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University Daily Kansan / Thursday, January 16, 1992
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The Associated Press
FBI will focus attention on gangs
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — FBI spycatchers well-versed in Kremlin codes and Soviet secrets are turning their attention to the street-smart ways of the Bloods, Crips, Oriental Boys and other gangs for their newest assignment.
The FBI announced last week that nine new agents would be sent to Sacramento as part of the largest realocation of manpower in the bureau's history. The move, a result of the breakup of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, will result in 300 agents being sent to 39 cities.
The FBI says that although the targets are different, the police work is the same.
Police and community leaders are quick to say Sacramento's gang problems are not as severe as those in Los Angeles, but that's little comfort for residents of neighborhoods plagued by growing numbers of drive-by shootings, drug-related killings and home invasions.
"We'll take all the help we can get," said Lt. Mary Savage, one of six Sacramento police detectives assigned to investigate 55 gangs with more than 3,500 members in the city.
"If we don't address it immediately,
Bureau reallocates manpower to combat gang problems at
home.
we will be an L.A.," said Manuela Serma, a community activist against gangs.
The FBI brings some important tools to the gang front, including broader powers to use wireset and seize drug dealers' property, an ability to prosecute under federal laws on extortion, racketeering and interstate crime, and longer prison terms for some crimes.
The FBI also could investigate almost any gang crime under a law that makes it a federal offense to commit a crime using guns manufactured in other states, Savage said. There are no commercial gun manufacturers in California.
Sacramento's nine additional
agents will join 22 already investigating violent crimes. Two of the new agents already are on the job; the rest will be transferred by Sept. 30.
But everyone is enthusiastic about how much effect moving agents to domestic crimes will ha'e.
"Three hundred men for 39 cities — that's really going to make a dent," scoffed Richard R. Bennett, an American University professor of justice.
"If they're expected to go out and work the streets, it'll be an utter failure," Bennett said. But if they "carry on with the type of counterintelligence they did in the past, then they might have an effect, have the ability to collect information on those gangs."
Serna, head of the Mayor's Hispanic Advisory Committee, said she was concerned that FBI agents might be insensitive to cultural diversity, and undo efforts to overcome distrust of police in minority communities.
"Law enforcement was not accepted among the communities of color for many, many years, and in some cases still aren't," she said. "All we need is another level of law enforcement coming and putting that at odds again. I think they need to touch bases with everyone."