Ferguson, Social Movements, and Gangs

I went to Ferguson for the one year commemoration of the murder of Michael Brown. I accompanied my wife and Maria Hamilton, whose son was killed by Milwaukee police last April.  I came away deeply moved by the dynamism of the young activists. It was clear to me that #BlackLivesMatter is spearheading a new black liberation movement that just might have the potential to transform society and reach alienated youth.

We were in Ferguson for the marches, the shootings Sunday night, and the civil disobedience Monday. We supported those who were arrested at the Department of Justice and trained for confrontation but fortunately were not among those jailed.  The crowd was exuberant,

At the Canfield Green Apartments where Michael Brown  was 

shot by police and laid for 4 and a half hours in the street after

 he was shot. 

chanting “We’ve Already Won” at the lines of armed cops.  One young girl was wearing a T-shirt that summed it up: “This Ain’t your Momma’s Civil Rights Movement.”

No indeed. This new movement is decentralized,  organized yet not organized, and its youthful activists exhibit courage, street smarts, and dedication. They don’t take orders from anyone. This new, dynamic set of comrades rely on social media to mobilize and educate, and won’t let the constant police provocations hold them back.  Police murders are the essence of dehumanization and Michael Brown’s death has sent Ferguson into a state of rebellion.  Young people are screaming, “Enough is Enough.”  This is an American Intifada and I’m on their side.

But the events in Ferguson are not one thing. I was not foolish enough to think in a few days I could learn anything about the gangs and the extent of their participation in the uprising. Lots of people claim they know, but there is no serious research. We heard that gang members in Ferguson pledged at one time to put down arms against one another and unite against police. So did Baltimore gangs, who publicly denounced lies that they were planning to shoot police and called for calm. In Seattle the gangs marched together. #BlackLivesMatter seems to be reaching the most alienated.

If there is hope to stem gang violence, I don’t think it lies in formal programs like CureViolence or law enforcement schemes to threaten leaders, or even less in the failed strategy of mass incarceration.  As I have been writing from People & Folks to A World of Gangs to The In$ane Chicago Way, the real hope for us is to pull gang members into social movements —  like those in Ferguson.  Gangs are by nature made up of desperate, angry young men and women. I’m sure they are among the those on Florissant Street confronting the police. These youth are setting the fire this time for all of us.

It’s not clear how the gun play started Sunday night. Some claimed two groups of youth were shooting at one another. Just because there is a movement for justice does not mean the internalized anger of black youth will be easily channelled into activism.  The movement may offer hope, but it doesn’t promise as many jobs as the dope game.  As it stands, our movement can’t even get more than a few killer police indicted, much less punished for murder. This won’t make gang kids’ anger go away but instead will heat it up.

In The In$ane Chicago Way I looked at how Latino gangs with their superior connections to Mexican cartels built a Spanish mafia in Chicago.  Black gang members, already at the bottom of conventional society are also at the bottom of the drug game. In Chicago their old hierarchical “street organizations” have shattered. Like the movement in Ferguson, black gangs are decentralized and their youthful members look to social media not self proclaimed leaders for inspiration. 

What Ferguson taught me was the vital importance of reaching out now to black youth on the streets. The In$ane Chicago Way argues that organized crime is a serious threat to our youth. However the lack of legitimacy of the old gang leaders means street youth are looking for something new and events in Ferguson show us the way.  We need to realize #BlackLivesMatter means gang members too.  The alternative to joining this powerful social movement is watching our youth succumb to an even deeper cycle of despair and destructiveness.  Ferguson is above all a call to action.

Spectacle, Desperation, and Justice

I'm for the deal for a new arena.  Whether you like it or not, in today’s world you can not address the needs of the city of desperation without a city of spectacle.

Urban scholars are looking to a city of spectacle like Rio de Janerio, Los Angeles, or Barcelona as the 21st century standard.  The industrial city model,  like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, or Gary have been replaced by high tech or tourist capitols like San Francisco, Denver, or Miami,  or even a sports mecca, like Indianapolis.  

Chicago’s rebirth was not based on recapturing the steel industry or meat packing of a dead industrial era.  Millennium Park, Navy Pier, museums, and a host of near-by sports facilities were incentives for highly paid professionals to settle on Chicago for a suitable residence.  Chicago’s banking, futures, and nascent information industries in the Loop have near-by amenities that attract and sustain their wealthy middle and upper class consumers.  Spectacle is necessary to attract capital and their high wage workers.

This means rejuvenating Milwaukee is more than raising — or lowering — the minimum wage. In order to recharge our economy our city has to agglomerate corporations in a few key sectors, like medical technology or water.  But to do that it needs spectacle, starting with the underused Calatrava, our summer festivals, the Harley museum, and the Potawatomi Casino (bizarrely misplaced in the Menomonie Valley after their proposed move downtown was vetoed by former Mayor Norquist).  If the Bucks arena is rejected, what kind of strategy do our leaders have to rejuvenate a truly depressing downtown Milwaukee?  

But the dark side of the city of spectacle is the city of desperation.  Milwaukee is both one of the poorest cities in the US and one of its most segregated.  Black lives apparently don’t matter in this city even in a debate over a mainly African American sport.  Mark Levine’s sobering research on the depths of inequality in our city needs to be heeded.  My own research on gangs in 1980s and 1990s Milwaukee predicated that absent a turn about in jobs for the very poor, gangs would not go away.  

And they haven’t. In Chicago, the danger of a one-sided city of spectacle can be seen in the depths of hostility in all-black, high poverty,  high homicide areas like Englewood and Lawndale.  Chicago’s leaders appear to have been blinded by spectacle and have wanted the public to not think about the wrenching poverty and desperation of the ghetto. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been franticly trying to control the headlines about “Chiraq’s” stubborn homicide rate.  Do you know Milwaukee’s murder rate is even higher than Chicago’s?  The city of desperation is a moral stain on us all and cannot be ignored.

Opposition to the Bucks arena come from a variety of interest groups.  Common Ground has proposed tying Bucks public funding to giving the Milwaukee Public Schools $150 million to rebuild playgrounds.  A coalition of labor leaders has demanded high wages for local construction workers saying,  Good Deal or No Deal.  Others, like Stan Stojkovic, argue that funding higher education has more benefits than having a pro Basketball team.

It is crucial to struggle for investment in the central city.  Construction jobs should be high wage and include minority set asides and quotas for black and other minority workers. It is also important to  invest in, not cut, higher education.  What could be more foolish in an information era than to threaten one of the nation’s top universities?  

But the opposition to the Bucks arena needs to recognize the nature of the 21st century city is inextricably linked to creating a city of spectacle. The entertainment district proposed around the Bucks arena is a sensible piece of an overall strategy toward concentrating amenities for the wealthy and middle class.  Forcing the Bucks to move would be an act of urban suicide. 

But that does not mean we have to remain silent on the needs of the city of desperation. We need to link the two cities whenever we can.  Indeed the Bucks arena financing might have provided some leverage but the needs of Milwaukee's ghetto have been lost in a foolish debate about whether it would be cheaper to keep the Bucks or let them move.

I want to watch Giannis and Jabari bring Milwaukee an NBA championship. But most of all I want to see a City of Justice that can link the dollars brought by spectacle to addressing the needs of the desperate.

#BlackLivesMatter and Gangs

In Ferguson, gangs are among those protesting the police murder of Michael Brown. In Baltimore Bloods and Crips denounce rioting and call for peace.  Are we witnessing something new where black gangs join in political protest rather than shooting one another?  No, we’ve seen this before and there are important lessons from history for the “new civil rights movement” about gangs.

  As a scholar who has called for the inclusion of gangs in social movements from People & Folks, to The In$ane Chicago Way, I’m closely focused on current developments. Police killings, brutality, and corruption are daily realities on the streets and gangs have a self interest in opposing police misconduct. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has created an “injustice frame” that has mobilized people from all walks of life, including gangs.   It has long been my mantra that “gangs are not one thing” and gang members have “multiple conflicting identities.”  Among other things this means gangs can take an activist role — and historically they have.

In the 1960s, gangs in both LA and Chicago were politicized.  In the HBO movie, Bastards of the Party,  gangs are described as the offspring of the Black Panther Party,  following Mike Davis’s history in City of Quartz. At the same time in Chicago, the Black Panther Party sought an alliance with street gangs mediated by civil rights leaders, including Useni Perkins, whose book The Explosion of Chicago’s Black Street Gangs is must reading. In the 1990s the NYC Latin King and Queen Nation took a pro-social path richly documented by David Brotherton and Luis Barrios. My own book, A World of Gangs, finds many examples of politicized gangs around the world.

What have these historical experiences taught us about gangs and activist politics? 

1. Law Enforcement will make concerted efforts to suppress any gang involvement in social movements and create divisions between gangs and activists.    We see this today in Baltimore. After the gangs announced a truce the Baltimore Police Department spread the slanderous story they had “credible information” that the truce was designed to allow gangs to target police officers for assassination.  In 1969, Chicago gang politicization prompted Mayor Daley to declare “war on gangs” killing and jailing important leaders.  In both LA and Chicago the FBI did all they could to incite violence between the Black Panthers and gangs.  In the 1990s the New York City Latin Kings' leadership were indicted in order to crush a transformed ALKQN. Gang involvement in politics in all three cities were effectively suppressed by law enforcement.
2. Historically, gangs who turned to activism had strong organization and progressive leaders, unlike the situation today.   In Chicago Bobby Gore was a transformational leader of the Vice Lords as was King Tone in New York. These leaders inherited strong organizational structures and through force of personality led their gangs into pro-social action. Today, at least in Chicago, the black gangs have little formal organization. The old leaders were discredited by the horrendous gang wars of the 1990s that cost thousands of lives.  Contemporary black gangs are not nearly as organized as their 1960s counterparts.  On the other hand,  with weakened organization, the alienated and hostile young gang members may be open to being individually or in small groups pulled into activism. There is an important opportunity today to reach out to gang members who may be willing to join the protests. 
3. Unfortunately,  desperation on the streets and police repression means other paths, including organized crime, remain attractive options for street youth.   What we learned from Chicago in the 1960s was that while the gangs were being politicized some of their leaders were also negotiating with the mafia to control retail drug markets. Both progressive politics and organized crime coexisted among gang leaders who led a desperate, alienated membership.  Both then and now the uncertainties of real progress,  repressive policies of law enforcement, and the seduction of a lucrative and ‘always hiring’ entrepreneurial gang, means sustained activism by gang members is unlikely. 

This does not mean we should neglect or reject participation of gangs and their members from the new civil rights movement. If we are ever to build a real movement that benefits those on the bottom of society, we need to include the US's one million gang members as allies. We must resist the lies of law enforcement and oppose their transparent tactics promoting disunity. But we also need to heed the lessons of history and understand gangs are not one thing. For me, the guiding point remains:  #BlackLivesMatters includes gangs. 

Stereotypes Can Kill

March 24, 2015

Yesterday, the Milwaukee Fire & Police Commission upheld the firing of former MPD officer Christopher Manney after he shot and killed Dontre Hamilton last April 30.  I spent four hours one day observing the hearing.  What was very clear and disturbing was that the decision whether to sustain or overturn MPD Chief Flynn’s firing of Manney was made on technical grounds of whether Manney followed MPD rules and training.  The entire hearing turned our attention away from the most obvious and important aspect of this killing: one more young black man killed by police.

Manney was fired on two grounds. First, he was accused of stereotyping homeless people and acting based on a general conception that homeless people had weapons, knives and such.  In the first count of the charges, Manney’s statements to police investigators had not included any evidence that these stereotypes applied to Dontre. His pat down of Dontre thus violated policy and MPD rules. Based on Manney’s own words, there was no reason to pat Dontre down, and doing so led to a confrontation that took Dontre’s life. 

In social science terms, Manney was fired for being guilty of the ecological fallacy,  mechanically applying characteristics of a group to a specific case.  “Homeless people often carry weapons; therefore Dontre carried a weapon.”  Manney was found guilty of using stereotypes.  And stereotypes, we discover once again, can kill. And Dontre wasn’t even homeless. 

The second count was based on Manney’s response to count one. Once Manney realized he had not made a case to police investigators for Dontre’s dangerousness, he changed his tune.  He said he actually had feared for his life because of Dontre’s aggressive reactions, including a kicking motion and a “thousand yard stare.” If this was true, the charges read, then Manney again violated rules and policy by not asking for backup. 

The Chief repeatedly has said that Manney’s shooting of Dontre Hamilton was not a criminal act. The shooting was deemed justified by an officer being in fear for his life. The firing was not framed as a homicide, but as a technical rule violation, one that had the “unfortunate” consequence of taking a human life, i.e. Manney shooting Dontre 14 times. In our celebration of Manney’s firing we can’t lose sight of the fact that Manney is a free man and Dontre lies dead.

Flynn himself has radically changed how he framed the shooting. The police union attorney, in his cross examination of Flynn, played a video of the press conference Chief Flynn had given the day after the killing. At that time Flynn decried deinstitutionalization of the homeless and mentally ill which made controlling them a police matter. He complained how dangerous the mentally ill are and how forcing police to deal with violent homeless men is bound to result in situations like the death of Dontre Hamilton. The police are overwhelmed, Flynn said in his best liberal manner, and until broader social policies are adopted, killings of people like Dontre Hamilton are inevitable.  The day after the shooting Flynn’s chosen frame was to defend his officers against crazed, dangerous, mentally ill homeless people— like Dontre. 

Oh yes, and Dontre was black. You wouldn’t know it from the hearing, from the union or city attorney or Chief Flynn.  All mention of race was missing from testimony even though racist police violence oppressively and persistently hangs over this and many other cities. To frame means your attention is focused on what is inside the frame and you are directed away from considering what is outside. I listened as the legalistic words of both sets of lawyers and the judge expunged race from the proceedings.  

The frame of this hearing was only whether Manney abided by MPD policy or not.  A policy, I might note that has been relied on by police and city officials to justify dozens of police killings of Milwaukee black men over the years. They didn’t need to shout “THIS IS NOT ABOUT RACE!”   They just ran the hearing as if race didn’t matter.  Race was outside the frame. Once our attention is focused on what is inside a frame, i.e. the police rules, we don’t need to recognize the shadow of a tombstone in the room, one more unarmed black man killed by police. Everyone seems to agree: “They” are dangerous and “they” are the homeless but we all know who else “they” are. The power of framing lies in what is said but also what is unsaid. 

Flynn’s day after “police-are-facing-violent-homeless-people” framing was very different from his technical defense of his firing decision many months later.  Why the change? In the months that followed Flynn’s initial defense of Manney, the country’s streets erupted in protest over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Do you think the thousands marching in Ferguson and New York had any influence as Milwaukee wondered whether they also will face protests, rioting, and violence?  Do Flynn and Milwaukee's Mayor Barrett watch the news? Without the protests filling our TV screens and the Hamilton family’s brave stand,  Dontre’s death would likely have been dealt with routinely and Manney would have been returned to duty. 

I think the Chief’s firing of Manney and the Fire & Police Commission action was a concession to our movement.  But we also need understand it as a conscious attempt to divert attention away from racist killings by Milwaukee Police.  #BlackLIvesMatter remains our powerful counter frame.

Paranoia Strikes Deep in the Heartland

Do you think this could be a gang-related  Rorschach test? Jody Weis, President of the Chicago Crime Commission, looked deeply into the Chicago 15 year olds' design for an official  sticker and what did he see?  Why of course, the  Maniac Latin Disciples!  How stupid of me.  I see it now: gang "forks".....  well sort of hands pointed upward and the fingers might be bent.....  Be still. Weis, the city's #1 Gangbuster  told us authoritatively:  “It’s very, very close to a gang sign..... It’s not exactly, but it’s very close.’’ He added with great seriousness: “It’s too close to be a coincidence.’’

But Jody, you also pointed out ominously that the "heart" was also a Maniac Latin Disciple sign.  Now this IS scary.  I have heard rumors— unsubstantiated I admit —  that the Chicago Crime Commission is going to call for the abolition of Valentines' Day!  Care to comment?  Don't you think the display of the so-called "heart" on Februrary 14  is "too close to be coincidence?"  

I wonder if Weis will also call for an investigation of Rahm Emanuel?  You know the mayor who fired him for giving the appearance of talking to gang members.  Look at this picture. Isn't Rahm "too close" to this gang sign sticker for it to be coincidence?  Take my word for it, this is not a good way, Jody, to reclaim your credibility.

Now, Chicago isn't the only place where paranoia about gangs runs wild. But in the words of Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets: "Go peddle crazy somewhere else, we're all full up here." One example of this has been a steady dose of "crazy" about gangs and the Arizona State University logo.   According to Sgt Epich of the Chicago Gangs Crimes Unit their logo is a replica of gang forks.  "It bothers me that, one, this gang will be wearing ASU gear, but also that ASU and Nike were so naive to develop it. In my mind  it's (gang forks..jmh)  the spitting image of the S.D. trident."  Will the Crime Commission call for a ban on ASU playing basketball gangs in Chicago or demand the arrest anyone wearing this logo? Should we worry about who King Neptune really was?

But let's add a note of seriousness to a thoroughly ridiculous story. One reason why Jody Weis is so concerned about gangs can be seen in the pages of the Chicago Crime Commission's newly released 2012 edition of the Gang Book.  For Weis, along with CPD Superintendent McCarthy, wants to elevate gangs to Public Enemy #1.  They both want their claim to fame to be the "eradication" of Chicago gangs. Good luck.  What is most likely to happen is their war will keep hostility between black and Latino youth and the police high and keep our jails,  prisons, and Temporary Juvenile Detention Center over capacity. And the gangs will shift with police pressure from one corner to another and grow in strength behind bars. Weis and McCarthy will be long gone and our institutionalized gangs will still be here.

The Gang Book claims there are maybe more than 100,000 gang members in Chicago.   Gangs, it says,  are the new "organized crime." Well, there are a few big time gangsters within the street gangs. The violence around the drug business is no laughing matter.  But take a gander just one column to the right of the Sun Times story of "Jody and the Stickers." There you find  a piece about a real gangster,   Cicero Outfit boss Michael "The Large Guy" Sarno who got 25 years for bombings, robberies, and serial mayhem. Ever since 1969, when Richard J. Daley and States Attorney Edward J. Hanrahan declared "war" on gangs, the attention of the CPD has been focused away from the Outfit and toward minority youth.  Only the feds ever seem to indict mafia guys. 

Looking at the Gang Book, we have to ask "what is missing?"  The new, improved Gang Book shows picture after picture of gang chiefs but there are no pictures of Jon Burge, the CPD Commander who ran his own gang who tortured at least 135 black male gang members for decades. Nor any pictures of those who knew about this horrific violation of human rights and did nothing, or protected Burge. Those pictures would include every police Superintendent right up to Weis and one very prominent former Mayor.  Nor is there a single word in the Gang Book about the Outfit and absolutely no mention of the culture of corruption within the CPD.  I wonder if it is a coincidence that Outfit bosses and Chicago machine pols have been such pals over the years while there have been almost no local prosecutions of the Outfit?  The Crime Commission's Gang Book would have us pretend Chicago is a world of good vs. evil, a fantasy world where police do no wrong and politicians are honest. That ain't Chicago.

So let's conclude with our own Rorschach test, this one from Vermont. It seems that prison inmates there designed a state logo for Vermont police departments. No gang signs, surely,  but look closely at the shapes on the cow. Probably not a coincidence either. 

The US Gang "Intelligence" Agency?

Just when you thought defining Juggalos as gangs and FBI hyperbolic exaggerations couldn't get worse, voilà,   here comes the  US Gang Intelligence Agency!  With understandably muted fanfare,  the creation of a new entity to investigate gangs and "domestic terrorism" was recently announced.  

Why not front page in the New York Times?  Maybe there was a bit of embarrassment.   To get some sense of how serious this agency is, the initial press release explains that  the USGIA is concerned with more than gangs and recently investigated a spat between police agencies. In what might be called "interfecine" warfare,  one officer splattered sh*t on the car of another over the arrest of a Miami cop by Florida State Patrol! Things "escalated" from there. Ugh!  This in their initial press release. Really.   Read about it for yourself.  Now,  no easy jokes about what this agency is probably full of.

Despite the official looking seal, the USGIA ("G"not "C", get it?) is a private company dedicated to "assist local, state and federal law enforcement agencies identify, analyze, confirm and respond to what they call Mass Victim Related Acts ("MVRA")."   For a hefty fee, no doubt.   Their absurd press release is hardly noteworthy except for its easy the equating of gangs and terrorists.  What needs to be noted is how the "frame" of terrorism is being extended to areas far from what you might think.   For example, the USA Patriot Act  defines "domestic terrorism as 

... an act ""dangerous to human life"" that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to:  (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.  

This can cover almost any crime and the label "terrorist" can be easily directed against street gangs. Many states have adopted terrorist language in their anti-gang bills like The Illinois Street Gang Terrorist Omnibus Prevention Act.  What we are witnessing is the acceptance of a frame that merges young people acting out destructively with organized terrorist conspiracies, real or imagined.

A few years ago I consulted with attorneys in the Narseal Batiste trial. Batiste was accused of plotting with al Queda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower.  Actually the plot was concocted by an FBI undercover agent posing as an al Queda operative in what the defense argued — and I concur —  was a clear case of entrapment.  After two mistrials and tens of millions of dollars spent,  in a third trial the US Attorney argued that not only was Batiste a dupe of Osama and al Queda, but he was a dupe of Jeff Fort and the Blackstone Rangers as well!  Terrorist and gang member to boot put the jury over the top.  Batiste's questionable conviction is now on appeal.

The American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI) manual for prosecuting gang cases states:

While they don’t call themselves terrorists, the effect is just the same—every day, innocent people are killed in the streets, often in broad daylight. Just like terrorists, gang members thrive on fear. The more fear they can instill in the communities and their enemies, the greater the freedom they enjoy while dealing in their dirty business of guns, drugs, and extortion. That fear is implanted by taking credit for the violence they

perpetrate.

Hey, lets reduce the world to "them" and "us," no shades of difference, no subtlety,  no mixed loyalties, nothing but enemies we need to wipe out before they wipe us out.  Gangs, terrorists, communists, Juggalos,  what's the difference? After all,  since we cannot reason or compromise with pure evil, we can only destroy it for the sake of "homeland security."

US Justice Department policy toward gangs is an example of what Robert Entman calls "cognitive shortcuts." This means we simplify complex and diverse matters into a single, uncomplicated mantra.  Life is reduced to a simple-minded narrative of good vs. evil.   When this psychological process becomes the underpinnings of policy, we should indeed be be wary.  Think about  it: do we really want to take "shortcuts" to justice?  Silly organizations like the USGIA just underscore the dangerous frames of our country's policy towards gangs.

Gangs, Juggalos, and the FBI's Crooked Frames

There it is, right in the FBI's list of Haitian and Somalian and other scary gangs,  the "Juggalos!" Yeah, the Insane Clown Posse's groupie group has made the FBIs most dangerous gangs list. You gotta be kidding. 

But lets leave to one side too-easy-to-make comments about FBI paranoia or tactics to scare lawmakers and get more funding.  Rather, let's look more carefully at what the FBI says about the overall US gang problem.  How are gangs being "framed" by the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency?

First, all sorts of gangs are lumped together in their report "2011 National Gang Threat Assessment." Fair enough, the FBI is charged with investigating "threats," as in the mafia, communists, terrorists, gangs, or now, eeek!,  Juggalos.  The "frame" provided by their report means some aspects — gangs as threats — are given more prominence than others.  As in a picture frame: you are directed to look inside the frame and end up not looking outside it.  

Gangs as threats may be a justified target of the FBI,  but aren't gangs more than threats?  We may not like it, but gangs, for example,  provide emotional support for troubled kids.  They are signs that not all is right with our schools and become a refuge for drop outs.  [note: according to a recent report only 47% of high school age black males actually graduated].  They provide jobs, even if from vice industries, for youth in minority neighborhoods where unemployment is staggeringly high.  They bring money into poor minority neighborhoods when gangs sell drugs to a richer white clientele  [evenso, white kids are more likely to use and sell drugs than black kids].  Yes, gangs do more harm than good, but we need to recognize that gangs (including Juggalos) are more than one thing.  Come to think of it,  just like the FBI, as those who've had experience with their investigations will attest. 

But FBI "framing," double entendre intended, is not on the up and up.  Let's look at what their report did not say or what we can find buried in their text.  For example, their report claims there are now 1.4 million gang members, a "40 percent increase from 2009."  Huh? Forty percent, actually a reported 500,000 more gang members over 2 years?  How did they arrive at this number ?  Read the small print: 

Better reporting and collection has contributed greatly to the increased documentation and reporting of gang members and gang trends. 

Uh, huh. They got these numbers by asking law enforcement agencies to estimate how many gang members in their jurisdiction and this year there was "better reporting" meaning the cops found more gangs. Do locales have a common methodology in estimating gang membership? Nope. Any checks on validity? Nope. Any reason to think a jurisdiction might exaggerate their findings? Well, if you got a bigger gang problem you will certainly need more funds to fight them. How many local estimates did the FBI reject because they were suspect? We don't know but I'll take a guess: None. So how do they know how many gangs and gang members there are? Do they count them? Nah, they ask the local cops to do what amounts to a "guess-timate."  So why do the FBI think this massive increase occurred?  Read and weep:

Law enforcement in several jurisdictions also attribute the increase in gang membership in their region to the gangster rap culture, the facilitation of communication and recruitment through the Internet and social media, the proliferation of generational gang members, and a shortage of resources to combat gangs.

Ah,  gangsta rap and Facebook are to blame. Really.  But there is more.  In 2010 the FBI tells us 

Gangs are becoming more violent.....

But Director Mueller, we have a problem here. USA Today reported that in 2010.  

Across the nation, homicide rates have dropped to their lowest levels in nearly a generation. And overall violent crime has sunk to its lowest level since 1973, Justice Department statistics show.

In fact, the murder rate in 2010 of 4.8 per 100,000 was less than HALF that in 1991 (9.8) or 1980 (10.2).  In fact, the absolute number of homicides in 2010 (14,748) is almost exactly the same as 1969 (14,760) when there were 100,000,000 fewer people in the US!   Rape, robbery, and assault are also all sharply down.

The report goes on to say other silly things, for example linking gangs to the computer game Second Life, because gang members "could potentially use Second Life to recruit, spread propaganda, commit other crimes such as drug trafficking, and receive training for real-world criminal organizations." "Potentially?" Is this a feeler for the FBI to investigate the 21.3 million Second Life accounts registered in 2010?

Now the problem with such "crooked frames" is that there is a real threat from gangs, but it becomes lost in rhetoric that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. In many cities gangs are not becoming more sophisticated and organized but fragmented with fewer controls from powerful city leaders. This has both good and bad aspects. Less organization often means more violence.  At the same time, the reach of Mexican cartels and prison gangs has influenced gangs in many areas, and this deserves more than cursory attention. We also are not informed of increasing penetration of Latino gangs into politics, following the well trod Irish and Italian paths.  Gangs and politics have always been closely knit, but the FBI apparently doesn't think corruption is a threat worth mentioning.  I wonder why?  FBI gang reports like this are meant for cheap headlines and little else. 

Now I have to admit that I have mingled with Juggalos and watched the Insane Clown Posse perform in person. They are outrageous. But no more so than the FBI's "Threat Assessment."