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Gangs topic of meeting
Published June 19, 2009
LOGANVILLE — Local officials are not waiting for gangs in the area to become a serious problem. Instead they are making good use of the newly formed gang unit to solicit the help of parents and the public to identify and curtail risks before the situation gets out of hand.
A town hall meeting, organized by the PTSO, was held at the Loganville Middle School Monday in an attempt to get the community on board with their efforts.
“We are tracking two potential gangs here in the Loganville area,” said Bob Gilbert, Loganville Police Department school resource officer for LMS and a member of the Walton County Gang Awareness Suppression Team. “And we want parents and teachers, members of the community and law enforcement to get educated on gangs before we get to the stage of places like Norcross in Gwinnett County. Even Social Circle was almost getting to that point.”
Mike Baldwin of the Walton County Juvenile Court System, another member of GAST, said the plan of the unit is three-fold.
“We want to educate the public, educate law enforcement and the third phase is gang suppression,” Baldwin said, adding the unit was formed after officials in law enforcement, the juvenile courts and school system started noticing signs they couldn’t ignore.
“We are using the Georgia gang law that was recently released from appeal, which allows us to bring a misdemeanor up to a felony in the case of a gang-related crime,” Baldwin said. “That allows for the punishment to be increased threefold if it is proved it is gang-related. If it was a one-year sentence for the crime as a misdemeanor, it will be three years if it was gang-related.”
Gilbert, Baldwin and a third member of GAST, Jason Stribling of Social Circle Public Safety Department, used the town hall meeting to inform attendees what signs to look for that were indicators their children were involved in gang activity or that there was gang activity going on in their neighborhood. They explained and showed slides on the different hand signs, tattoos, graffiti and even clothes that gave an indication gang activity was in play.
“Some of the younger members who are too young to get tattoos will even use branding — they will burn themselves,” Gilbert said. “It’s the wannabees that can sometimes be the most dangerous because they want to prove themselves.”
Gilbert said since becoming educated through the formation of the gang unit, he constantly saw references to gangs, even in pop culture such as signs and symbols being used on television.
“I’ve even seen sports celebrities showing gang signs now that I know what to look for,” Gilbert said. “What we want to do is get everybody in the community on board to know what to look for. It is important when we identify gang graffiti in an area, we know about it and remove it as soon as possible. We also have gang members who come in from other areas trying to recruit and by removing graffiti we are sending a message that we won’t tolerate gang activity in this community.”
Gilbert urged parents and even grandparents to get involved in speaking to children, checking on their friends, their wardrobe and even their computer activities.
“For those who are grandparents, sometimes you have more influence than parents,” Gilbert said. “They don’t want to hurt or upset you — talk to them. Also check their MySpace pages — we get a lot of information on gang activity off of MySpace pages.”
Gilbert, who also teaches the Gang Resistance Education and Training program at LMS, said gang membership ranges from the ages of about 10-years to 40. However, the ages of 13 to 16 is usually the age targeted for recruitment, which is why the G.R.E.A.T. program is taught at the middle school level to head off the problem before it is encountered.
There are more town hall meetings planned for the future and Gilbert said principals from the schools in Walton County would also be educated with a view to them in turn educating teachers. He urged parents to familiarize themselves with the clothing, signs and symbols even if they don’t believe their children would ever get involved in the gang culture.
“The gangs use regular clothes with team logos such as the Chicago Bulls, colors or their hats tilted a certain way — sometimes as a way to disrespect an opposing gang,” Gilbert said. “If a child is unaware of what he is wearing or what it might symbolize he could be disrespecting a gang member without even being aware of it and that could be dangerous.”
The members of GAST warned there are likely to be members from gangs outside the community attempting to recruit from the local area and it would help keep the problem at bay if members of the community were well educated on the topic. Anyone wanting to find out more about gangs, their symbols, signs or clothing can go to the FBI Web site at www.fbi.gov for links to gang resources for parents and the community.
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