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The arrests were made primarily by John Molinelli’s Gang Task Force — funded, in part, by state and federal grants that presumably don’t burden the local taxpayer.
Molinelli said those picked up, with help from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office, “are alleged to be members of and/or have ties to the Crips, Bloods and Latin King street gangs.”
Most of the action happened in Garfield, hardly the height of suburban living — or gang wars.
The task force members began working the streets in July, collecting tips and making undercover pot, cocaine and heroin buys, leading to this week’s sweep.
Molinelli didn‘t give weights or street prices of the drugs — ordinarily not the kind of information a law enforcement official whose team just made a big bust leaves out. He also announced the arrests through a brief release after quitting time, instead of at a news conference, where major takedowns are usually revealed.
Still, if you listen to fellow Democrat Robert Menendez, the U.S. Senator from Union City, this must be a country at war.
“From our cities to our suburbs and beyond, families, police, prosecutors are at war with gangs, and we need to give them full support from the federal level,” Menendez said a month ago, in pushing a bill that would boost anti-gang funding in the state. “This has become a pervasive problem in need of a comprehensive solution, and that’s what we want to help deliver.”
We can say, with certainty, that there’s trouble in Camden, Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Trenton. Throw in Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, East Orange and Passaic, as well.
But how many times are feuds, vendettas, retribution and violent one-upmanship simply labeled as “gang-related”?
A “formless street scene” is often responsible for crime, says David M. Kenney, a highly respected professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Many of those involved, he said, are petty thugs who may or may not have gang affiliations.
As Kennedy once noted, the criteria used to identify someone as a gang member includes directly asking whether he or she is. Given that choice, what wiseass would deny it?
“People think they are organized and [part of] making money on the streets, but, for the most part, all of that is wrong,” Kennedy said. “What you usually find are groups that fit none of the above descriptions.”
This in no way denies that street crime is still very real and must be addressed somehow.
“Calling it a gang is a response that calms public fears but may not be necessarily accurate,” Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, told TIME magazine
Although the term “gang” can have many several different meanings, even within the law enforcement community, the definition New Jersey uses requires:
- The association of three or more people who use a common name or identifier, such as a symbol, tattoo, item of clothing or hand gesture;
- Someone who, alone or with others, commits or conspires or attempts to commit two or more serious crimes — robbery, carjacking, aggravated assault, assault, aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, arson, burglary, kidnapping, or extortion.
Guess what? When I was a teenager, I hung with the 64th Street “gang” in North Bergen. We wore jeans, t-shirts and Chuck Taylor All-Star high-tops. Rarely did fewer than a half-dozen or so of us hang together at a time. Sometimes that number grew to nearly 20.
We used fake IDs to buy blackberry brandy, Colt 45 malt liquor, Michelob “nips,” Boone’s Farm apple wine and Yago sangria. We drank it in our cars, in family basements and at the 64th Street field. Sometimes someone would break out pot or hash.
We were teens — too young to drive but behind the wheels of our friends’ cars, or even our parents’ cars, if we could slip the keys while they were asleep.
We went to dances in other parts of town and started “rumbles.” We stole statues off lawns in Alpine and Demarest, then dumped them in front of a friend’s house. We used siphon hoses with cranks to fill our gas tanks, cut holes in the bottom of beer cans and flipped the top to “shotgun” the contents down our throats in seconds.
We even broke into the freight trains stopped off West Side Avenue, pulling out mini-TVs and whatever else was sell-able. And we “vanished” disabled cars in the Meadowlands — removing any and all signs of identification — so our families could collect the insurance money.
86th Street had a crew. Same for downtown, near Kennedy Elementary School. We were all such bad asses back in the 70s.
But we weren’t Hell’s Angels.
Using the broadest criteria, a 2009 federal report estimated there are more than 1 million gang members in 20,000 gangs nationwide.
Two years earlier, 43 percent of those New Jersey municipalities that responded to a state study cited gang activity — although the ranks were considered “thin on the ground,“ with no more than a dozen in any particular area.
The study also questioned local assessments of gang culture, noting that different jurisdictions had different perceptions. Even the terms used to describe the areas are dubious: Although located in otherwise bucolic Bergen, towns like Garfield and Lodi, along with cities such as Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, aren’t suburban in any way, shape or form.
“Local characterizations of gangs are inconsistent, partial, overreaching, and noncompliant,” Kennedy said. Databases “can be overinclusive, underinclusive, poorly conceived in particular places, inconsistent from place to place, guided by statutes and policies that are themselves all of the foregoing and often implemented in practice in ways that are inconsistent with these statutes and policies.”
As violent crime recedes, and authorities begin to concentrate more on computer and sex crimes, street thugs have become major targets.
Nine years ago, the federal government launched the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative — a funding source aimed at taking illegal guns off the streets. Five years later, it expanded the initiative to “fighting” gangs.
The federal program combines enforcement with coordinated programs aimed at deterring and preventing crime through community-based programs. It also requires that each United States Attorney implement programs in tandem with state and local prosecutors.
In order to qualify for funding — which can include money to hire more detectives or police officers, in addition to equipment — jurisdictions must show gang activity, no matter the size, shape or degree.
The trouble is: If that funding dries up someday, and those federal dollars are dedicated to other areas — particularly in a recession — public authorities will have to consider laying off the employees they hired during flush times.
More likely, they’ll make YOU pick up the check.
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