ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - American youth gangs have spread to almost every big city and most medium-sized towns in the United States in the past 10 years and are now establishing themselves in Canada and Central America, a conference heard this week.
The gathering organized by the Justice Department's office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention brought together law enforcement officers, researchers, social workers and activists from all over the nation. It runs through Thursday.
New York Police Department gang investigator Lou Savelli said law enforcement resources were shifted away from combating gang-related crime following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, which may allow gangs to thrive unchecked.
"Most resources were shifted toward terrorism," he said. "My team went from being a gang unit to being a gang and terrorism unit. We were asked by the commissioner to put the gang stuff on the side."
U.S. officials said on Monday Abdullah Al Muhajir, arrested last month in a suspected al-Qaeda plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States, was a former Chicago street gang member.
James Howell, a researcher at the National Youth Gang Center in Pinehurst, North Carolina, told delegates on Monday the latest research suggested that 93 percent of cities of 100,000 or more had active gangs. Two thirds of cities of 50,000 to 100,000, 49 percent of towns of 25,000 to 50,000 and 23 percent of jurisdictions of less than 25,000 also reported gang activity in the survey conducted two years ago.
"Nearly nine out of 10 jurisdictions said their gang problem began in the decade between 1985 and 1995," Howell said. "Over half said their problem began in the 1990s."
The data also suggests that young people are joining gangs younger and more girls are becoming gang members.
The study said an estimated 24,500 gangs were active in the United States in 2000 with a combined membership of more than 750,000. Some 284 cities reported gang homicides.
Al Valdez, an investigator with the district attorney's office in Orange County, California, said one Hispanic group known as the 18th Street Gang had 50,000 members in his state alone and was broadening its horizons.
GANG GOES INTERNATIONAL
"18th Street in now international. It is in Canada, Honduras, Mexico and is spreading across Central America," he told the conference.
The Crips gang, originally formed in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, has developed offshoots in Belize.
Gangs are spreading overseas by members deported from the United States to their countries of origin after completing prison terms in the United States.
John Guzman, a retired Chicago police officer, said last year gangs were involved in around 25 percent to 30 percent of the 666 homicides in the city, which led the nation in murders. He dedicated his talk to two police officers -- Brian Strouse and Eric Lee -- killed by gang members.
Guzman said Chicago gangs were spreading across the Midwest in search of easy profits from drug trading and moving aggressively to take over the trade in ecstasy. Gangs also made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling fake identity papers.
"It's a national epidemic," he said.
Savelli said gangs in the Northeast were increasingly business-oriented and were no longer ethnically pure. He reported an increasing incidence of so-called hybrid gangs in which many different ethnic groups cooperate.
"Gangs have reached across geographic, ethnic and racial boundaries. Gangs no longer match their media stereotypes and law enforcement professionals need to take the time to understand their individual community's unique gang problem," he said.
Guzman said some of the major Chicago gangs, such as the Gangster Disciples Nation, were organized much like a modern corporation with a chairman and a board of directors, giving orders to governors, regents, coordinators, security enforcers and street soldiers.
Many gangs recruited members and advertised on the Internet and some even marketed gang apparel and other items from their Web sites. Gang culture spread to the general culture using media such as "gangsta rap." Professional basketball stars are seen on television bearing gang tattoos.
ASIAN GANGS GROWING
One worrying trend, according to Kris Yoshida of the California Department of Justice, was the rapid growth of Southeast Asian gangs, mainly made up of the children of immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
In 1990, total membership of such gangs in California was around 15,000 but had grown to 25,000 by 1995. These gangs were imitating the rituals and habits of Hispanic and black gangs but added their own criminal activity, including taking families hostage. They also run protection rackets, extorting money from Asian businesses that prefer to pay than resist.