1,400 Arrest 46

The lamestream media told you:

Thomas Watkins, reporting for the AP, writes: "More than a thousand law-enforcement officers descended Tuesday on the homes of key members of a notorious street gang suspected of killing a sheriff's deputy and murdering rivals while defying authorities for decades. A federal indictment identified 88 suspects and detailed criminal activity spanning more than a decade... 1,100 police officers worked with nearly 300 federal agents to arrest 46 gang members (39 were already in custody)... Among them was Tammy Armstrong, a corrections officer accused of helping incarcerated gang members... gang members strafed L.A. police in Feb., 2008... off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Juan Escalante was shot dead in Aug., 2008 in front of his parents' home northeast of downtown." http://tinyurl.com/mw2k9a

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Unasked and unanswered questions include: Why were 1,400 people needed to make the 46 arrests? Why was this known illegal activity allowed to continue for a decade before making arrests? If gang members strafe police, is it considered timely to wait 1-1/2 years to nab suspects? Corrections officers are supposed to help inmates in addition to keeping them locked up, what sort of help did officer Armstrong provide?

While it's encouraging to hear the "news" media cheerleading for the capture of 79 desperados (nine are still at large), is L.A. now safer? How many gangbangers were still operating after the media promo ended?

Well... LAPD estimates that L.A. has 463 gangs, making the 79 individuals arrested seem small. Those gangs have an estimated 39,032 members http://tinyurl.com/yqotg8. No word yet on when the rest might be rounded up, or which of them will be promoted to fill the empty slots created by those detainees who don't get back on the streets soon. No followup "news" reports on that are expected, just the rah rah for the original collars.

Stepping out further, again using LAPD figures, L.A. County has 1,108 gangs, with 85,298 members, and no word on planned arrests for them either, or available jail space for the 85,219 known or suspected gang members still at large, probably for decades.

Note that L.A. gangs are notorious for rejecting diversity and multiculturalism, according to LAPD estimates. The most numerous gangs are Latino, with 22,309 non-diverse members, and blacks (Crips and Bloods), with 14,515 non-diverse members. Rumors that white, oriental and other gangs will be filing Title VII discrimination charges could not be confirmed at press time.

Anti-gun campaigns that focus on crime as a motivator overlook the fact, with the media's assistance, that crime is largely gang related and geographically isolated, leaving much of society untouched. It's also fueled in large measure by the government's feckless War on Some Drugs, making the murder rates war deaths, not gun deaths. See the maps: http://www.gunlaws.com/GunshotDemographics.htm. It's hard to remove the failed social policies that spawn the problem, because that's what justifies much of the law-enforcement community and its budgets and jobs. The 1,400 police involved in the 46 arrests (30 per detainee) are under administrative protection and could not be reached for comment. Thankfully, not one hardened criminal on the streets for more than a decade was killed. An estimated cost to provide public defenders for the former fugitives is unknown.

Comments

[Grace]

I have to take issue with your post.

First off, you characterize LA gangs as being non-diverse while the LA Times article you link to states "Predominantly African American are the so-called Crip gangs, with 10,306..."

"Predominantly" means most of them are black but not all. Most gangs in LA are not exclusively one race.

As far as the Avenues gang goes, I don't find 30 officers per person unreasonable considering the circumstances. Most of these people are armed and they don't live alone. They also don't live together. Their houses have front and back doors, might be in big apartment buildings, etc.. They may have confederates in the neighborhood who aren't being arrested who are dying to help. So, considering it's a gang, 30 officers per person isn't outrageous. No police were killed so that makes it a successful raid.

Okay, now down to the nitty gritty. How much do you know about the Avenues gang? Reading what you have written, one gets the idea you don't know much about LA gang life at all. If you are going to talk about Avenues, why haven't you mentioned that Toonerville (one of their rivals) has been decimated in recent months with arrests? And Timothy Joseph McGhee (a "non-diverse" white guy running a Mexican gang) was convicted in 2008.

I understand your beef about newspaper reporting being rather haphazard, but your own "copying" has proven to be haphazard too. Should I start an ombudsman site of my own focusing on your website?