Investigators worry of local gangs tied to Mexico cartels

Posted at: 05/03/2011 6:31 PM
By: Stuart Dyson, KOB Eyewitness News 4

Gang experts say recruiting for members is beginning as young as seven years old, sometimes younger.

Gang squad cops from all over the state are worried about new ties between local gangs and the Mexican cartels engaged in drug smuggling, gun running, and wholesale murder across the border.

Police from all over the state are gathered at Isleta Pueblo's Hard Rock Hotel for the annual Gang Task Force conference, an opportunity for learning the latest developments in the war against gangs.

New Mexico's governor doesn't need much briefing - Susana Martinez spent 14 years as District Attorney in Dona Ana County, where the intersection between border crime and local gangs is well known.

"They are getting younger people in order to participate in the violence and the drug trafficking that is taking place in New Mexico, and the territory that is being fought over as to where drugs will be sold and how they will be trafficked," said Martinez as she attended the conference today. "The gang activity is being affected by the Mexican cartel and drug trafficking that is coming from Mexico into New Mexico."

"We are increasingly seeing a connection, economically motivated if you will, between the use of local street gangs as soldiers for trafficking narcotics," said task force member Gregg Marcantel, a recently retired captain in the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department.

Cops and anti-gang counselors say gang recruits are getting younger and younger, with active gang members as young as seven years old, and early recruits even younger.

"That actually is the most difficult thing, probably - the kids," said Craig Sparks, deputy director of the state Children Youth and Families Department. "They're three or four years old and they're already being put in gang colors, gang attire. They learn that from their parents, their grandparents."

Cops and counselors say those family ties are even harder to break than the social connections that have kept gangs flourishing in New Mexico communities for generations. Leaders of the Gang Task Force say New Mexico's gang problem has escalated in recent years, evolving from traditional neighborhood gangs into statewide networks deeply involved in what amounts to organized crime.

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