G-Mobb and gang members from Blood-affiliated subsets had been "co-existing."

G-Mobb and gang members from Blood-affiliated subsets had been "co-existing." After the G-Mobb members relocated out of Franklin Villa, "what we saw was a group of the younger Sacramento kids wanted to become part of this G-Mobb," he said. "So they began to integrate and form subsets off the G-Mobb with some of the younger G-Mobb members and families."A number of local subsets that identified with the G-Mobb, with names such as the Stickup Stars and the Guttah Boys, then fought with Blood affiliates such as the Fourth Avenue group in Oak Park, Maclafferty testified.
Sacramento State criminal justice professor and gang expert Jim Hernandez said the G-Mobb spinoffs and the splintering of the area's Blood network provide more evidence of a breakdown in the traditional red versus blue, color-coded gang structure.
"This idea of unified gang stuff, with the younger generation, is falling apart," Hernandez said. "You've got smaller groups, local groups, that are fighting everybody."It's a violence that endangers innocent bystanders and took the life of a young woman on a pathway to success.Kebret Tekle, 20, a student at California State University, Sacramento, was out with friends near the campus at the Library Eat & Drinks nightclub on Folsom Boulevard when a fight on the dance floor moved outside. The fight resulted in gunfire while she was getting in her car to leave.
A bullet from the May 2, 2007, shooting struck Tekle in the head. She slumped sideways in her vehicle and died later that day."She was a very good student, very disciplined, a very hard-working person," Tekle Sebhatu said about his daughter, who grew up in Union City. "She was very kind, very friendly, very active with her sorority group. It was her goal to complete her studies at Sac State and pursue her further education as well."Sebhatu sat through most of the preliminary hearing for David Allen Falls, 25, the man suspected of firing the deadly stray bullet. Sebhatu said he was amazed at the police testimony that provided the gang backdrop.
"I had no knowledge, no clue, as to how these gangs operate," said Sebhatu, an immigrant from the East African nation of Eritrea and an international business instructor for UC Berkeley Extension. "You hear it in the news or you might read about it in the paper. I was surprised to see the depth of their network, how they operate, that they are clueless in a way about other people's activities and the value that other people give to life."

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B.C. gangs are taking over the streets. A violent gang war is taking place over the control of drug trade.

B.C. gangs are taking over the streets. A violent gang war is taking place over the control of drug trade. Prince George seems to be one of the key battle grounds. The forestry community has had to deal with shootings and brawls as gangs fight amongst themselves.As police deal with one gang another pops up. There are a reported 129 gangs in B.C.

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Griselda Blanco, The Godmother

Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry.

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Hector Portillo, a member of the international MS-13 street gang, and seven others were charged in New York City with multiple crimes

Hector Portillo, a member of the international MS-13 street gang, and seven others were charged in New York City with multiple crimes, including 29 counts of murder, attempted murder, assault, racketeering, and illegal use of firearms. The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Peter J. Smith, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office of investigations in New York City; Richard A. Brown, Queens Country District Attorney, and Raymond W. Kelly, Commissioner, New York City Police Department.The indictment alleges that on December 24, 2006 three of the defendants, Hector Portillo, Javier Irheta and Luis Bonilla, murdered 15 year-old Pashad Gray in the Flushing section of Queens County.Beginning in 1998, the defendants served as members and associates of MS-13, also known as “La Mara Salvatrucha,” and engaged in a series of violent crimes in Jamaica and Flushing, New York, including conspiracy to murder and assault members of rival gangs, such as the Crips, the Bloods, and the Latin Kings. During one particularly violent 13 month period, the defendants allegedly assaulted or attempted to murder seven victims by stabbing and shooting.Portillo, who was previously charged with racketeering and murder conspiracy, is now charged with a pattern of violent attacks, including, in addition to the Pashad Gray murder, the non-fatal shooting of a teenager on February 17, 2006, and the stabbing and beating of two teenagers in August 2006.“The indictment of this dangerous MS-13 gang member is a positive step toward ridding our communities of the violent transnational street gangs that have instilled fear in our citizens and taken our communities hostage for far too long,” stated ICE Special Agent-in-Charge Smith. “Through Operation Community Shield, ICE and its law enforcement partners will continue to conduct aggressive enforcement actions against members and associates of violent street gangs like MS-13.”“The defendants have spread fear in our community through wanton violence, including shooting, stabbing, and beating their victims,” stated United States Attorney Campbell. “Today’s charges reflect our unwavering commitment to bring members and associates of violent street gangs to justice.” Mr. Campbell thanked the New York City Department of Probation for its assistance.Queens County District Attorney Brown stated, “Rivalries among criminal street gangs all too often turn neighborhoods into urban battlefields with innocent victims being caught in the crossfire. Only through the joint and committed efforts of law enforcement on all levels of government can we reduce gang-related violence and reclaim our streets for law-abiding residents.”NYPD Commissioner Kelly stated, “New York City has not experienced the explosion in gang violence experienced elsewhere, in part, because of continued, successful crime suppression and arrests by the NYPD with support from our federal partners.”If convicted, the defendants face maximum sentences of life imprisonment.The MS-13 is comprised primarily of immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, many of whom are in the United States illegally. With hundreds of members locally, it is the largest street gang on Long Island and has a major presence in Queens, New York. Over the past four years, the coordinated efforts of United States Attorney’s Office, ICE, the NYPD, and the Queens District Attorney’s Office have resulted in felony convictions of nearly two dozen New York City members of the MS-13.

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Gang violence appears to be on the rise in B.C. as gangs war over control of the lucrative drug trade

Gang violence appears to be on the rise in B.C. as gangs war over control of the lucrative drug trade, but there are few places where the increase has been more severe than in Prince George. The northern forestry community has been plagued by a year of brawls, shootings, reports of torture and several murders as rival groups brazenly fight among themselves. In late summer, a 19-year-old man was seriously injured in drive-by shooting in Prince George, 500 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. A few weeks later, a young couple believed to be connected to the drug trade -- including a 19-year-old woman -- were found shot to death.
Although the victims were gang members, Mayor Dan Rogers says every violent act ripples into the wider community.
"There are innocent victims all the time," says Rogers, recently elected as mayor after 12 years on city council. "There are parents, there are relatives. It's just tragic." While things have quieted since the grisly October slayings, the head of the RCMP's local gang unit says 2008 was the worst year he has ever seen.

"We never used to have this kind of violence in Prince George," says Sgt. Raj Sidhu, who's been with the Mounties there for 13 years. "It's pretty brutal what's happening."

The violence in the city follows a pattern established elsewhere in B.C.
A new gang crops up, a turf war breaks out, and eventually the violence ends when one group is either beaten down by rivals or rounded up by police. The cycle has been a source of constant frustration for police forces combating violence among B.C.'s 129 identified gangs. "There's always peaks and valleys, and that seems to just repeat itself," says Supt. Dan Malo, head of the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force. "We've certainly had an increase in gang-related murders (in 2008), but while it keeps moving around, it really becomes the same."
For example, the RCMP homicide team for the Lower Mainland -- excluding Vancouver and Delta -- says there were about 20 homicides connected to drugs and organized crime this year, compared with about 14 in 2007, and 20 in 2006. Gang-related killings tend to rise and fall with the overall homicide rate, the Mounties say.
Violence increases when gangs try to expand their influence into new areas, which is what appears to be happening in Prince George. The latest spate of attacks in that city is related to a turf war between the Independent Soldiers, who appeared two years ago and have ties to a gang in Vancouver, and a smaller, unnamed group that arrived about a year ago. While things have been quiet in the past couple of months, the head of the Prince George gang unit predicts the calm will be short-lived.
"I don't know for how long -- it's always revenge and the greed to take over the drug trade," says Sidhu. "There's always that vacuum. You take out one group and someone else wants to come in. Malo, while seeming resigned to the fact that gangs will be a perpetual problem in the province, says there remains reason to be hopeful. He says the force has dramatically changed its tactics in recent years, starting with the formation of the integrated task force in 2005, followed by a so-called violence suppression team two years later. The suppression team consists of several dozen uniformed officers who track gang members and try to intervene when violence erupts, or prevent it from happening in the first place. The task force is also reaching out to future gang members with a provincewide initiative targeting at-risk youth through community involvement and education.
And there have been successes in actual enforcement. A few weeks ago, the RCMP arrested nine people in Surrey and laid 26 charges related to drugs and weapons. It was part of a year-long investigation that the force held up as evidence its efforts were working. "We've seen a tremendous amount of violence in the past couple of years, and hopefully we're going to be able to suppress that for a period of time," Malo says.

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Cannabis Wars,one man lay dead in his car with another sprawled wounded in the passenger seat.

The A73 south of Nijmegan was littered with bullet casings, and one man lay dead in his car with another sprawled wounded in the passenger seat.The survivor refused to talk to police, even though a hired assassin had pursued his vehicle shooting at it without hitting for several miles before finally catching up and riddling it with automatic fire.

Commuters were horrified, but the murder in September was wearily familiar to detectives who have dealt with 25 gangland-style killings in suburban southern Holland over the past three years.

As usual, there was a cannabis connection. The assassin was a hired Bulgarian and his two victims, men in their twenties, had been involved with one of the thousands of cannabis “nurseries” which flourish out of sight in the attics, sheds and spare rooms of small towns – using Dutch horticultural expertise honed from years of growing tomatoes and tulips.Billions of euros worth of cannabis is grown for export – much of it to Britain – in Holland’s modern cannabis industry, which has come a long way since the days of penniless hippies growing pot on Amsterdam houseboats and opening “coffee shops” where stoners could happily puff away in an atmosphere of dope haze, peace and love.Now there is so much money and violence involved that Holland’s police commissioner responsible for cannabis calls it a danger to Dutch society.Since he started his job a year ago Max Daniel has made it his mission to change Holland’s laid-back view of the drug, and as calls mount from politicians and citizens to shut “nuisance” coffee shops he believes that his message is getting through.Mr Daniel said: “For years this was seen as an innocent business and the tolerant Dutch approach was undoubtedly a successful form of harm reduction – it kept users away from hard drugs.

“But now there is so much money to be made that cannabis is sucking in organised crime gangs from abroad and corrupting legitimate businesspeople – especially lawyers, estate agents and bankers. Money laundering is a massive enterprise, and it is bringing together white-collar professionals and the kind of criminals who deal with heroin, prostitutes and people-smuggling.

“Cannabis is a threat to our democracy.”Mr Daniel said police noticed that the business was starting to change about 15 years ago when criminals realised there were bigger profits from growing cannabis in Holland than smuggling it from Morocco, but the violence has become much worse in the past few years.Dutch police believe that the underground cannabis growing cottage industry has now become one of their nation’s biggest earners of foreign currency, worth an estimated 2.7 billion euros (£2.3 billion) in total – about half as much as Holland’s legitimate horticultural business.The public perception has not kept up with the worsening criminality; most Dutch still regard cannabis as harmless, if not quite respectable. A nationwide poll in November found that 80 per cent of Dutch people opposed the closure of marijuana coffee shops.The nation’s 730 coffee shops, where customers can buy herbal cannabis or hashish without fear of arrest, attract tourists and pay more than 300 million euros in tax annually.An estimated 40 per cent of the cannabis grown in Holland is sold in them. Police believe some are fronts for organised crime, but the worst of the violence takes place in the cannabis-growing industry where strong-arm gangs prey on novices who think they can make easy money by setting up cannabis farms.Everything needed can be bought in a “grow shop” – seeds, nutrients, powerful lights and hydration systems. Police say some grow shops sell the addresses of novices to criminal gangs, who months later smash their way in and steal crops or cash.Cannabis growers can’t go to the law for protection, so they arm themselves, electrify doors to shock or electrocute, or buy large dogs for protection. In one case police discovered a trap for intruders, in the form of a pit filled with sharpened stakes dug beneath a doormat. Suburban Holland has never seen anything like it.

Public anger about tolerant drugs laws is mounting along the French and Belgian borders, where rows of coffee shops sell to thousands of drugs tourists every week. They are accused of making a nuisance in the placid and law-abiding small towns.

This month Amsterdam’s civic fathers decided to shut 43 of the city’s 228 coffee shops as they were close to schools, another sign of growing anxiety about the city’s laid-back drugs laws.So far coffee shop owners have been remarkably relaxed in the face of the growing campaign against them.

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Kyle Parvez shot a member of a rival gang from close range in the neck

Kyle Parvez shot a member of a rival gang from close range in the neck will serve a minimum of 10 years behind bars. And the judge who sentenced Kyle Parvez to an open ended jail sentence said his response to almost killing his victim Dilbag Singh was "chilling." Judge Stuart Baker told Parvez: "You seem to be unconcerned for your victim. "Your response to what you have done is in my view chilling, you are a dangerous offender." The judge told Parvez, convicted by a jury last month of attempting to murder Mr Singh in April and possessing a firearm with intent to commit the crime, that he was passing an indeterminate sentence for the protection of the public. He will only be released when assessed by the Parole Board as no longer a danger and will serve 10 years minus time spent on remand before becoming eligible. Parvaz, 21, of Arnhem Road, Callon, showed no emotion as he was led to the cells. He had denied both offences but was convicted by a jury following a trial at Preston Crown Court. Judge Baker warned that evidence from the trial suggested that at the time groups of young men involved in gangs from Deepdale and Fishwick were "prepared to use firearms to settle differences." And he said the courts would pass heavy deterrent sentences. Parvez had armed himself with a sawn-off shotgun which was a weapon used by criminals for one purpose - to kill or maim, said the judge. The jury had found he had intended to kill Dilbag Singh and he shot him at close range, from between nine and 12 feet away on St Paul's Road, Deepdale. Mr Singh, 26, was hit by 56 pellets in the neck and body but survived following emergency surgery. He gave evidence to the trial but it was revealed in court he had subsequently been arrested and has been interviewed on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The trial heard that the shooting came in the wake of an earlier abduction of a man during growing tensions between groups from Deepdale and Fishwick with drug dealing backgrounds. Zainul James, 18, of no fixed abode, was cleared on the judge's direction of charges of attempted murder and possession of the firearm with intent but convicted on a charge of aggravated arson in relation to a car in which they travelled to the scene. He set it alight on Manor House Lane and the judge said innocent members of the public could have been injured by this reckless action. Judge Baker sentenced James to five years in a young offenders' institution.

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Green Valley drive by shooting in Sydney’s south-west

Police are appealing for witnesses to an overnight shooting attack on a house at Green Valley, in Sydney’s south-west.Around 11pm yesterday (Sunday 21 December), a series of shots were fired at a home in Hewison Avenue.Five people inside the house heard the volley of gunfire and ventured outside to find a number of spent cartridges and damage to the exterior of the home.The family contacted relatives, who in turn telephoned police.Officers from the Green Valley Local Area Command attended the address and secured the crime scene.Forensic Services Group experts and the Police Rescue Squad also responded.The spent casings were retrieved and will be subjected to a series of ballistics tests.Police are conducting a canvass of the neighbourhood in the hope someone witnessed the attack.

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Nine men's heads were found in plastic bags in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero early Sunday. Eight of them were eventually identified

Nine men's heads were found in plastic bags in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero early Sunday. Eight of them were eventually identified as belonging to soldiers, and the ninth was a lawyer. "grave mistake" for criminals in the illegal drug trade to have decapitated eight soldiers over the weekend, a top Mexican military officer said Monday.Residents of Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, found the heads on a busy city street before dawn, and hours later located the bodies several kilometers (miles) away, local police said."For each member that you kill, we are going to kill ten of yours," read a sign that was found next to the heads. It was signed "You know who," a state security official told AFP.Prosecutors announced late Monday that soldiers had detained seven suspects in the decapitations, all in Guerrero state."The criminals made a grave mistake with this audacious crime," said the local regional commander, Enrique Jorge Alonso, speaking at a ceremony here Monday honoring the slain soldiers.The beheading was "an offense against the (government) institutions and especially to those who wear a military uniform," said Alonso, speaking for Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan.
The attack was a "sick and despicable act of revenge," Alonso said."There will not be the least concession ... and we will not rest until we have put these criminals where they belong," he added.

The soldiers were apparently kidnapped late Saturday as they left their base in Chilpancingo, located 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the resort town of Acapulco.

The beheadings were the drug cartel's answer to the Friday slaying of three drug cartel members in a clash with soldiers in the town of Teloloapan, also in Guerrero state, the daily La Jornada reported, citing security sources.President Felipe Calderon, speaking in Mexico City, said that the death of the soldiers "had not been in vain."Mexico "will spare no effort to bring to justice those responsible for these cowardly acts," Calderon said.Feuding drug cartels have engaged in a fierce battle to dominate Guerrero state. In the past two years, decapitated victims were recovered there at least three times. Two of those killed were federal police.Separately, 19 people were killed overnight Sunday to Monday in the northern state of Chihuahua in drug related violence, state officials said.
They include 14 people found dead in different parts of Ciudad Juarez, the most violent city in Mexico, located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.
Those include a couple, both 25, who were killed in a hail of 49 gunshots, said Alejandro Pariente with the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office.Authorities blame most of the violence there to an ongoing war between the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel -- led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes -- and the rival Sinaloa drug cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman for control of the city, one of the most lucrative points to smuggle drugs into the United States.More than 5,300 people have been killed this year across the country in a wave of drug-related attacks, despite a government clampdown on cartels .

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Three major street gangs in Brockton, the Green Street Gang, Bloods and North Side Stars, control certain areas of the city

Three major street gangs in Brockton, the Green Street Gang, Bloods and North Side Stars, control certain areas of the city and are reaching out to recruit new members. That means neighborhood kids seduced by the “glamour” and cash that drug dealers flash. They even reach into schools, seeking teenagers as young as 15 to join their illicit enterprises.The threats against Brockton police came from the Bloods and Green Street Gang, who are mostly involved in drug dealing and intimidation of entire neighborhoods, police say.There have been gangs in one form or another for many years in Brockton. Drugs have also been a part of the fabric of the city, as they are in most urban areas. But daily life takes on a darker cast when credible threats linger against police officers, who are doing all they can to protect the vast majority of local citizens who are not part of this crime wave.Federal authorities and state and local police need all the help they can get against these gangs. That means the testimony of witnesses, neighborhood watch groups not allowing gangs to take over their streets, and parents drilling it into their children that the profit in a life of crime is very short term.

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