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Police Documenting More Gang Members

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The number of documented gang members in all of the United Sates has been increasing. For example Austin, Texas has increased about 36 percent since 2010, and law enforcement officials say they are concerned about the connection to Mexican drug cartels.

At a meeting Monday of the Austin Public Safety Commission, police Cmdr. Donald Baker said that by the Police Department’s most current count, 2,657 people belong to 113 gangs in Austin.

The double-digit increase is reflected in a year-to-year comparison: There were 2,501 documented gang members in March of this year and 1,834 in March 2010. August 2010 figures were not immediately available, Baker said.

However, Baker, who oversees the department’s organized crime units, cautioned that there may not be more gang members than in the past.

The documented gang members may be on the rise, he said, because law enforcement officials may be better identifying them.

“It’s almost like a terror cell,” Baker said. “You know they exist, but have you identified all of them?”

Baker has noted a rise of about 14 percent in documented youth gang members, from 658 in July 2010 to 748 this July.

It remains hard for police to say for certain how many gang members are present in the city, Baker said. “The gang member population in Austin is greater than we can give to you,” he told commissioners.

The bump in documented gang members is accompanied by a slight rise in gang-related violence, Baker said, including a shooting on Sixth Street in May that injured four bystanders.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official Greg Thrash, the resident agent in charge of the Austin office, briefed commissioners on the work of Mexican drug cartels in Austin.

Thrash said four cartels are active in Austin: the Gulf Cartel, La Familia Michoacana, the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel and the Los Zetas Cartel. Thrash and other officials said they are working to tackle to the problem.

Two weeks ago, authorities arrested 25 suspected members of La Familia in Central Texas, capping a 20-month, nationwide series of investigations.

The DEA said that strike significantly hurt the cartel in Austin, one of its major hubs. Included among those arrested were four men who were in charge of autonomous cells in Austin that distributed drugs locally and to other states.

Also in July, 18 people were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin in a federal indictment targeting the Mexican Mafia prison gang in Central Texas.

Baker said he worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in the 1980s and early 1990s on that city’s gang problems.

He said that gangs today, including those in Austin, are less about turf wars and “red versus blue,” and more about the sales of narcotics they get from Mexican cartels.

“This is a different game,” Baker said. “The cartels are bringing the dope in, and this is the distribution center. They’re bringing in gangs for a narco-enterprise.”

 


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