The gangs of Virginia. Who would’ve thought that Virginia would one day have a growing gang problem? Usually a southwest/southeast D.C. phenomenon, violent thug group activity has increased across the river.
But these gang members aren’t black; they’re Hispanic, mostly illegal aliens. Not only are they shooting and knifing each other on the street in broad daylight (and killing bystanders), their very presence on the street is illegal.
Michelle Malkin’s blog is the first place you should visit to find resources and information about the horde of illegal immigrants crowding out the nation’s public schools, draining its health care system and committing crime. Yesterday she cited a City Journal article by Heather Mac Donald, “The Immigrant Gang Plague”:
Federal law enforcement officials in Virginia are tracking with alarm the spread of gang violence from Northern Virginia west into the Shenandoah Valley and south toward Charlottesville, a trend so disturbing that they secured federal funds this May to stanch the mayhem. “This is beyond a regional problem. It is, in fact, a national problem,” said FBI assistant director Michael Mason, head of the bureau’s Washington field office.
Open-borders apologists dismiss the Hispanic crime threat by observing that black crime rates are even higher. True, but irrelevant: the black population is not growing, whereas Hispanic immigration is reaching virtually every part of the country, sometimes radically changing local demographics. With a felony arrest rate up to triple that of whites, Hispanics can dramatically raise community crime levels.
Many cops and youth workers blame the increase in gang appeal on the disintegration of the Hispanic family. The trends are worsening, especially for U.S.-born Hispanics. In California, 67 percent of children of U.S.-born Hispanic parents lived in an intact family in 1990; by 1999, that number had dropped to 56 percent. The percentage of Hispanic children living with a single mother in California rose from 18 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 1999. Nationally, single-parent households constituted 25 percent of all Hispanic households with minor children in 1980; by 2000, the proportion had jumped to 34 percent.
Bad news.
I don’t know how the Virginia Attorney General’s or U.S. Attorneys Offices are set up, but they should follow the lead of the office in D.C. Under the direction of the former U.S. Attorney, Wilma Lewis (a Bill Clinton appointee), the office created the Gang and Intelligence Unit (re-named Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking) in the late 1990s. Notorious gangs were prosecuted under federal law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. If there wasn’t enough evidence to put thugs away for murder (they often killed witnesses), they’d be put away for life for racketeering.
You hardly ever read gang-related stories in D.C. involving black gangs these days. Hispanic gangs dominate the headlines.
Washington Post (registration req.) gang-related stories:
— Assistant Prosecutor To Focus On Gangs
— Killing at N.Va. Party May Be Tied to Gang
— Va. Man Guilty Of Gang Activity
— Va. Teenager Pleads Guilty in Machete Attack
As Virginia’s law enforcement units struggle to handle this mess, I wonder if it will occur to them to deport the criminals back where they came from? We’ll see.
Addendum: At least Virginians (legal residents) get to protect themselves with firearms, unlike D.C. residents.
