Essay Sample: Gangs in Trenton, New Jersey

The Trenton police department has marked the two main gangs in Trenton, New Jersey as the Latin Kings and MS-13. The Latin Kings crew originated from Chicago, and they are tremendously violent with the main source of finances being from drugs and robbery. This crew has operations in New York and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, the MS-13 trace sits origins from Los Angeles and is also exceptionally fierce. They also majorly deal in drugs. Dealings in illegal drugs are the major factor accelerating the gang activities not only in the Trenton area but extends to the entire New Jersey state. In addition, some of the violence that are as a result of gangs is attributable to individual arguments within a given gang group.

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The police report shows that it is a norm to see street gangs in Trenton to be composed of various people who are in a similar learning institution and grew up looking at the back of each other ((Blanck, 2012). Often, authentic crew members will see a street crew member making a good reputation for self in the drug dealings, and afterward, either of the two stated gangs or other gang groups make an effort to recruit that individual into their crew.

Each gang has a distinctive feature, for example, the MS-13 have awfully tattooed their bodies. The team is composed majorly of Latinos, and they put on blue and black bandanas. For one to join this crew, one has to be transnational, and they have operations in more than one nations. Conversely, Blanck asserts that The Latin Kings are mostly identified by the black and gold colors, and marks that have a three or five-pointed crowns (2012). The black color is a representation of death while the gold color is a symbol of life. Also, their eyebrows are trimmed to form five points, and most of their clothing is of the Pittsburgh sports team jersey. They also put on bandanas that are yellow and black in color.

The local police department and relevant authorities have embraced the strategy of getting to the targeted recruits before they can be members of the organization(s). The idea is to bring together the police officers, with help from the community leaders and social service providers. They have been focusing on the targeted and at-risk youths, juvenile misbehavior, finding who is at risk, and the associated gang, and then getting them back from the gangs. This has been effective as it has been able to save more than 20 youths from this vice. Nonetheless, the police department has established an anti-crime syllabus to deal with gangs and the regions gang atrocities. The syllabus is being taught by the Juvenile Justice Commission to assist the youths who have already done criminal activities to impede the chances of them being recruited by the gangs (McArdle, 2015).

A program called the Violent Crimes Initiative, being assisted by the FBI has also been created, and the task force work is to mark the key violent street gangs and the drug dealers of the national level by employing similar techniques used to fight the traditional structured delinquency effectively. About the FBI evidence presented to the Senate committee, one of the gangs to be targeted first was the MS-13. The effort put by the task force allowed the court of the Central District California to use the laws to imprison the frontrunners of the 18th street gang crew.

References

Blanck, E. (2012). Slavery in New Jersey: A Roundtable. New Jersey History, 127(1).

McArdle, K. (2015). The state of gangs in Trenton. Homicide Watch Trenton. Retrieved 21 February 2017, from http://trenton.homicidewatch.org/2015/07/05/the-state-of-gangs-in-trenton/