family structure, but the rest of your thesis is absolutely 100% spot on.

        • I agree. Legalizing drugs won’t make drug criminals disappear. Dealers are not about to get real jobs and be productive. And unless the government plans to hand out drugs for free the money to buy drugs will have to come from somewhere. Enough with the stories about bankers, doctors and successful ordinary folks toking it up and living NORML lives. The truth is a lot uglier.
          –
          And if tobacco is any indicator, the taxes on drugs sold legally will create a market for untaxed drugs. In CA they were up in arms that the state wanted to tax pot. They cried foul over their water pipes, after all it’s medication , right? All those ailing people and you have the nerve to ask for remittance to the state?
          –
          So the argument about legalizing, TAXING, and paying for all the goodness kinda gets thrown out at that point. This is why they are about decriminalizing it but not legalizing it since legalization opens the door to taxing pot.
          –
          Maybe the best solution is for adults to grow up and live life without chemical assistance. It is possible, you know.

  5. It seems that our culture approaches many issues by treating symptoms over the disease/root cause. I suppose the illusion of doing “something” alleviates the conscience of a person who knows deep down that they don’t want to face the work & sacrifice a real cure will take.

  6. I don’t trust the FBI’s statistics any more than I trust any other government statistics, or anything the FBI says. Which means I don’t trust the study even a little.

    As far as the “High Point” strategy, if the government and police in Providence say it’s working, then it isn’t. Period. The Providence government is so corrupt it makes the government of Ciudad Juarez look clean. The Mayor of Providence lies when he says “hello.” In fact, if it wasn’t for lies, the entire government of Providence might as well be made up of mutes because they’d have nothing to say. Mother Teresa once gave Providence the finger. Okay, I made the last thing up, but everything else I wrote about Providence is true.

  7. I see the current crime strategy in Fort Wayne is working real well. Richards suffers from a rectal cranium inversion.

    Having grew up just South of Fort Wayne, I can tell you that the War on Drugs is an utter joke and failure. When I was in High School and College, drugs were always very plentiful and a lot of people took them. I suppose the only real reason I did not become a druggie, alchie, or smokie was the stuff just never impressed me. It seems like a lot of the druggies realized as they grew older that going through life stoned was just not going to work and they were sooner or later going to really screw themselves up.
    I had some friends who messed themselves up taking drugs or getting killed in drug deals gone sour. Some of my friends died due to taking drugs.
    People just have to realize for themselves that the booze, ciggies, and drugs are just a bunch of crap.
    I have friends whose siblings were big into the drugs and alcohol and a lot of them thought the alcohol was worse.

  8. I think they should legalize drugs and tax the stuff. Treat drugs like alcohol and tobacco. I have heard Kentucky and Indiana grows better pot than Mexico anyway. I would rather see legal drug production in the USA, than Mexico.

    As far as most violence coming from gangs, what else is new? Most of the really bad violence in Fort Wayne, Indy, Cincy, has to do with gangs fighting for control of territory. Going on for decades now.

    One thing is for sure, I am just positive that all of the criminal gangs follow all of the Gun Laws completely and make sure to consult the BATF for expert advice in fire arms legality. I believe in the Wizard of Oz as well.

    I would bet that most of the drug gangs can get any type of weapon or explosive they want. I would not be surprised if some of the stuff was ripped off a military organization.

  9. Think about the 20’s and prohibition. Gangs, Violence, drive by shootings its all the same old shit. The war on drugs is just as wrong as prohibition, and the results are the same.

  10. You’re actually right about the legalizing drugs, Rob. I think anyone who does drugs is an idiot, but it’s their (stupid) choice to make. We’ve created a massive amount of crime by criminalizing drugs, just like how the gangs sprouted up after they enacted prohibition. Most gangs wouldn’t have a source of income or nearly as much of a reason to use violence if drugs were legal.

    Legalizing drugs would allow for increased taxes, less violence, more income / jobs, fewer people in jail, more time for the police to spend on real crimes, and less chance of someone getting bad drugs that results in death. If only politicians would quit trying to force arbitrary morality on people, we could have a much safer, freer, and more prosperous country.

  11. Short and simple solution is to make drug dealing, gun running, and gang affiliation all punishable by death and effect the sentence within a one year period.

  12. The question is basically how can you reduce the bad results of prohibition without causing a massive increase in drug use.

    My modest proposal is to sell drugs in government run stores the way some states sell alcohol. As government run entities, they will be open only when it is convenient to the government workers, which of course does not mean at night, on weekends or federal holidays. As a sweetener for politicians to vote for this proposal, workers at the government drug stores can be exempted from civil service regulations so that politicians can use the jobs as places to employ their idiot son in law or to supply political favors. You do not want the sale of dangerous drugs to the public to be particularly efficient.

  13. Forget gun control. See a gang tat from gang associated with viloence – shoot on site.

    Problem solved. These thugs aren’t human.

  14. Yes, the break down of the family structure, caused in part by the war on poverty and welfare, is part of the problem. However, another part of the problem is the “war on drugs” which consumes resources without producing a tangible benefit. We finance excessive police departments. Legalizing drugs, with the same sales tax everything else gets, will deflate the problem. Would we be having problems with meth that we have if marijuana, coke and heroin were available? Sounds as if some are using bath salts as an alternative to pot, and the bath salts are much worse for the user.

    One of the reasons marijuana was criminalized, and hemp as well, is because of crony capitalism going back to late 1800’s newspaper wars. Hemp makes wonderful paper, rope and textiles.

    After all these years of the war on drugs, exactly what percentage of high school students couldn’t get drugs if they wanted them?

  15. Milwaukee nailed it while I was writing the following:

    No one has brought up the issue of LEO involvement and incentives. The “War on Some Drugs” ™ is big business all around, not just for the gangs. The seizure laws give the cops and prison officials lots of reasons to keep the war going and little reason to see drugs legalized when much of their budget is directed toward drug interdiction and user punishment.

  17. Show up off of Columbia with supertanker.
    Tell cocaine suppliers that the US will deal with ONE dealer. Said dealer will fill up the tanker and get paid x amount of dollars.
    Rule 1. No more retail. Enforce it among any startups.
    Rule 2. If said dealer sells elsewhere, we will buy from someone else.

    Use cocaine to produce cheap pain killers, dump in ocean, or distribute for free to addicts, killing the market and drying up funds.

    Rinse, repeat, with poppy based drugs too.

    The cartel will police its own ruthlessly. The smuggling will be greatly reduced. The black market drys up. Once that is gone, gradually reduce drugs to addicts.

    Legalize grass. Its a common weed. And don’t try to tax it.

  21. Hey, The commenter from Wisconsin; I deal with this s$^* everyday in my ‘hood. Last year, we had one dead and two wounded because people didn’t care. Now, we have outdoor cameras, increased police protection. and a drop in the crime rate. ( no stats available. Call MPD.) I’m not saying that a block watch is the answer, but it sure helped here.

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