Editor’s Note: This week’s PoliceOne First Person essay is from PoliceOne Member Nick Perna, a Detective with the Redwood City (Calif.) Police Department, currently serving on the Street Crime Suppression Team. In PoliceOne “First Person” essays, our Members and Columnists candidly share their own unique view of the world. This is a platform from which individual officers can share their own personal insights on issues confronting cops today, as well as opinions, observations, and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. If you want to share your own perspective with other P1 Members, simply send us an e-mail with your story.
By Detective Nick Perna
Police1 Member
When you think of techniques to deal with gang problems, a number of solutions come to mind:
• Long-term investigations
• Wire tap operations
• Injunctions
• And so on...
These have all proven successful in dealing with gang issues, especially in large cities with big gang problems. But what if you work for a smaller department with limited resources?
Death by a Thousand Cuts
A wiretap operation can be very manpower intensive when you consider the number of personnel required to man the wire room, do surveillance, manage the investigation, and so on. Usually most other investigations need to be put on the back burner while detectives are assigned to the wiretap.
This can be especially problematic if a major crime such as a homicide or a series of crimes like residential burglaries or serial rapes occur while the wiretap is up and running.
A detective bureau in a larger department wouldn’t have a problem handling this, since they would have plenty of folks. My agency has 10 detectives and two detective sergeants (that includes the Street Crime Suppression Team with four detectives and one sergeant).
It’s difficult to pull all of them from current cases to assist in a long term investigation. Injunctions can be difficult as well and require a high level of enforcement that not all agencies can provide.
So, if it’s too difficult to manage a large scale gang investigation, how can smaller departments deal with their gang problem? Smaller agencies need to be creative when coming up with solutions.
One technique we use in my city is what I refer to as “death by a thousand cuts.”
What this amounts to is an aggressive, zero tolerance approach in gang areas, for even the most minor of infractions. Its gang enforcement, one small bite (or cut) at a time.
The key is zero tolerance in every sense of the word. We all like arresting drug dealers and hooking crooks with guns, but a single arrest usually doesn’t solve the problem. In a zero-tolerance operation, departments deny gangsters a place to hang out, drink, smoke, sell drugs and commit assaults. Since most gangs are territorial in nature, it’s not hard to identify those places.
Zero tolerance can come in many forms. Here’s what’s worked for us:
• Citing gang members for all manner of petty crimes: Open container, underage drinking, loitering, curfew, possession of marijuana, littering, city and county codes. These violations result in costly fines that most gangsters can’t afford to pay.
• Contacting landlords and apartment managers to get troublesome tenants evicted.
• Working with landlords and apartment managers to serve gang members with trespass warnings and arresting them when they are in violation (kind of like a low rent version of an injunction). Some property owners will give police carte blanche when it comes to this.
• Booking gang members, even for small time crimes: misdemeanor weapons possession, drunk in public, misdemeanor and felony warrants, parole violations, probation violations. The less time on the street means less gang activity in the targeted area.
A word about booking probation violations: In the county where I work in, we can book juveniles into Juvenile Hall for violating their probation. Many of our juvenile gangsters have gang conditions as a part of their probation and they are pretty easy to violate, especially when they hang out together and with other gangsters (especially those on probation with gang conditions).
In 2011, we had an increase in gang violence so myself and two other detectives were put on a gang suppression detail. Out of the 192 arrests we had that year, we arrested 84 juvenile gang members and booked 59 of them into juvenile hall, most for probation violations with no on-view charges.
This had a major impact in reducing gang activity.
I recall three kids we arrested no less than three times that year, usually for being with each other. Two of those guys dropped out of gang life completely.
As a form of incentive for us, our juvenile hall is located near a great Italian Restaurant so we tended to make a lot of arrests around dinnertime. If booking juveniles for these types of offenses is an option in your jurisdiction, I highly recommend it.
The zero tolerance approach has worked well in Redwood City.
We had a Sureno neighborhood where we were having a lot of issues with shootings, assaults and general nuisance stuff. We used the fore-mentioned techniques (cites, arrests, probation violations) over about a six-month period.
At the end of the six months, we saw a significant decrease in gang activity. Many gangsters missed their court dates and their cases went to warrant so they stopped hanging out in the area to avoid being arrested.
Others, tired of the constant pressure, abandoned the location. Patrol units, working in conjunction with the Street Crime Suppression Team, also hammered the area. This provided almost constant, 24-hour pressure on gang activity.
The hard part is being consistent. It’s easy to jump out on a bunch of gangsters and tell them to take off rather than citing and booking offenders. But, the problem is that this is what has been done before and the gangsters are conditioned to it.
They know that they can return as soon as you leave because there hasn’t been any consequence for their actions.
You have to stick to the game plan and enforce all available laws. It takes a lot of work that isn’t particularly glamorous or exciting but the ends justify the means.
Winning Hearts and Minds
One way to look at this technique is to equate it to military style counterinsurgency operations, such as those in Vietnam, and in present day Iraq and Afghanistan.
Zero tolerance policies deny the “enemy” sanctuary and base to operate from. It also disrupts their “operations” (acts of violence, drug dealing). The “Hearts and Minds” approach of dealing with landlords and property owners to join in the process is essential to long term success.
Just like in war, it is essential to have the support of the local populace— the non-gang members living in those areas being targeted.
Other alternatives that can be used in conjunction with or separate from the zero tolerance policy include:
1.) “Poor Man’s Wire”
I’ve seen two cases where Detectives used jail calls to build good gang cases. In one instance a DA Inspector used jail calls to build a solid, multi-defendant witness intimidation case stemming from a gang homicide. I testified as the gang expert in the case and used many of the admissions made during those calls.
Eight defendants plead guilty with sentences ranging from 13 to 35 years.
In another case, a detective used jail calls to build a good drug case on a Northern Structure gang member. A word of caution though: these cases take a lot of work.
Anyone who has ever had to listen to inmate phone conversations for an extended period of time knows what I’m talking about. Most of the conversations have nothing to do with crime and are often unintelligible due to language barriers and use of slang.
2.) Testifying Confidential Informants
If you’re fortunate enough to have a testifying informant, they can be a great asset. In 2011 and 2012, we used a former Norteno drug dealer who was working off a meth sales case.
He bought meth, heroin, cocaine, pills, marijuana, and a firearm from other Nortenos in the area. We arrested eight gang members for drug sales, weapons violations, and gang conspiracy.
Although not nearly as big as some wire cases, it had an impact on gang activity and we were still able to conduct our normal, day to day crime suppression operations. Our local gang prosecutor was supportive of our operation, which was essential to our success.
In Conclusion...
Gang activity — like any crime issue — needs to be aggressively addressed in a methodical manner (given the time and resources available). As officers we understand that there is what we would like to do and, on the flip side, what we actually can accomplish.
If large-scale operations aren’t an option to attack the gang problem, then go at it the best you can: one cut at a time...
About the Author
Nick Perna is a Detective with the Redwood City Police Department, currently serving on the Street Crime Suppression Team. Detective Perna has testified as an expert in gang and narcotics cases and has served with local, State and Federal Officers on gang and fugitive task forces. He previously served as a paratrooper in the US Army and is a Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
