By Natalie Neysa Alund
The Bradenton Herald
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Gang intervention and prevention.
Regional joint law enforcement and community task forces.
Efforts to lower gang members’ return to crime after being released from prison.
They are all part of a new strategy state officials plan use to fight gang growth across the state.
“They are tall orders,” Attorney General Bill McCollum said as he offered the Bradenton Herald a preview of some of what will be in a report due out by the month’s end.
Although there is no magic bullet, there is a strategy to tackle gangs, McCollum said while sitting in a conference room at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport Tuesday.
“This has to be community-driven with some direction from the state and we’re gonna give it, but the community needs to take it and make it work,” McCollum said.
Locally, Manatee County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Gary Combee greets the plan with open arms.
Combee, who heads the sheriff’s gang suppression unit, said the sheriff’s office and the Department of Law Enforcement have a joint anti-gang task force, but it’s just for officers.
“We welcome the idea of community members getting involved,” he said. “We need the community to take back their neighborhoods, because we can’t do it alone.”
Last year, McCollum initiated an executive group aimed at reducing gang growth.
Members include agency heads and representatives from agencies and organizations including the Department of Corrections, Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Education and FDLE.
The group first met in August.
Soon after, authorities started hitting gangs hard in court, using racketeering laws to take them down.
Florida, over a 25-year-period, has the largest-growing number of gangs in the nation, said Emery Gainey, director of law enforcement relations with McCollum’s office.
Statistics show Florida has about 1,000 gangs with an estimated 65,000 members, according to information from McCollum’s office.
In Manatee County alone, there are 14 known gangs with an estimated 600 to 800 members.
Gang recruitment is on the rise, McCollum said, so prevention and intervention are crucial.
“There is no state repository of prevention programs that address at-risk youth,” McCollum said. “We might have at-risk programs, but they have not been effective in preventing kids from entering gangs.”
Juvenile Justice Secretary Frank Peterman Jr. said one area he plans to strengthen is his department’s Faith Based Initiative, which ties churches or mosques into a network aimed at helping at-risk youth.
“We want to revive that area, to get the faith-based community to put together viable prevention programs,” Peterman said. “Seeing life from a faith perspective, I know, could be a major shift for kids who are at risk in terms of going into gangs.”
There is also a plan to get children involved more in after-school programs.
“They can focus on priorities including how to make it appear that it is not cool to be a gang member in your community,” McCollum said.
Prisoner reentry is another focus.
Currently, there are 4,000 identified gang members in the system and 1,000 gang members on probation, said Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.
Although there are not statistics on gang member recidivism, of the 96,000 inmates in the system, there is an overall 42 percent recidivism rate.
But McCollum said Tuesday that many gang members do, in fact, return.
Walter McNeil, Florida Department of Corrections Secretary, emphasized the importance of rehabilitation.
“Many inmates gang-involved come to our institutions with gang affiliations and try to continue that,” said McNeil, also a member of McCollum’s executive working group. “The focus is try to identify gang members when they come in and then work with them to make sure there are interventions.”
In addition to the report’s anticipated completion this month, McCollum said he hopes state lawmakers will pass proposed anti-gang legislation by the end of the session, which concludes the first week in May.
The proposed legislation, recommended in late January by a statewide grand jury, would enhance laws targeting criminal street gangs and enhance the ability of prosecutors to seek racketeering charges against gang members.
It also includes enacting a “gang kingpin” statute designed to target gang leaders and remove them from gang organization to start dismantling gangs. That statute would make it a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison to initiate, organize, plan, finance, direct, manage or surprise gang-related activity.
Other provisions include outlawing ownership of bulletproof vests by felons and creating a registration requirement for convicted gang members.
Fighting gangs
An executive working group, instituted by Attorney General Bill McCollum, is working to reduce — and eventually stop — gang growth in Florida. The members include agency heads and representatives from these agencies and organizations:
— Department of Corrections
— Department of Juvenile Justice
— Department of Education
— Florida Department of Law Enforcement
— Department of Children and Families
—Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles
— Florida Sheriffs Association
— Florida Police Chiefs Association
— Office of Drug Control
— Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association
Copyright 2008 The Bradenton Herald