Will it be a problem in Europe too? – Study Center for Legality Security and Justice

By Marco Strano

They call them gangs. In America they represent one of the most serious criminal problems and are connected to drug and weapons trafficking and above all to the murders (in Los Angeles and Chicago about 75% of the murders are attributable to wars between gangs). From 2020 I have been collaborating with a police department south of Los Angeles and I was able to observe the phenomenon of person. Over the years, each Police Office of California has activated a specific unit that deals with gangs. In the Los Angeles area, about forty gangs are active, which developed in the eighties with the immigration of Mexicans and Asians. The two most feared and violent gangs are the Crips and Bloods that count on a total of 22 thousand members and who have inspired the film “Colors”. The CRIPS Gang and the Bloods Gang are in fact identifiable by the colors that distinguish the clothes and other symbols brought by their members: the red color is the distinctive color of the Bloods affiliates, while blue is that of CRIPS. The two notorious groups are divided into hundreds of subgroups that face each other daily in a war without exclusions of shots that causes many deaths every year. The most famous Latin American gangs are Latin King and Neta. The Latin King were founded in the late 1940s in Chicago by Puerto Rican citizens with the aim of transforming the world into a Latin nation. The Neta were instead founded by Carlos Torres Iriarte, called the Sombra, a Puerto Richamfish who thought that the weakest prisoners should be protected by the most violent and organized ones. But also from the eastern world they come and spread very dangerous youth gangs. This is the case of Japanese delinquent groups that are inspired by Yakuza and who administer a vast drug trafficking and other illegal affairs.

As Samanta Castellan (researcher at the University of Trento) wrote years ago, the salient characteristics of the American youth gangs (the American model) can be identified. The type of US setting gang has the following characteristics:

• is led by a recognized leader;
• It has a well -defined internal hierarchy;
• Check a territory, which generally coincides with the neighborhood where the gang originated;
• it is stable over time;
• It is frequently involved in delinquent behaviors and in clashes, even rather bloody, with rival gangs;
• Inside is very much felt to belong to the group;
• Among its members there is a strong internal cohesion;
• There are precise rules that everyone is required to respect and those who break these rules is severely punished;
• It differs from other gangs by adopting a name and other identification symbols.

The main symbols of identification of US gangs are:

• A specific vocabulary (code words and modification of the meaning of words)
• particular clothing
• use of objects of a certain color

In the United States, the fight against gangs has taken on the character of a real war. The Los Angeles police call them Operation Hammer, which means hammer operation. The almost eight thousand units that make up the anti-Gangs departments are trained and equipped as Marines with pump rifles and assault rifles and are used on the front of a real war in black and Hispanic ghettos twenty-four hours a day. The hammer operations involve the use of helicopters, armored, raids of entire buildings. Sudden blitz (often nocturnal) are performed during which law enforcement agencies surround the affected areas with autobbindo and helicopters and then invade the houses. All doors that do not open are broken through. Often, before leaving, I policemen write on the walls of the ghetto theater of the operation with the spray lapd rules, which means here commands the Los Angeles police department. But when the police leave, they start them again to command them. The transformation of the Los Angeles Police Department into a paramilitary body began in the 1950s, by William Paker, linked to the environments of the far right, who, as soon as they are installed at the head of the police, gave radical process of militarization of the Lapd (Division Internal Affairs of the Police), transforming it from a counterpart with modest professionalism into a modern and super efficient. bureaucratic detective system. But even in Europe we will see such a scenario one day and will we have to face such dangerous criminal teams? At the beginning of the 2000s, our police forces probably remained a little surprised and perhaps a little “underestimated” the problem. In Italy, delinquent gangs on an ethnic basis begin to be felt for some years. They are currently mainly composed of young people aged 15 to 25. Some gangs are composed of the children of Ecuadori’s immigrants and other South American nations that came to our country in the 90s, especially in Genoa and Milan and then transferred to other Italian cities (Rome, Florence, etc.). These immigrants managed to integrate quite well but their children began to live the way and agitated and in the end they began to implement deviant behavior. Then there are the gangs of young North Africans who operate both in the North (Milan and Turin) and in the South (especially in the south of Sicily) and dedicate themselves to drug trafficking. Also in Italy the Latin King have therefore arrived, but also their bitter enemies, the Neta, founded in the seventies in Puerto Rico. A cobweb that has its epicenter in Genoa and which is expanding in Chiavari, Milan, Turin, Rome, and a little throughout Italy. In Milan, Latin King are 100/200 boys between fourteen and twenty years, mostly Ecuadores, who recognize themselves from the bandanas and the three vertical cuts on an eyebrow and attend the Milanese underground stations. In Genoa, the Latin King are about 300 in the Sampierdarena district. The Genoese Neta (about 150, the first arriving in Italy) are in the Aquarium area, in the historic center. Years ago there was also a dead man (Miguel). Each team has its territory and the enemy cannot violate it. In their reserves, the bands commit arrogance, robberies, snakes and sexual violence. Crimes for now limited within the South American communities. In the context of Italian youth gangs, those involving the youngest, we also find groups of Roma and neighborhood bands and then there are minors exploited by criminal organizations. We are on the border between groups of neighborhood bullies and real delinquent bands. Often they come from the areas of urban marginalization but sometimes they are also “dad sons” who rob their peers cutting and cutting. Toxicodes and youth alcoholism are often the frame of this dramatic phenomenon. Finally, the Gangs phenomenon in Italy is also manifested through the exploitation of groups of minors by organized crime. The reduced punishment of the minor in the Italian legal system makes them particularly useful for carrying out several trafficking. The Camorra and the Sacra Crown united use them for the distribution of drugs and smuggling goods. Police operations over the years have also shown that minors, are sometimes taken “for rent” by unwanted families from Eastern European. They were intended for thefts, drug trafficking, accttoning and prostitution. Those who refuse are threatened and beaten wildly. In short, a problem, that of youth gangs, to be kept under a constant monitoring to prevent their criminal danger from increasing over the years and reaching that recorded in the US scenarios.

References:
“13 American Gangs That Are Keeping The FBI Up At Night.” 2012. 27 May. 2014 <

“City of Los Angeles – StreetGangs.Com.” 2010. 15 May. 2014 <

“Drugs and Gangs Fast Facts – Department of Justice.” 2013. 15 May. 2014 <

“Gang – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” 2003. 21 May. 2014 <

“Top Ten Most Wanted Gang Members – Los Angeles Police …” 2008. 15 May. 2014 <

“What Gangs Do – Los Angeles Police Department.” 2006. 15 May. 2014 <