The Plague Spreads
Little Robert was only 11 years old, yet he was found facedown under a desolate bridge. There were two bullet holes in the back of his head. He had been killed, it was believed, by members of his own youth gang.
Fifteen-year-old Alex was headed toward gang membership and perhaps toward an early grave. But he saw a friend die, and he thought to himself: ‘I don’t want to end up like that.’
VIOLENT street gangs, once associated with the widely known Los Angeles gangs called the Bloods and the Crips, have spread worldwide. But wherever they are, gangs are amazingly alike.
England’s “Teddy Boys” shocked the world in the 1950’s. The Times of London said that they used axes, knives, bicycle chains, and other weapons to “inflict terrible injuries” on innocent people. ‘Knife fights broke out, cafés were ripped apart, and coffee bars were wrecked.’ People were molested, robbed, beaten up, and sometimes killed.
Die Welt of Hamburg, Germany, reported that more recently young people “on their way to the disco or on their way home” have been set upon by gangs wielding “baseball bats, knives, and guns.” Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung said that skinheads in Berlin attack anyone “who is noticeably weaker—the homeless, the handicapped, retired women.”
An Awake! correspondent in Spain reported that the problem of teenage gangs is a recent one there but is growing. ABC, a newspaper in Madrid, carried the headline “Skinheads—The New Nightmare of the Streets.” A former skinhead from Spain said that they would sniff out “foreign pigs, prostitutes, and homosexuals.” He added: “A night without violence [was] worthless.”
In South Africa the Cape Times said that much of the violent crime there is “the by-product of a vicious gang culture.” A book published in Cape Town says that South African gangs became “parasites” in the poorer townships and that they “robbed and raped members of their own communities and indulged in gang fights over territory, markets, and women.”
O Estado de S. Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper, said that gangs there were “multiplying at a frightening rate.” It stated that they would attack rival gangs, better-off youths, people of another race, and poor migrant workers. It also said that one day several gangs formed a dragnet, “robbed people on the beach . . . , fought among themselves,” and turned a major avenue in Rio de Janeiro into “a war zone.” Another report from Brazil said that the number of gangs is increasing both in large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and in smaller towns.
The Canadian magazine Maclean’s noted in 1995 that according to police estimates, there were at least eight active street gangs in Winnipeg, Canada. And newspapers in the United States have published pictures of gang members who have taken gang clothes and graffiti to isolated Indian reservations of the American Southwest.
In New York City, a rash of gang-related violence erupted last year. Members of the Bloods and the Crips, gangs originally prominent in Los Angeles, were said to have been involved. According to the mayor of New York, between July and September, the police made 702 arrests in incidents directly related to street gangs.
The problem is no longer confined to major cities. The Quad-City Times, published in the central part of the United States, told of “increased violence among teen-agers, rampant drug use and a growing sense of hopelessness.”
A Heartrending Plague
One gang is said to have started as a group of friends. But as its leader’s reputation grew, so did the violence. The gang leader lived at his grandmother’s house, which was shot at repeatedly, even when she was inside. A newspaper reported that there were more than 50 bullet holes in the house. The shots had apparently been fired in retaliation for acts that were blamed on the grandson’s gang. In addition, the gang leader’s brother was in jail as a result of gang-related activity, and his cousin, who had moved away to avoid the violence and had returned home for a visit, had been shot by someone in a passing van.
In Los Angeles, gang members shot at a car and killed an innocent three-year-old whose mother and boyfriend had mistakenly turned down the wrong street. A bullet smashed into a school and hit a teacher who was trying to help students learn to improve their lives. Many others have also been killed who had nothing to do with gangs but who became their victims. A Brooklyn, New York, mother became known in her neighborhood for the saddest of distinctions—losing all three of her young sons to gang violence.
What has caused this worldwide plague of youth violence, and how can we protect our dear children from it? How do gangs get started in the first place, and why are so many youths joining them? These questions are discussed in the following articles.
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Scott Olson/Sipa Press