Archive for June 4, 2012

The recent surge in violence that left 10 dead in Chicago during the Memorial Day weekend underscores a continuing national struggle to control criminal gangs whose numbers continue to grow even as violent crime has declined throughout much of the nation.

Of the 200 murders in Chicago so far this year — up from 139 at the same time last year — local police said that about 80% were gang-related in a city whose gang membership is estimated at more than 100,000.

“We’re trying to get our arms around it,” said Robert Tracy, Chicago’s chief of crime control strategies. “We’re trying everything.”

Tracy attributes much of the violence to a rapidly-changing gang structure in which young members of the city’s established 59 gangs have splintered into more than 600 subgroups, all seeking to assert their authority.

Chicago’s gang presence largely tracks a troubling national trend in which criminal gangs have been expanding in number and reach throughout the country, according to the National Gang Center, an arm of the Justice Department.

“At a time when most cities are experiencing their lowest levels of violent crime in a quarter of century, gang activity remains a potent problem,” concluded an April report released by the National Gang Center.

James “Buddy” Howell, a senior research associate at the gang center, said gangs have become so “entrenched” in some of the nation’s largest cities that gang-related crime is largely immune from forces that have been driving down overall crime.

“There are some dynamics in gangs that just don’t change and are transmitted across generations,” Howell said. “The turf battles, the internal struggles for control continue.”

In Houston, where there are an estimated 200 gangs and 10,000 gang members, police spokesman John Cannon said authorities are identifying new members “virtually every day.”

So far this year, murders are up slightly to 83, from 74 during the same period last year.

Cannon said the current number still is far fewer than the 114 killings during the first five months of 2010, but the number of gang-related killings has remained fairly steady. About 20% of the murders in 2012 have some link to gang activity.

Earlier this month, Harris County, Texas District Attorney Patricia Lykos, whose jurisdiction includes Houston, announced a $1.7 million anti-gang effort aimed at disrupting what she described as an increasingly sophisticated network in which street gangs have joined forces with international groups, including drug cartels and human trafficking organizations.

In Chicago, Tracy said officials are applying a combination of strategies, including intervening directly with gang leaders in an attempt to stop the violence.

“Our goal is zero shootings, zero murders,” he said. “One is too many.”

via Cities across the USA fight to control street gangs – USATODAY.com.

The Yemeni army is gearing up for a push to try to take a southern coastal town from al Qaeda-linked fighters, local residents say.

Via text message, the head of the southern military zone asked people living in the area not to use the roads around Shaqra and two other towns controlled by the fighters.

Shaqra lies on Yemen’s southern coast, along a major shipping route that is also the gateway for Somalis entering the country to fight alongside the fighters.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the frontline in the southern town of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, said on Monday: “The army has taken up positions here. They are backed by thousands of tribal fighters, air force and drone attacks.

“The problem [that] they say [they face] is al-Qaeda using guerilla warfare tactics making it extremely difficult for the Yemeni army to put an end to the presence of al-Qaeda, which has gained more territory in the southern part of Yemen.”

The US is backing the offensive in the south and has stepped up its campaign of drone strikes on alleged al-Qaeda members.

It has also sent dozens of military trainers and stepped up aid to Yemen where it wants President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to reunify the military and fight al-Qaeda’s Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) wing.

Speaking to Al Jazeera near the frontline, army Colonel Ali Radman Qahtan said: “The biggest challenge we face is that al-Qaeda fighters are constantly on the move in small numbers, they never hold out in one place.

“It’s an army fighting militias, they know the area very well … take advantage of the dense trees to move surreptitiously.”

via Yemeni army advances on al Qaeda-held town – Middle East – Al Jazeera English.