Conducting gang investigations is an entirely different animal than working investigations into a series of residential burglaries or a sexual deviant peeping into garden-level apartments of your local female population. Gangs are complex criminal enterprises which require a different type of invigorative approach than most other investigations. Gangs finance their nefarious activities through the commission of everything from drug trafficking operations to the creation and sale of counterfeit goods (not to mention extortion, gambling, prostitution, armed robbery, automobile chop shops, and a host of other crimes favored by gangs). Gangs are constantly evolving, moving into new cities and towns even as they are flushed from other areas. Gangs investigators, then are necessarily a different breed than those detectives who focus on “ordinary” criminals.
In response to a handful of inquiries submitted to me from PoliceOne Members who want to get into the area of gang investigation, I recently spoke with a couple of seasoned gang investigators — both of whom will go unnamed here as they are still in the thick of the fight in their local areas — to get a handle on the top three key attributes of successful gang investigators.
These are just three characteristics to keep in mind. There are plenty more aspects of your law enforcement training and experience that must be taken into consideration. I encourage experienced gang investigators to add your comments below so this column becomes an even more valuable resource for street cops who aspire to one day focus specifically on gang investigations.
The Gift of Gab
Unlike a fraud investigation, for example, where you will focus much of your energy toward the collection of electronic data, the gang investigator is primarily focused on carbon-based intelligence sources (a.k.a. “HumInt”). For this, you absolutely must be able to effectively talk with these people.
Some people are just born with the ability to “BS” with anybody, regardless of how different they are from themselves. While successfully communicating with the gang members in your jurisdiction is in part determined by your natural-born inherent personal traits, the “gift of gab” can also be developed over time. The first, most important step in that process is simply to talk with these guys.
This is the starting point, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. These guys don’t trust the cops, and in many cases will never have a sidewalk conversation with a cop. So at first at least, some of these conversations will start as violation stops. That’s fine, because you can stop “Sleepy” 15 times, and the first 14 times he tells you to [bleep] off, but that 15th time you engage him in a conversation during which you finally get at least some level of trust from him. These conversations are held not with the intent of taking somebody into custody or developing a case that day, but with the specific intent to develop your own conversational capabilities as they relate to this segment of our society.
As you have these conversations, you are also developing a relationship — even a rapport — with individual informal street contacts who can help you down the line. You may even develop one or more of these people into a CI. Consequently, you will want to document every one of these contacts. Naturally, you will not do this right in front of them, but none-the-less you want to help yourself connect the dots down the line by keeping detailed notes on what you hear and what you learn.
Expert Knowledge
You must develop a level of expertise that goes well beyond the commonly-used standard of “knowledge that exceeds that of an average person.” A successful gang investigator has spent countless hours becoming acutely familiar with the language (hand-written codes as well as spoken lingo), their visible identifiers (from tattoos to ‘tags’ on neighborhood buildings). This course of study is both formal and informal. There are myriad college-level criminal justice classes that address the fundamentals, and a good many resources available from state and federal agencies, as well as countless books and online sites (PoliceOne and Corrections1 are two examples, but there are others) that can get you “schooled up” on gangs.
The important thing to remember about being “book smart” on gangs is that it’s not a one-time deal. Gangs — even the oldest and most nationally-known — are constantly evolving. New gangs pop up, and gangs expand into new cities. It’s a good idea to get connected with a few officers from other regions and cities to hear from them what’s happening elsewhere. You would be well-served to have contact with COs from prisons and jails where gang members are serving time. The “education” process in this area is forever ongoing.
You can do all the classroom work, read every book, and talk with LEOs and COs from around the country, but still not have much of a chance of being a successful gang investigator. The best lessons are learned on the streets, which leads us to the last and most important part of the equation — your experience.
Appropriate Experience
There really is not a lot to be said about this one — it’s pretty simple — but that it is vital to have significant personal exposure to the gangs in your patrol area. If all you do is work the “nice” part of town, you’re not going to have the opportunity to develop either of the abovementioned skills. You have to work the street in the “busy” area of town where you regularly encounter guys named “Sleepy” and “Snatch” and “Snake” (or in Latino gangs, “Flaco” and “Huero” and “Largo” for another set of examples).
Even the most gifted criminal investigator cannot necessarily transfer his or her skills directly to working the gang unit. However, if your intention is to one day work that area, you can develop (or further refine) your skills as described above.
