Add to that deadly duo: credit card fraud, identity theft, counterfeiting, prostitution, Internet gambling, loan sharking, fencing of stolen goods, auto theft, music and movie pirating, hardcore pornography, home invasions, money laundering.
The list can encompass most felonies and misdemeanors listed in our criminal codes, but those listed above are "for sures." If the gangs were corporations, all of these would be called profit centers.
Though they cause untold grief, localized street gangs may be the least of problems for law enforcement and the general public. The gangs are going national, even international.
Bankrolled by drug profits, the gangs have become as technologically sophisticated as the crook catchers, perhaps more so because they have bigger budgets. Add to that, they play by different rules. Human rights, civil rights, the rule of law - none of these have value when gang members and fellow travellers choose to enter the game, except to the extent these civilized social niceties can be exploited.
Consider basic technology: cell phones, police band scanners and decoders, surveillance and counter-surveillance equipment. State-of-the-art goodies are available across the counter to anyone with the money. Then, of course, there are computers, high resolution digital cameras, and printers, to say nothing of universal Internet access.
The gangs can sell their product over the Internet - and do. They operate grow-ops by computer from a distance, run a multitude of scams, gather personal data, and accumulate data bases to keep track of their criminal activity. They can track drug shipments as quickly as FedEx can track a parcel, and quicker than an airline can track lost luggage.
The solution to the street gangs seems simple on the face of it. Arrest members, convict them, imprison them. Politicians have been elected by a naïve electorate on that premise, most recently demonstrated in the Canadian federal election. Law and order, stiffer sentences, tougher laws -- these measures, they opine, have to be the answer.
But alone, they are not the answer. Often gang leaders, though locked up, still run the gangs, orchestrating their activities from prison cells, right up to murder.
The kid tagging a building or fence with gang graffiti isn't just a kid defacing a surface. The kid is usually as surely "connected" as a mafioso from the mountains of Sicily.
The kid is the new face of organized crime in North America. The face is cold-eyed, sneering, unforgiving. It manifests power and, as it matures, it will manifest control. Perhaps its lines will soften, reflecting the subtle transition of these individuals from law breakers to law givers. In any case, if not dealt with today, they could shape tomorrow's morality. It's not a pretty shape.
