steady hustlin Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 oh damn, good looks. Link to comment
El4D Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 Looks DOPE homie, keep it up. Link to comment
Luddy Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 (edited) We appreciate all the kind comments. Shoot me a PM for a link to our Discord group chat. Q&A with a gang expert By Marshall Allen, Staff writer LOS ANGELES -- Malcolm Klein, 73, is a professor emeritus at USC who has studied street gangs for more than 40 years. Klein views gangs from an academic perspective, which often differs from the image portrayed by the police and media. What is the difference between your definition of a street gang and the police definition? How do the police define a street gang, and how do you define a street gang? The law enforcement communities say a criminal street gang is any group, formal or informal, of three or more persons, one of whose primary purposes is to commit crimes of the following sort … and then they list a series of felonies. Any person who joins such a group, so defined, is then liable to sentence enhancements. (Academics say) a street gang is any enduring street-oriented youth group for which illegal activity is part of its identity ... that separates a street gang from all the other youth groups, and also from other types of gangs, prison gangs, motorcycle clubs, and from criminal cartels, the Mafia, etc. It's very different from the legal definition. You notice we don't talk about size. Second, we don't say they are a criminal group, we don't say they have a primary purpose to come together for illegal activity. Most gang members come together for identity, for belonging, for excitement, for what they think is going to be protection … they're wrong of course, it makes them more vulnerable. The enforcement viewpoint is really predicated on a couple of points. One is what they want to do with this gang problem. Second is what is it they have seen that gives them understandings like this. Their view is necessarily limited to the gang members they come across and those they come across most often. Well, who are those? Those are the more visible, the older, the more violent, the more criminal, the ones who articulate the gang mentality. So the police get this image which then becomes the image for prosecutor, for the court, for the juries, for the press. But there's 70 percent of the gang members out there that they don't know about. Police see a different picture of gangs and that picture is what they use to form their practices and their policies. How do the police typically approach gang enforcement? How does this affect gangs? What the police tend to do is respond to the gangs as groups, not as individuals. (The police) roust them on the corners, call them by their gang names instead of their given names - to show off that you know who they are … and take advantage of establishing a power relationship in which they're on top and the gang kid is on the bottom. The gang kid is not going to appreciate that and all he's going to do is resent it. And it's going to reinforce his identity with the gang, which is not what you want to do, because that reinforced identity means more crime. (Gang members) have what researchers call an "oppositional culture" -- anything you do for them, by them, to them, with them, on their behalf or against them, they will turn in their minds to increase their own identity as a gang. They'll use it in just the reverse fashion from what you want. How organized are street gangs? Is there such thing as gang loyalty? Gang loyalty is a wonderful rhetoric, but any gang cop will tell you how many gang members he's turned. Gang loyalty is a wonderful thing to talk about: "I got your back, man." Unless there's three of them in which case I don't have your back. Most gangs are not very well organized. There are some shot callers in the most highly organized gangs, or cliques of gangs, but to expect that a 25- year-old so called shot-caller is going to tell a bunch of 15-year- old kids what to do misstates what we know about adult-juvenile behavior. There are senior members and there are OGs. See "shot caller" is not a gang term it's a police term. The police made up the term "shot caller," the police made up the term "wannabe." These are denigrating terms the police use to describe this overly organized system of relationships which in most gangs doesn't really exist. Is there any solution to the gang problem? I don't see a solution. The programs that are being tried by and large have not been shown to be successful. Some have shown to be remarkably unsuccessful or even worsening the problem. I think most people define gangs as a police problem, and it's a great deal more than a police problem. It's a community problem. Gangs don't come out of nowhere. An obstetrician doesn't give birth to a child, and say, "Congratulations, you've just given birth to an 8- pound homeboy!" If I had my billions of dollars to spend I would spend it on trying to reorganize those communities, reorder those communities … bring more self control, social control, informal social control. More clubs, dads groups, older teens working with younger teens, churches; bring resources into the community the community can use. Is this a hopeless situation? I don't want to be in the paper saying it's hopeless, but yes, a certain portion of it is hopeless, having reached this point we will never be without street gangs. The nature of our western society, our capitalist society, is the haves versus the have nots. And the have nots turn to various other things, or are forced into other things, not just gang activity … drug activity, homelessness, prostitution, other things. It's going to be an enduring problem. It doesn't have to be as severe as it is. It doesn't have to be as widespread as it is. It doesn't have to be as violent as it is. What would you say to the public about gangs? Most of us will never have contact with a gang member. Most of them shouldn't be reading gang stories. Most of them shouldn't be concerned about walking in their communities and being assaulted by a gang members. Marshall Allen can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4461, or by e-mail at [email protected]. Edited October 27, 2017 by Luddy Link to comment
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