Original Homies Gang Tapes Iraqi Cards Download Gang Articles Trace Tupac's Murder Some Gangs Get Sued

Gang Violence Here, There, Everywhere By Marc Fisher Tuesday, October 21, 2003; Page B01 The funerals in the District make the TV news: More blood shed in the urban danger zone. But the cameras could just as easily be in Dale City, where members of the MS-13 gang were charged not long ago in the shooting of an 18-year-old; or in Leesburg, where police arrested 16 members of MS-13 after a mob attacked a man with a machete; or in Manassas, where four members of MS-13 were charged with initiating a 17-year-old girl into their clan by forcing her to have sex with them. In Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Silver Spring, school principals saw the problem before the shootings and stabbings made the news. Teachers saw the hand signals, the gang tags spray-painted on walls, the unexplained absences. Principals warned that gangs were putting down deep roots, and some police took notice. But the rest of us don't pay attention until blood runs in the streets. Gangs were something we watched on TV -- a Los Angeles problem, a latter-day "West Side Story" that surely reflected the anonymity of Sun Belt sprawl. Even during the crack wars of the 1980s, we were told that the Washington area was different, that we had our own form of criminal organization for young people, highly localized "crews" that fought over family ties and neighborhood turf. But now traditional ethnic gangs such as MS-13 -- Mara Salvatrucha, a 20-year-old outgrowth of the civil war in El Salvador -- are here in a big way, in suburb and city alike, in Fairfax, Silver Spring, Mount Pleasant. Gangs, though as old as mankind, turn out to be beautifully adaptable to contemporary technology. The modern American gang is a franchise operation, opening new outlets simply because the market is ripe and the profits attractive. "They look to find a place that's open and vulnerable," says Alejandro Alonso, a Los Angeles-based researcher who has studied the structure and proliferation of gangs. "A 14- or 16-year-old member moves into a neighborhood and takes along the culture of the gang. He becomes the toast of the town. 'You lived in L.A., man? Cool!' They jump hosts, like a virus, using the pop culture and music videos that spread the word about the hand signals and the look." The gangs infiltrating our area have a powerful presence on the Internet, complete with chat rooms, message boards, file swapping, photo galleries and music videos. Web sites for local branches of MS-13 seem benign at first -- eyebrows hardly elevate these days when kids choose a song such as "Soy Un Criminal" (I Am a Criminal) as their anthem of belonging. These guys even have enough taste to reach back to golden oldies, choosing theme songs such as Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" and Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman." Take those pop standards, add comic book-style drawings of idealized vixen and muscular gents bursting through brick walls, and you've got stereotypical adolescent fare. But recruiters blend all that with raps in praise of their gang's prowess: "Ya think about it, where in the USA is there no MS, ha ha ha, We are everywhere." Add page upon page devoted to the splendors of marijuana and the purported exploits -- criminal, sexual and violent -- of MS-13 members, and the result is intoxicating to kids in neighborhoods where parents often work double shifts and the hours after school seem an endless desert. Long before the shootings of recent weeks, it was clear that Los Angeles was exporting its gang structure here. In 2001, at Gaithersburg High, police arrested two adult MS-13 members who were actively recruiting students. They enlisted two teens who proceeded to rob two men and beat them with a baseball bat. On the bat: "MS-13" and the logo of the gang. Los Angeles authorities have sought to prohibit gangs from gathering in public. That gives police extra tools but does little to diminish MS-13's appeal. This is an international structure, with complex webs of drug sales and arms purchases that investigators say create a steady supply of weapons to criminals in El Salvador. But most of that is way over the heads of the kids who sign up to be a part of MS-13. They're just following the leader, joining the crowd. "Especially in the suburbs," Alonso says. "That's the big trend, everyone trying to look like gang members, be part of it." So the blood flows, and let's not kid ourselves: It's not just in the big, bad city. News Topics | Home | Research | History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People| Life in a Gang | Gallery | Iraqi Cards | Memorial | Migration | Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions Homicides | Maps | California Prisons | Contact

Copyright © Streetgangs.com, All RIGHTS RESERVED. Disclaimer
All trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.