Gang Intelligence Methods in Law Enforcement

19 April 2002

GANG INTELLIGENCE METHODS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

The American headlines of any large city will site killings on street corners, robberies, assaults, intimidation, and drug interaction. While not all-criminal activity is associated with gangs, the 780,000 strong members do account for a large majority of the problems that are plaguing America. There is no one-way to stop gang activity in one single swipe, but through a combination of cooperation, education, and training techniques law enforcement can minimize the gang's movements and even stop a crime before it is committed.

A gang is defined as a group of individuals with the same objective that are bound together by a bond of trust. The majority of gangs are young people, but not every gang member is in his prime. The people that make up a gang are usually trying to achieve something, either money, respect, freedom from the oppression of another gang or law enforcement agency, the need to belong to something greater than themselves, or a combination of any of these. The individual that joins a gang is usually after the same goal that the gang is seeking to obtain.

Different gangs have different characteristics, but all gangs possess at least one: A hierarchy. Whether the gang is a small local crew that never moves out of the neighborhood or a larger well organized team that controls an entire district, there will always be a leader. The leader of the group is the focus of gang-related law enforcement intelligence investigations. Often times the leader of a gang may already be incarcerated, and is still communicating and giving orders from within the walls. The leader is the individual that is usually the strongest member of the group with the most charisma, not necessarily the smartest member of the group or the member that has been in the group the longest.

Membership in a gang does not necessarily mean that the person is uneducated. Some gang members may have positions within the law enforcement communities (Sulc, 65) and some gang members earn college degrees in business, law enforcement, finance, etc. This type of education whether formal or on-the-job will make the gang even stronger. If an individual cannot afford to go to college, this type of scholarship program could be an incentive to stay or join up with a gang. The more educated a gang is, the harder it becomes to deal with.

Collecting information on the gangs is the painful job of every law enforcement agent. The street cop is often in the best position to get good first hand information. The majority of the problems in any jurisdiction tend to occur in a certain area of the district, and the street cop is the official that is usually on the scene first. This gives that individual the advantage of the moment, as well as first hand knowledge on what crimes are continually committed, identifying any patterns, and visually seeing the same faces in the surrounding area of the crime. This type of intelligence must be quickly relayed in order to stay ahead of possible gang related activity.

Another type of information collection comes by the way of open source intelligence. The Internet is a powerful tool and recent advances have made it easier to retrieve specific knowledge (Peterson 2000, 83). Information can be drawn from web sites or chat rooms that are advertising position openings within a gang for new members. The problem with the information highway is that it may sometimes be a little overwhelming and time consuming in order to find useful information.

The news media is another source of collection within the open source intelligence discipline. The media may be the first to a gang-related crime scene or could be doing an inside story on a gang. One major advantage to working with the news media is there is always a camera at the scene, but this can at times also be considered disadvantage. The media sometimes presents a misconception that the they can cover the story and solve the crime faster than investigator or the analyst (Lowenthall, 131), this leads to another problem with the media; the media can make corrections as it goes, law enforcement cannot. The media can give a quick judgment, and sometimes they are right, but the reporter does not have to answer directly to the American people if the wrong person is apprehended and put in jail.

Other personnel that are sometimes enlisted to fight the gang wars are informants. Informants are citizens that have decided to help law enforcement for one reason or another. An informant could be helping law enforcement in order to receive a lighter sentence, to clean up the neighborhood, or out of vengeance. Not all informants can be totally trusted, but information received should be recorded and filed along with the dependability of the informant's history.

Clandestine