LAT:L.A. Violence Crosses the Line(gang spreads to 33 states, 5 countries)

[DeepModem Mom]

L.A. Violence Crosses the Line
A brutal band born near MacArthur Park has spread to 33 other states and five countries. For the first time, the FBI forms a nationwide task force to go after a single gang.

By Chris Kraul, Robert J. Lopez and Rich Connell
Times Staff Writers
May 15, 2005


The gruesome murders were each more than 1,000 miles apart, an arc of bloodshed that spanned much of the North American continent....

***

The killings were similar not only in their brutality but also in their lineage: Authorities say all three incidents are tied to a single Los Angeles branch of Mara Salvatrucha, a street gang formed 20 years ago in the immigrant neighborhoods west of the downtown skyline.

Today, the gang's extreme violence, vast reach and increasing sophistication have made it a top priority at the highest levels of law enforcement and political leadership from Washington to San Salvador.

In recent months, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security have launched a series of initiatives to confront the threat posed by the gang, also known as MS-13, which has between 30,000 and 50,000 members in half a dozen countries, including up to 10,000 members in the U.S., according to federal law enforcement estimates.

The FBI's creation of an MS-13 task force, the first nationwide effort targeting a single street gang, was ordered by Director Robert Mueller after several high-profile murders blamed on MS-13 in the suburbs of Washington. On Tuesday, Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for the first time placed an MS-13 member on its most-wanted fugitive list. The Los Angeles gang member is suspected in a string of violent crimes....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gang15may15,0,2750330,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[DrDebug]

1. Welcome to the jungle

And that's a group of internal insurgence which hasn't been under control for quite a while and which are growing year by year.

Poor people who have to live in such an area which is controlled by gangs and where nobody dares to come.

[LifeDuringWartime]

2. wow

is it still correct to refer to the group as a gang with so many members in so many places?

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Interesting question -- Previous poster, Dr. Debug...

calls it an "internal insurgence."

[bennywhale]

4. It sounds more like a NGO

a non-governmental organisation spanning the globe. The joys of globalisation. Seriously this is pretty worrying. A violent gang can spawn itself into a trans-continental army. This has serious implications for the stability of states.

Imagine such a gang organising a coup d'etat on some unstable nation. It could fucking work with so many members. If these kinds of gangs become politicised their sheer size, organiusation, and sophistication would be a worry to the less secure nations.

[DrDebug]

6. The mercenaries of tomorrow

In a way these things are happening in countries like Colombia and other drug producing countries. Since the gangs control the streets where it is sold, they will steadily seek to control the supplier side as well and they have lots of money, they have lots of guns and they have lots of hatred.

It's actually surprising that L.A. and other cities have been quite for such a long time now.

[Johnyawl]

8. Nothing new, this has been going on for over 150 years

Go rent the movie "Gangs of New York".

The Irish immigrants did it in their ghettos, the Jewish immigrants, the Sicilians, the Italian, all followed the same path. Organize in their own neighborhoods for the purpose of protecting themselves, and hoisting themselves out of the extreme poverty that confronted them. And they all expanded out of their neighborhoods (to greater and lessor degrees) and became extremely predatory.

It's just organized crime, with a new flavor.

Our current government will hype the hell out of it, because the republicans know that nothing works as well for them as selling fear.

[bennywhale]

9. True, gangs have been around for actually thousands of years, but this IS

different. This is tens of thousands of organised members worldwide. This is continueous and indefinite growth due to the reality of the globalised world today and communications.

A small weak state could be very vulnerable to the threat of tens of thousands of organised members. Its an army. If they wished to do so, which i doubt they do, they could cause serious problems for a small country. But they're only interested in profit and revenge so its unlikely. Its only if gangs like this become politically motivated it would become particularly dangerous.

But you're certainly right about bush et al inflating the threat to scare people into giving up rights etc.

[Johnyawl]

10. Yes, it's more globalized, but not all that different

Everything is more globalized today, including law enforcement.

Think about the Sicilian gangs that grew up in the US in the early 1900s. Almost all of the 'families' in the US had branches in Sicily, and with the expansion of Italian immigration after WWII many of them had branches in Latin American. They were the first real international crime families. And they have been trying to control Sicily politically since the end of WWII. It's been a constant battle for 60 years that the Italian government has waged to keep them under control. So yes, I understand what you're saying, they are politically dangerous to small countries (pre-Castro Cuba was basically a mob run state), it's just that it's not new. It's just a different set of ethnic immigrants.

And most of the small countries those gang members are from are already being run by thugs.

[Spazito]

5. That can't be! The First Lady solved the gang problem, right?

After all, there was this big announcement about her focus on it and we DID see some classroom visits to prove it!

[sonicx]

7. Yeah, there were even pictures with black kids!

;)

[sweetheart]

11. V13 ... SOTEL

The gangs are spreading because of the in"justice" system, as the
members are meeting up in the crime-spreading factories where the
police state trains the next generation (read: prisons).

The gangs are a byproduct of the drugs war, because they have the trade
of the street commodity, and the massive profits, they are able to
grow and prosper. The white assholes have learned nothing about
prohibition from prohibition, and the're dumb as wood, wondering
why another huge gang explosion happens during prohibition. Keep in
mind the prohibition never stopped anyone from getting drugs, rather
it is a public subsidy to the street price of those drugs so that the
gangsters get rich.

MS-13 are on the frontline of the new civil war against the criminals
in the police state and the white house... God bless 'em.