08/18/2008
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has big ideas about how to solve the worsening gang problem which he shared in today’s LA Times [Going global to fight gangs].In it, he illustrates the upside-down mindset of many public officials regarding crime committed by foreigners. The elite apparatchiks attend cushy conferences in places like Acapulco etc. with foreign officials in similar positions where the agenda is propaganda about "working together" and "partnering." It’s another strategy for Latin American freeloaders to mooch more dollars from Uncle Sucka.
"Global" approaches are distractions, and only serve to dilute responsibility. Job #1 should be to keep the bad guys out of the country — that’s the purpose of borders.
Delgadillo is trying to wiggle out of LA’s decades of failed, politically correct policing.
He-e-e-e-e-re’s Rocky …
The two fastest-growing and most powerful gangs in the world are homegrown products of Los Angeles. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, and the 18th Street gang, known in Central America as Mara 18, sprang up in Pico-Union and the densely populated neighborhoods around MacArthur Park. But unlike many local street gangs, these two were entrepreneurial: They recruited Central American immigrants across the city and then expanded farther — throughout Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Conservative estimates put MS-13’s ranks at 20,000 and 18th Street’s at 30,000 worldwide.Stopping street gangs is no longer a local matter — a point driven home to me during a symposium in El Salvador. During the conference, two points of consensus emerged. First, MS-13 and 18th Street have become an international concern — indeed, even Interpol is now involved in the fight. Second, past strategies to handle these gangs have failed.
In the 1990s, the U.S. strategy centered on deportation: Undocumented gang members convicted of crimes were sent back to their country of origin after their prison sentences. But this only exacerbated the problem, spreading both gangs like a virus until they grew into transnational "super-gangs" with countless cliques in southern Mexico and Central America in addition to their presence in California, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Virginia, Oregon and even Canada.
The FBI now acknowledges that the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs have become America’s new organized crime, using their numerical superiority and sheer muscle to extort "rent" or "taxes" from local businesses, including legal and illegal vendors. These "protection" rackets are an insidious form of crime, often going undetected because the victims are unwilling to come forward lest they incur the gangs' wrath; they also supply the gangs with steady profits and fuel their growth.
To paraphrase Tip O'Neill, All crime is local. Instead of imagining dreamy strategies of global crime-fighting, Delgadillo should be leading the charge against his own city’s sanctuary policy, Special Order 40, which directly caused the death of Jamiel Shaw II and others.
Arrest. Incarcerate. Enforce immigration laws on the borders and in workplaces. Utilize "broken windows" policing regarding illegal immigrants, and stop coddling job thieves and violent criminals. The fundamentals still work: effective policing and tough penalties decrease crime.
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