Gang violence continues to grow, plague cities across USA

Numbers grow despite falling violent crime

Even as violent crime declines throughout much of the nation, experts say gang activity is still strong because of changing gang structure.

The recent surge in violence that left 10 dead in Chicago during the Memorial Day weekend underscores a continuing national struggle to control criminal gangs whose numbers continue to grow even as violent crime has declined throughout much of the nation.

Of the 200 murders in Chicago so far this year — up from 139 at the same time last year — local police said that about 80% were gangrelated in a city whose gang membership is estimated at more than 100,000.

“We’re trying to get our arms around it,” said Robert Tracy, Chicago’s chief of crime control strategies. “We’re trying everything.”

Tracy attributes much of the violence to a rapidly changing gang structure in which young members of the city’s established 59 gangs have splintered into more than 600 subgroups, all seeking to assert their authority.

Chicago’s gang presence largely tracks a troubling national trend in which criminal gangs have been expanding in number and reach throughout the country, according to the National Gang Center, an arm of the Justice Department.

“At a time when most cities are experiencing their lowest levels of violent crime in a quarter of century, gang activity remains a po- tent problem,” concluded an April report released by the National Gang Center.

James “Buddy” Howell, a senior research associate at the gang center, said gangs have become so “entrenched” in some of the na- tion’s largest cities that gang-related crime is largely immune from forces that have been driving down overall crime.

“There are some dynamics in gangs that just don’t change and are transmitted across generations,” Howell said. “The turf battles, the internal struggles for control continue.”

In Houston, where there are an estimated 200 gangs and 10,000 gang members, police spokesman John Cannon said authorities are identifying new members “virtually every day.”

So far this year, murders are up slightly to 83, from 74 during the same period last year.

Cannon said the current number still is far fewer than the 114 killings during the first five months of 2010, but the number of gang-related killings has remained fairly steady.

About 20% of the murders in 2012 have some link to gang activity.

Last month, Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos, whose jurisdiction includes Houston, announced a $1.7 million anti-gang effort. The program is aimed at disrupting what Lykos described as an increasingly sophisticated network in which street gangs have joined forces with international groups, including drug cartels and human trafficking organizations.

In Chicago, Tracy said officials are applying a combination of strategies, including intervening directly with gang leaders in an attempt to stop the violence.

“Our goal is zero shootings, zero murders,” he said. “One is too many.”