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06-12-2005, 11:25 AM #1
GANGS LOVE THE SUBURBS, COPS SAY
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GANGS LOVE THE SUBURBS, COPS SAY
Saturday, June 11, 2005
By EVONNE COUTROS
STAFF WRITER
PARAMUS - Suburban North Jersey, with its expensive homes, sleek cars and ready cash, is attractive territory for gangs, Col. Joseph Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said Friday.
"Gangs love the suburbs," Fuentes said during a training conference at Bergen Community College. "There is a tremendous upscale clientele for drugs. We tend to drive pretty good cars. We live in nice homes. We have money in our pocket."
The conference, titled "Gangs in Suburbia," was sponsored by the college's Center for Suburban Criminal Justice and attended by several hundred law enforcement leaders and educators.
Fuentes' keynote address attempted to dispel the myth that gangs and violent crime exist only in urban areas. His sentiments were echoed by other moderators and panel members.
"We've had homicides, drug traffickers, all types of illegal activities that go on right here in suburbia, and we can't deny it anymore," said Detective Hector Carter of the juvenile/gang unit of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. "We have to wake up, educate and find a solution."
There are an estimated 17,000 gang members and 691 active gangs in the state, Fuentes said, quoting from a recent survey of full-time police departments about gang activity.
In that survey, 29 percent of Bergen County municipalities reported the presence of gangs -with the statewide average at 33 percent, Fuentes said. He provided no figures for Passaic County.
Most gangs are simply "neighborhood" and aren't statewide threats, he said. But 148 gangs are considered distinct. A smaller number are considered super gangs such as the Bloods - the most active gang in the state - Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, Pagans and 18th Street.
"Fourteen out of 63 towns [in Bergen] engaged in a task force that addressed gangs," Fuentes said.
Fuentes praised Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli, Sheriff Leo P. McGuire and Mike Mordaga, the prosecutor's chief of detectives, for their efforts in building task forces to fight gang activity.
They limit super gangs from getting a foothold in the county, Fuentes said.
"The super gangs ... have manifestos, credos, normative codes of behavior that use violence to enforce the discipline in the gang," Fuentes said.
"You get beaten into a gang. You wanna leave? You get beaten out. If you're a woman, you get sexed into the gang ... you get sexed out.
"These gangs are all about violence. They're not doing gang activity at night and going to work at McDonald's during the day. They're distributing drugs during the day. They're stealing property, cars."
A gang- and drug-related kidnapping attempt and shooting in Lodi in February had ties to the Latin Kings.
And the arrest of those involved in a recent 900-pound cocaine stash in Palisades Park had the municipality talking about how the suburbs are more frequently the sites for such high-level distribution activity.
"One out of every five homicides in this state is gang-related," Fuentes said. "We see this particularly in Irvington and in Camden, where I have a substantial amount of troopers. They're confronting this issue everyday."
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06-12-2005, 11:28 AM #2
We have about 5,000 mostly Black and Hispanic gangmembers on Long Island in Nassau and Suffolk. God knows how many they have in the sanctuary of NYC
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06-12-2005, 12:08 PM #3
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Now wait I am a firm believer in gangs...........chain gangs
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06-12-2005, 12:19 PM #4Originally Posted by Charlesoakisland
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