By Jessica Van Sack
The Boston Herald
BOSTON — Faced with an increasingly mobile culture of gangbangers, top law enforcement agencies are firing back.
State officials plan by August to launch MassGangs, a new computer program that will track gang members statewide and join the records of local police departments into a central clearinghouse for law enforcement officials, almost like a ballistic fingerprint database of gangs.
Funded by a $12 million grant from the Department of Justice as part of a larger intel-sharing initiative, the program should enable police departments to anticipate flare-ups of violence faster and locate connections among associates almost instantly.
It’s about time.
The Hub’s Cape Verdean Outlaws have trickled into Brockton. Members of ragtag Asian gangs are going from Quincy to Randolph and back. And the notorious Latin Kings — a crew of drug-dealing dregs — has extended its tentacles from Springfield to Holyoke and even into parts of Vermont.
“The bad guys don’t care when they run from Quincy to Boston or Boston to Quincy,” said John A. Grossman, undersecretary for forensic science and technology at the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety. “The idea that our information-sharing would stop at those borders is crazy.”
That’s largely what’s happened in the past. In interviews, several police and law enforcement sources described encountering a babbling brook of gangbanger implants.
“Usually it’s a day or two later — after something happened — that we’re talking about it,” said Lt. John Crowley of the Brockton Police Department, which is tackling a surge in violence related to warring youth factions and their petty street beefs.
Still, only about 40 major players reside in Brockton - a fraction of what lurks within the Hub’s boundaries — and the six-member gang unit knows who they are.
It’s when Hub kids make trouble at nightclubs in Brockton and start forming alliances there that cops are caught unaware. Or at a crime scene when there’s some hoodlum they’ve never seen before who unbeknowst to them is running with a dangerous crew based elsewhere.
“It’s especially an issue for officer safety,” said state police Major Michael Crisp. “The police need to know who they’re encountering.”
Designed by techy project manager Tracy Varano of the Criminal History Systems Board and overseen by Curtis Wood, director of Criminal Justice Information Services, the program allows officers to log on and search by any number of criteria — everything from the person’s street moniker to an identifying tattoo, their gang colors, a date of birth or street address.
Said Wood, “They can run, but now they can’t hide.”
The database will first absorb repositories of information on gangs within state police, Boston and Lawrence, and the Department of Correction before bringing in other departments such as Brockton and “We’re routinely having gang members travel, primarily for reprisals,” said FBI Special Agent David Donahue of the Southeastern Massachusetts Gang Task Force, which is tracking more than 1,000 gang members in Brockton, New Bedford, Taunton and Lakeville alone.
“For intelligence purposes, the database is invaluable,” he said.
To get a sense of the dizzying volume of gangs throughout the state, look no further than the jails. Currently, 2,630 inmates hail from more than 250 separate gangs, according to the Department of Correction.
The sad part is that many of these gangbangers will actually want the dubious distinction of being placed on the list.
Said Crowley, “They want to be known as the bad guy.”
Copyright 2008 The Boston Herald