Gangs are again becoming a significant problem in Wichita, our editorial today reported. Of 22 homicides in Wichita this year as of Wednesday, 15 were gang-related. Wichita police today are launching a campaign to educate the city’s bar owners about how to spot and prevent gang activity.
The gang scene is changing, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams (in photo) told The Eagle editorial board. It’s less dominated by drugs than in the 1990s. And those committing violent crimes are younger — 16, 17, 18 years of age. “We have to make a difference in the elementary schools,” Williams said. Parents have to be aware and involved, because gangs are recruiting kids at an earlier age.
It’s a community challenge.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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30 Comments
Why aren’t gangs attacked as organized crime? They should use the same law they used against kkk, to go after them. Anyone dispalaying gang attire, or identifying themselves as gang members by other display, should be subject to arrest, once gang membership is outlawed.
RICO laws work well
We should look at why kids join gangs. Then try to address that.
Even when police arrest one of the little ‘gang-bangers’ they have to take them to juvinile court where they are slapped on the wrist and turned loose. We could get rid of the ‘juvie’ court joke if the police would take these little monsters and drop them off at the door of our local state senators and state representives.
haha thinkfirst! :D
An amusing and creative way to create legislation that might work. :D
Not a problem if you keep reloading.Punk-azz gangsters should all be body bagged
How do you distinguish between a group of friends and a gang? Consider for example, a group of young people attending the carnival in Lawrence-Dumont Stadium parking lot during the River Days celebration? I suspect it is safer for young people to attend activities like that with their group of friends.
I think, we know pretty well why kids join gangs. It’s been explained a hundred times and I don’t mean this as a putdown, to the previous poster.
The problem is: Ineffective parents,a lack of teaching discipline and respect, at home and school. Further, the juveniles know, whatever they do, will result in a badge of honor and a reduced sentence at a detention center.
Gangs, cause 90%, of the crime in Wichita because, the current laws allow too much leniency for these young criminals
You do the crime, you should pay the price regardless, of their ages!!
Well if the group of friends are all displaying the same colors, flashing signs, or in general have the demeanour of being in a gang, I’d suspect they are probably in a gang.
…or a baseball team practicing their infield signs before a game…
That could be a difficult call, not.
Guns in young people’s hands will eventually get fired.
Some young people afraid of gangs, try to act brave against criminal threats, arm themselves.
Some shooters are first time offenders. Their crimes leap to the felony from being a community nuisance. Vandalism kind of person.
Shootings can be pro-active horrible actions, to attack a gang first. To attack people associated with a gang.
All the shootings aren’t happening from seasoned gang members.
Horrible gang members are trying to create street cred. They try to rob and shoot people.
Kids can be in a group, but they shouldn’t get high and drunk together.
Nothing worse than mob mentality, and some of them have guns.
Little mobs of kids, drunk, high or armed something bad will happen. Innocent people can be attacked, because they were in the wrong place.
I’ll never forget a store owner shot to death by a gang member needing money to feed his young daughter. The store owner wasn’t a stranger to the kid. It was a criminal necessity moment.
I hate those crimes. What allows young people and pregnancy.
Desperation to feed or take care of a child. They are children themselves!
A 16 year old girl can get housing on her own with a baby? Look who she invites over. She has no ability to stop bad people from hanging out there.
Wait until she does get mentally strong enough to break up from a guy with a gun. That guy is likely to shoot her.
Gangs exists and there are young babies in their world. That is the tragedy.
I hate to say this but it needs to be said. Race is a big factor in gangs.
We keep on saying “kids”, but we all know we can spot a gang member out. It’s no secret.
When you see a 19 year old, wearing a basketball jersey and gold chains, slumped down in his car seat, bumping rap music and driving a Cadillac Escalade in the middle of the day, knowing that person doesn’t have a job nor can a person like that afford such a automobile from just collecting allowance money. You know something is wrong. But the cops can’t pull him over, because it will be racial profiling.
What race does in America is produce a culture and that in turn creates the street culture that is acceptable in certain aspects of our society.
The “Don’t Snitch” campaigns promoted by rappers and enforced by street drug dealers and thugs on the street creating a modern day ghetto gestapo.
When you have more black men in prison that you have black men enrolled in college there is a serious problem.
U.S. Department of Justice ยท Office of Justice ProgramsBureau of Justice Statistics:
At year end 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.
What has caused this huge breakdown in culture that creates huge disparities between the races?
To start without racism, the best solution to a social disease is thru classification.However, classification is a difficult process without profiling, how do we identify what is a lawful assembly of people and gang association?Do we ID by culture or do we ID by reputation of the group or by the individual?
Italians for how long in their mob culture has demanded no snitches.
Culturally people don’t want to rat out their friends and family. That’s in all races.
Japanese, Chinese, Korean gangs in America. They use language as a code of silence.
Races attack their own, more than others! That tells you something!
White gangs may not wear colors but they can act gang like in mob mentality.
I’ve seen Mercedes and BMW’s being driven by white teenagers, because of their parents.
How do gangs make money, drug sales.
Middle class, educated and with advantages, has a drug problem. People get high nightly, not just occasionally.
The ultra rich live the high life style. Drugs are fuel for the most famous people.
Violent streets is where drugs come from.
Addictions are in all classes of people.
Some chose to deal drugs than go to high school or college.
The street criminals laugh they make more money. But they burn through that cash, always spending on bling, style and cars they drive.
Some gang members do make legit money. They sell gang culture as entertainment to other people. They can do it locally or nationally.
Pointing out race, who is in jail, doesn’t stop the jails from being full of irresponsible people.
The drunks and abusers. Thief and robbers. Tax cheats and embellezers.
What causes white serial killers? Who cares, something has to stop all serial killers before they start.
Random white guys are just as dangerous same as obvious gang members. Haven’t we seen the single white guy committing murder recently? What stood out? Who feared, just by looking at them?
What gang member has many murders as BTK? Who caused more society fear?
Economics is flawed on poor people. They get higher interest rates. Struggling neighborhoods get more pawn shops and liquor stores, than Credit Unions and Banks.
Cities abandon some area’s of town.
Live in a bad neighborhood its hard to get out. Bus system spotty its hard for some getting to a better job. Having kids without economics, makes families struggle.
One has to stay home, the other works supporting too many family members on a small check.
Aren’t all children born the same, if parents don’t have addictions.
Kids without genetic problems have equal chance to grow up well.
But adults aren’t equal financially. That causes bad childhood developments. Food kids eat can harm their learning.
Some Americans don’t speak well at all, they have children. Kids never learn to read is amazing but it happens.
Foreign language parents teach small children that and not English. Harms kids assimilation into American culture.
No more wrist slaps. When they show up in juvenile court, in addition to their wrist-slap sentence: add 5 years for gang affiliation in possession of illegal gun; add 10 years for gang affiliation committing gun crime; add 20 years for gang affiliation committing aggravated assault or murder. Make it stick, and make ‘em an example.
Americans are many times more likely to be killed by a gang member than an Al-Quida terrorist, and yet you don’t see that problem being seriously addressed. Maybe Bush will come up with a color code alert system for it! (By the way, whatever happened with the almost daily color code TERRORIST alert, did they quit serving the purpose for which they were created, to instill fear and numb the minds of the sheep?)
Deal with gang members and illegals the same way; kill ‘em.
Parkay: You got it right!!
I hope sgt. slaughter is posting from Iraq, he sounds like a lean mean killing machine and Uncle Sam needs you.
This is a BIG problem, and none of the answers are really acceptable. We ARE in America, where one has freedom of speech, and of association. BUT, because of the social reasons already mentioned, we have created a sub-culture that resists normal treatment. Lock them up, and they exert gang influence in prison. They have no guilt, no social conscience, no morals. We have created a legion of human cockroaches. The cost and effort of trying to “save” them is enormous, and the probability is very low. Can we just declare an “open season” on gangs, and hunt them like wild boars? (Even that might not work.) Of course not. All we can do is react as strongly as we can, impose very hard time, and deny them juvenile protection. Or perhaps, just parachute them to an isolated island somewhere, with no staff at all, and let them try to survive there.
This is a BIG problem, and none of the answers are really acceptable. We ARE in America, where one has freedom of speech, and of association. BUT, because of the social reasons already mentioned, we have created a sub-culture that resists normal treatment. Lock them up, and they exert gang influence in prison. They have no guilt, no social conscience, no morals. We have created a legion of human cockroaches. The cost and effort of trying to “save” them is enormous, and the probability is very low. Can we just declare an “open season” on gangs, and hunt them like wild boars? (Even that might not work.) Of course not. All we can do is react as strongly as we can, impose very hard time, and deny them juvenile protection. Or perhaps, just parachute them to an isolated island somewhere, with no staff at all, and let them try to survive there.
This is a BIG problem, and none of the answers are really acceptable. We ARE in America, where one has freedom of speech, and of association. BUT, because of the social reasons already mentioned, we have created a sub-culture that resists normal treatment. Lock them up, and they exert gang influence in prison. They have no guilt, no social conscience, no morals. We have created a legion of human cockroaches. The cost and effort of trying to “save” them is enormous, and the probability is very low. Can we just declare an “open season” on gangs, and hunt them like wild boars? (Even that might not work.) Of course not. All we can do is react as strongly as we can, impose very hard time, and deny them juvenile protection. Or perhaps, just parachute them to an isolated island somewhere, with no staff at all, and let them try to survive there.
Tulsa had the same problem, but their national Sen. and Cong. people told the mayor there to get all the law enforcement qualified and trained through what is called Section 287g training.
It is so they can enforce Immigration laws and pick up these characters on immigration and deport them. This gets them out of the criminal justice system here where they can get 30 years of appeals and lawyers assigned to them.
Get them on immigration and get them to ICE.
This training is paid for by the Feds and more and more cities are using it. All of Georgia is now up to speed and others are using it.
And the section is still in any of the proposed new immigration bills.
Ive asked all of our councilpersons to address it…but Im guessing they are to PC to take a stab at it so to speak.
My councilman, Mr. Longwell will not return emails etc….nor has anyone else. Contacted them all.
But this council is to much a set of business whores, I doubt if anything will be done here until a bunch of little girls get raped or run over by a drunk illegal , then there will be outrage et al.
Sorry folks, I didn’t try to enter 3X, the computer froze up, and did this.
I can clean up this mess quickly. A gang is either a “continuing criminal enterprise” or a “terrorist organization” or both. And they should be treated as such. Here is what should be done:
1. Any crime committed by a member of a known gang should be prosecuted in ADULT court. No juvenile crap here.2. Such crime should be prosecuted under the RICO laws with a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison with no parole.3. Gangs should be added to the government list of terrorist organizations. Belonging to one or lending material support to one should be a crime itself and prosecuted vigoriously.4. If juveniles are found to be in a declared gang and the parents made no efforts to curb the activity by allowing gang members to use their house or vehicle for gang business, asset forfeiture should be used and the property involved be siezed.
“At year end 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.What has caused this huge breakdown in culture that creates huge disparities between the races? ”
To be honest we have not really done enough to help the black people use the capitalist system to escape poverty. Many have but many have not and, to be really real, quite frankly many of my liberal friends- while well meanning- have not really helped the black cause by lowering expectations and not demanding that the black people- and black males in particular- live up to their potential. And I think alot of this crap starts in school. If you look at the progress and test results of the black male in school, you will see that his progress is roughly the same as the white male until about the 4th grade when the curve starts to widen. I think one of the main reasons for this is the lack of dicipline in the school and the influence of media trash culture like BET and MTV. Blacks seem to be far more influenced by culture than whites are. Most of us whites might watch Jerry Springer and see our fellow whites on their acting like the stupid trash rednecks they are and we do not feel the urge to go out and look and act like that. We might have listened to Alice Cooper as teens but few of us wore make up, played with poison snakes or dressed like he did. Black males, on the other hand, are very influenced to mimick the rappers they see on BET and MTV. Whatever the rappers do today, black males will be doing tomorrow. Whatever the rappers wear today will be selling like hotcakes in the ghetto tomorrow. The problem is that many whites seem to think that it is OK to allow this kind of behaviour to prevail for fear of being called a “racist” if they try to rein it in. If I were running the schools, there would be no baggy pants around the ass, no torn jeans, hats on the head and no Air Jordans on the feet. If you came to school that way, you would get sent home to change. In fact I would like to see uniforms and black leather shoes required (sneakers only worn during gym class). This would counter the idea that rappers are “normal” and that it is normal to do what the rappers do. If you require the black male to come to school looking decently and using decent English, he would probably accomplish alot more and stay out of jail later in life. In fact, if you took a black male child and moved him to- let’s say Wyoming- and kept the influence of rappers away- he would no doubt grow up to be a good citizen and a hard working man.
Please tell me I did not write “their” instead of “there”! Shame on me!
Kev
BLING
RICO
Lets connect the dots!
I agree with you that RICO is not utilized nearly enough in gang-banger situations.
RICO was passed as a tool against crime. RICO contains civil as well as criminal sanctions.
Sadly, RICO is used by government as a merely another revenue source.
I admit, as well, that federal lawsuits against juviniles would not be easy to pull off.
However, SOMEONE definately owns the automobiles these bangers drive. SOMEONE definately owns the “Bling” the jewelry, the cloths, shoes etc that are so much a part of gang culture.
Every state, county and city has the right to bring suit, under RICO, in federal court.
Strip property from the gang-bangers. Seize the property of known gangs, put leins and judgements against all property belonging to members of such gangs.
Make members testify, in court, that they are NOT members of that gang, or forfeit their property. Humiliate the gang members!
It would be difficult. It might not be a very good revenue source. It WILL strike at the heart of gang culture: The idea the crime PAYS and the idea that following the rules is for “chumps.”
“We have to make a difference in the elementary schools”? Nothing like absolving parents and children of any responsibility.
Say what?! – how about “parents have to make a difference at HOME.”