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Out of Order Comes Chaos
http://inthesetimes.com/article/12843/out_of_order_comes_chaos/Vacant houses in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood that is one of Chicago's poorest and most violence. In 2011, it had 56 murdersa 40 percent increase from 2010.
Chicagos black gangs arent the criminal enterprises they once were, but the police wont change their story.
CHICAGO In January, the Chicago Crime Commission released its 2012 Gang Book to much fanfare. Its findings that most residents of the city live and work within feet of a gangs operations, and that there are more than 70 gangs with as many as 150,000 members were faithfully repeated by Chicago media outlets. The president of the commission, former Chicago police superintendent Jody Weis, explained to Fox Chicago News:
'What were seeing today with these younger street gangs, with these hundreds and hundreds of factions of gangs out there [is] it might be four or five kids on a corner, but theyre still organized, theyre still a gang, theyre still a criminal enterprise, selling illegal products, enforcing often times their turf with weapons.'
But some researchers in Chicago and gang members themselves scoff at this official narrative starting with the definition of gang. The Gang Book defines a street gang as an organized group that participates in criminal, threatening or intimidating activity within the community using, among other characteristics, a defining hierarchy, a regular meeting pattern, a code of conduct and an organized, continuous course of criminal activity.
Lance Williams, assistant director of Northeastern Illinois Universitys Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies and the co-author of The Almighty Black P. Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of an American Gang, says the vast majority of black gang members in Chicago do not fit this official description. He estimates that at most 10 percent are involved in criminal activity, such as drug dealing or extortion. And even though this minority may self-identify as being part of a gang, the gang has nothing to do with their crimes. They might happen to be part of a gang, but they took that upon themselves, he says. Unlike in the 80s and 90s, when highly organized, hierarchal gangs controlled Chicagos underground economy, today theres no leadership around even to get a kickback.
Between the War on Drugs and the war on street gangs in Chicago, the whole infrastructure fell apart theres no top-down control, Williams says. In addition, there are no formal rituals for initiation. Gangs are largely a block-by-block neighborhood association. Williams works closely with the 8-Tray Stones, a 300500 member set of Black P. Stones based at 83rd Street (8-Tray) on the South Side that ranges in age from young children to grandfathers. At an early age, the men in the neighborhood learn the Stones handshake or gang sign, but thats the extent of their affiliation.
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Out of Order Comes Chaos (Original Post)
xchrom
Mar 2012
OP
CAPHAVOC
(1,138 posts)1. Bring back the Old World Order...
bemildred
(90,061 posts)2. The pentagon has terrorists and drug lords, the cops have gangs.
Without that, what is their need for all that money?