Gangs are joining the military, not to serve their country, but to learn how to kill people better:
The FBI has assigned an agent to monitor any connections between U.S. Soldiers and a Chicago-based gang alliance, federal agents said.
Of particular concern are reports that the Folk Nation, consisting of more than a dozen gangs in the Chicago area, is placing young members in the military in an effort to gather information about weapons and tactics, said FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons, who is based in El Paso, Texas.
“Our understanding is that they find members without a criminal history so that they can join, and once they get out, they will have a new set of skills that they can apply to criminal enterprises,” Simmons said. “This could be a concern for any law enforcement agency that has to deal with gangs on a daily basis.”
Chicago gang symbols can be found amid other graffiti, mostly in latrines on U.S. military bases such as Camp Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar Province.
The police are beginning to worry:
(05/03/06 – FAYETTEVILLE) – An unlikely place has become the new battleground for American gangs. Gang leaders want their members to sign up for military duty so they can learn urban combat tactics.
Images of graffiti in Iraqi combat zones is capturing attention. Military personnel who are gang members in their hometowns allegedly put it there. Fayetteville police officer Hunter Glass, a gang expert, says whoever did the graffiti knew exactly what they were doing.
He says he is not surprised by what he calls the infiltration of gang members in the military. Glass blames recruiters.
“With millions of gang members out there, it may seem like a great place to recruit from as an element, but the problem is is that gangs are a problem,” he said.
One shocking video shows a gang member, who also served as a Marine in Iraq, using urban warfare tactics to kill a California police officer and seriously wound two others.
The images of our military’s defaced equipment and buildings:
Some people are blaming the recruiters, but this problem is bigger than just a recruitment issue. These people are seeking miltiary training for the purpose of killing their gang enemies and the police and other law enforcement officials for the furtherance of their gang enterprises: drug dealing, prostitution, weapons dealing. It sounds to me like they didn’t need to be recruited.
Flopping Aces and Michelle Malkin have more.
It wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened in the U.S. military. In the 19th century, Irish immigrants voluntarily signed up for the Army to get training they could use when they went back to Ireland to fight the Brits.
Of course, they were using the training to kill non-Americans, but it’s the same kind of deal.
What are you going to do? Convicted criminals are still being given the option of joining the military, rather than serving time in prison. Everybody’s gotta be somewhere. Make them swear that they’re not gang members and they’ll swear. Makes no difference. Can you think of a practical way to keep gang members out? It’s already illegal (see your UCMJ on secret societies), & I’d bet that people join gangs after they join the military.
Then there’s this hip-hop culture that’s so pervasive — very unnerving to come upon a kid in rural Maine, with his NY Mets hat worn askew, several visible tattoos and body piercings, MF Doom pulsing from the cab of the rusty Chevy pickup, saying something to a similarly arrayed and equipped kid along the lines of, “Dog, gotta milk the cows, yo.” Does every vandal belong to a recognized gang?
And finally, do hard drugs cause rock music? I have personally recorded five decades of hysterical pronounciamentos by axe-grinding law enforcement people, all of them shit, e.g. the notion that marijuana is The gateway drug, as opposed to whatever’s in mom & dad’s liquor cabinet. Do you absolutely trust these reports? If so, why?
“It sounds to me like they didn’t need to be recruited.”
Good policy Kim! Maybe you and the rest of the Wizbang staff/readers who support the war will sign up. (Spines required)
One would hope that the military would provide this misguided youths with a more wholesome environment that would replace the gang as their “family”. In some cases, I’m sure it does. In most, however, it only helps make them “better” thugs.
Sigh…
Sad thing is that, if the military attempts to crack down on this kind of thing, it’ll be pilloried for “racism” and “witchhunts”.
“The images of our military’s defaced equipment and buildings”
Not for nothin’ but that equipment is not “ours”.. last time I checked, the U.S. doesn’t use BMP’s.
/shrug
i think this is hilarious with the gang bangin in iraq,tho it is fuked up for the nation, i’m only a rymebanga so its all good…..
CHI-T0WN! AKA G0-GETTAH-VILLE!
As a lifelong Chicago resident, I am quick to criticize Mayor Daley: however, I have to give him credit for at least trying to do something about the city’s massive gang problem. Several years ago, the City Council passed an ordinance whereby known gang members were banned from assembling out-of-doors. The ACLU sued, and the Illinois Supreme Court struck the law down for being “too vague”.
Seems the Constitution (or at least some interpretations of it) ties our hands when it comes to preventing the activities of gangs.
About three years ago I sat in on a Military Police class on gangs and gang violence, and this topic was brought up. This isn’t anything new.
Nothing new. Tattoos are screened – docs doing the screening physicals are supposed to categorically refuse anyone marked. Gangs have gotten wise and are making it harder to screen their brethren out. Move along.
This story is ducking fumb. An insult to thinking people in the know:
‘In NEARLY EVERY ONE of the cases that we have looked into, it is a young man or woman who thought that the symbol looked cool,’ said Christopher Grey, spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. ‘We have found some people even get gang tattoos not really knowing what they are, or at least that they have not had any gang affiliation the past.’
Still, Army investigators have opened 10 cases in the last year in which evidence of gang activity was found, he said.
TEN PEOPLE. You have a better chance of finding ten people that have bitten heads off of live chickens in a satanic cult ritual.
As an ex-gang member from Chicago’s West Side, and as a current Active Duty soldier on my way to my second tour in Iraq, I can only say the “real” gang members wouldnt be stupid enough to represent their affiliation where it doesnt matter, but i can say old habbits are hard to break.
seriously gang members are losers compelte losers.
seriously gang members are losers compelte losers.