Dozens of Central Valley gang leaders arrested in one-day sweep

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: LA Times

Police arrested 75 alleged gang leaders Tuesday in a one-day sweep in the Central Valley for offenses including attempted murder and drug trafficking, state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris said Wednesday.

The raids, which involved helicopters and canine units, occurred at 50 locations in the cities of Madera, Los Banos, Livingston, Merced, Atwater and Dos Palos as part of the Operation Red Zone crackdown, Harris said.

It was aimed at "ruthless" and "lethal" gang leaders associated with Nuestra Familia, which was started at Folsom State Prison in 1968 and continues to be run out of the state prison system, Harris said. Nuestra Familia controls most of the Nortenos street gangs in Central California and has ties to Mexican drug cartels, according to law enforcement officials.

Growing gang violence in the Central Valley has threatened small farm communities and spawned efforts to keep young people from being recruited.

Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/dozens-of-gang-leaders-arrested-in-central-valley-crackdown-.html

[Cleita]

1. So where are they going to put them?

Wasn't California ordered to release 30,000 or so prisoners because of overcrowding. Somewhere along the line the right hand is going to have to tell the left hand what's going on.

[TheMadMonk]

2. Well you (and we) could start with releasing their customers.

But what you said is a total furphy. (irrelevance)

Now if you'd addressed the MEAT of paragraph three, you might have been onto something.

These gangs were spawned WITHIN the prison system. Putting outside members inside (even for life) is worse than useless, when these new introductions are free to recruit from amongst the soon to be released. Released with virtually no prospects of finding a legitimate means of support particulary if of a poor minority background.

Seventy-five (less aquitals) new recruiters, each with full license to promise a steady income, protection, lawyers, family support if incarcerated and a whole host of other reasons to abandon a life of freelance crime.


The solution is to figure out how to provide productive, decently paying jobs.

[sofa king]

4. And stability....

...For me, stability is the key. I study warfare and what I'm seeing here is the spontaneous creation of a "warband." The warband has no reason to exist except when its members feel threatened, feel there are no other options to seek protection and get on with their lives, and have no prospects for improving their lot in life outside of the group. So in this case, they join a paramilitary criminal gang because it represents opportunity to them, where opportunity otherwise does not exist.

That's what you get in a climate of racism and ostracism, with no social safety net. Take more away from them, and those kids will naturally begin attacking the underpinnings of society itself, not because they are ruthless marauders, but because it's the only chance they'll ever have at acquiring the loot, comfort, and necessities Americans used to be able to accrue through hard work and community building.

The bears have gone back to the forest. Unfortunately for the metaphor, the "forest" is civilization, and now they're beginning to forage in it.

[formercia]

3. Send them to Folsom for a Post Grad education

Thre hots and a cot on the State Dime.

[TheMadMonk]

5. Yeah a post grad education in running a gang. See above.

Particularly what Sofa King had to say about Warbands and how they form.

Nor is this anything new. It's something which has been known for millenia. Isolate a bunch of young men from all that's good about society and if not aimed at an enemy of that society, it WILL turn on its own.


And folk like you lap up the tough on crime rhetoric of the people who KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE DOING (and creating) when they gin you into voting for harsher penalties and even fewer rehabilitative services.