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May 7, 2008 10:17 pm US/Central
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Gangs' Criminal Networks Extend Into Suburbs
Chicago's FBI Bureau Hoping To Limit Activity Of Handful Of Major Gangs
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Much of the deadly violence on Chicago's streets is tied to gangs.
CBS 2's Dana Kozlov reports their criminal networks now extend beyond the city as the FBI focuses more of it resources on rounding them up.
Jose Manteca, 36, saw it manner of violence first-hand as a member of a Chicago street gang. He was shot in the head, beaten, arrested and did time – and it was the only life he knew growing up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
"These were kids and adults that I knew and I respected and admired so it was an easy fit for me," said Manteca, who got out of the gang in his 20s.
"I don't think I was ever scared of dying, I was more concerned about what if I lived?" Manteca said.
That's the conversation he tries to have now with current gang members, many of whom are all too familiar with the violence on Chicago's streets.
According to the Chicago crime commission, there are between 75 and 125 Chicago street gangs with up to 125,000 members. In 2006, there were 468 murders in Chicago -- many of them gang-related -- compared with 480 in the much larger city of Los Angeles and 596 in New York.
Experts say none of this is new. What is new are the numbers of gang members in the suburbs and the types of crimes committed.
"They're flourishing and they're becoming smarter at the same time," said Jim Wagner of the Chicago Crime Commission. "And that makes them even more dangerous than before."
"Twenty years ago, the FBI here in Chicago, we weren't working street gangs," said Bill Monroe of the FBI's Chicago bureau.
But Monroe, an FBI gang expert, says the bureau now has three squads devoted solely to gang activity to try and limit their reach.
"There's probably three or four major gangs, and those are the gangs that go beyond the city of Chicago, they go beyond the suburbs, they go across state lines, and those three or four or five gangs, those are the ones we place big emphasis on," Monroe said.
So how can we as a society stop the proliferation of gangs? While there's no easy answer, everyone CBS 2 spoke to for this story agrees we need to start changing attitudes.
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