Word on the Street
"These kids have gotten out of hand. We've have lost another generation". No matter what you're reading or watching on the news, it always appears that we're having a problem with some of our youth. Okay, that isn't too unusual until I add the “G-word” and re-mix as "These gangs have gotten out of hand!"
Street gangs have multiplied nationwide in recent years, and so has gang violence. Gangs shoot innocent people as they shoot at each other in fights over drugs, women, turf and revenge. As I read the news from around the nation it's clear no one has the answer to the problem, but someone is always working on it. That’s okay, since it's really not an easy dilemma we've gotten ourselves into.
The cry for help has been in the public eye for over a decade and, in my opinion, it has mostly been ignored. Why? Well, gangs are a social issue that we have given to law enforcement to solve. People think the gangbangers only operate in one part of town, or that gangbangers attack only gangbangers. Or they think this is just a police problem or, better yet, “they're just wannabees.”
The police quickly realized that the youth problem that has become a gang problem is much more imbedded. As they patrolled socially disadvantaged communities, police also saw the social mix relating to drugs, music, dress style and human interaction.
The behavior once thought to be a Black or Latino community problem has transcended the hood, and is now spreading across all the land. Even more chilling to law enforcement professionals is the fact most of the gangs in prior years were a loose group of problem kids. They allied together to form a posse, clique or street drug unit in which they kept most of their independence but also acted together for the purpose of defending members who fought over territory, also called Familia, and as well as protecting against other street posses.
But now we're seeing more gangs coming in with the rank structure of L.A. gangs. They hold sanctioned meetings, they have creeds, they have shot-callers -- and we have a problem.
There's a huge change going on in the way we interact and transact all sorts of information about gangs. The paradigm shift in the philosophy of the generally accepted model of how to deal with street gangs hasn't worked; locking them all up has not solved the problem. On top of that, we have more gangs, gang members, peripheral members, hanger-ons, hybrids and gang relationships than ever.
Forming a concrete framework for dealing with the problem is now fully involved at the federal, state and local level. Yep, give it to the government to solve, bring in the FBI. The problem with that is people care for a while, and the entire community is galvanized. But then it fades and again people think that it's somebody else's problem.
It's not somebody else's problem. It's a nationwide problem. There's no way the police alone can solve this. It is a parenting problem, an educational problem, a social problem, a health problem, a religious problem, and a business problem. No one is outside the box in this equation. We need to share information, keep each other informed, talk about this issue, meet on regular bases and, finally, we need to plan for prevention. Let’s get out of the box.
Wes Daily, MA, CGP.
Email: wesdaily@aol.com.
Website: www.wesdailyassociates.com
