
What would you do if you were forced to face one or more of these individuals?
So, firstly, what are gangs? Simply put they are groups of people sharing an identity, who claim a territory, interact predominantly among themselves, often wear distinctive clothing including colours, insignias, and ‘patches’, generally engage in criminal and anti-social activity regularly, create an environment of fear and intimidation, and often communicate with each other in unique ways. They will often display their affiliation with tattoos, scars, cigarette burns, sometimes adding a new tattoo or scar to display another victim that they have murdered. Gangs are present in almost every race, ethnicity, and economic and social circle. Both male and female gang members carry out acts of violence, drug deals, crimes, carry weapons, intimidate and lead by fear within their organisation.
Gangs participate in drug manufacturing and dealing, murder, rape, prostitution, fraud, car theft, stand-overs, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, burglary, assaults, weapons dealing, money laundering, vandalism (including tagging), among other things. Gangs operate as a ‘family’ (and I use that term very loosely), if you mess with one of them, you have messed with all of them, and that is not a place you ever want to find yourself.