NEW YORK—Gangs, or street crews, are a major source of violence in New York City, and the NYPD is stepping up its enforcement efforts.
The NYPD will double its Gang Division from 150 detectives to 300 to combat the gangs, which are mostly made up of young teens, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at an international meeting of police chiefs in San Diego Tuesday, according to a transcript.
Large gangs such as the Bloods and Crips will not be the focus. Instead, smaller street gangs such as the Rockstarz and Very Crispy Gangsters will be. The NYPD arrested 49 members of these gangs recently. The smaller gangs have looser associations, Kelly said, and mainly find identity in the neighborhood they live in.
“Their loyalty is to their friends living in a relatively small area and their rivalries are based not on narcotics trafficking or some other entrepreneurial interest, but simply on local turf,” Kelly said. “In other words, you come in to my backyard and you get hurt. You diss my crew and you pay the price.”
At least 30 percent of shootings in the city come from such gangs, Kelly said. Conflicts that used to be settled by fistfights have escalated into gun warfare, he added.
Meanwhile, the murder rate is down 18 percent compared to last year and could be a record low by year-end, Kelly said.
Social Media
A new tool in disrupting such gangs, as seen in the arrest of 49 street crew members two weeks ago, is social media. The gangs themselves use social media—primarily Facebook—to post pictures of members in front of a rival’s apartment building, for instance, while NYPD officers with the Juvenile Justice Division are using social media to investigate the gangs.
New guidelines allow officers to use social media in criminal investigations under aliases, as long as they register with the NYPD.
The social media investigations are concurrent with other measures in addition to doubling the Gang Division, including having each of the affected precincts field a team of a dozen officers to tackle the street gang problem. The initiative is called Operation Crew Cut.
Gang violence, often taking place at or near public housing, also spills into the subway system, contributing to thefts of Apple products, Kelly said. The percentage increase in thefts of Apple products through September is higher than the percentage increase in the total number of crimes, according to previous NYPD analysis.
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