Commenting on How Can The Police Be Strengthened?
“Love your blog. I've read about two dozen of your posts in the past couple days. Huge breadth of fresh air between liberals and conservatives, politically correct idiocy, and the media. One request: Could you be more specific about how the BPD protect the drug gangs?”
James responded on Jun-24-2015 at 5:27 PM:
Very easy question.
Let's say you are the leader of the Ho Street Yo set, and you decide to sell heron—there is no I in heron whiteboy—and you and you five playas and you two guns show up to do business. The cops don't know you yet. Who they do know is the Black I'm Up In Yo Chump Cheap-Dealin' Ass Always Kicking Ass Family, with their thirty playas and 20 guns. When the IUIYCCDAAKAF come out to bust a cap in yo collective ass—bam—the tactical squad is on them, and your cheap dealing punk ass has been PROTECTEDED, by Five-O, Yo.
On a more serious note: Since the Mayor and the city government threw the BPD to the media dogs and thugs at the same time, demanding that they stand back and watch the city they are supposedly sworn to protect and serve burn, the BPD has come down with the Blue Flu. The BPD and the BCPD [in apparent solidarity with its neighboring force] has declined to do most police work, and does no intervention in gang controlled districts, only clean up.
During this period murders [mostly of gang members] have increase by over 40%. Significantly non lethal shootings have increased over 60%, which indicates open warfare, and will favor the larger established gangs. When you have a pool of 200 gangs and three are controlling most of the trade, what you have is a reign of terror. I personally know of three gang-to-gang informants [not police informants] one of whom drove an ice cream truck, who have been executed in the past month.
The police are a “God Gang’ who target those gangs that get closest to their position. For instance, our last two mayors have been elected with the aid of drug gang donations through lobbyists. The Black Guerilla Family was running at least one Maryland Corrections facility, and even had military operatives in Afghanistan bringing home dope. Terrence White, the incarcerated Commander of the gang, impregnated four corrections officers! When the BGF became the target of a probe initiated by the Mayor they killed one of her male relatives!
So, when the cops are targeting major gangs, who employ the best killers and have the most assets, most of the gangs benefit from the heat, which is reflected in the increasingly young age off gang members and leaders. This is saliently depicted in the HBO series The Wire. The reason why the gangs were so effective against the police during the April Purge was that these kids learned from five how to tactically maneuver against police. The heat being brought down on black drug gangs is so heavy that nothing similar to the Mafia or the Latino mega-gangs has developed, in which extensive hierarchies and command structures—and also some limited honor codes—eventually bring political power. Black gangs remain small, numerous, ephemeral, and hedonistic in the extreme, due to the youth of their membership, which emerges under police protection.
Essentially the police protect youth gangsters from adult gangsters, who get locked up, leaving the youths on the street, assuring that active black gangbangers have the least possible impulse control.
This is the same exact thing that the US does with drug dealers in Latin America (except the ones it cuts deals with, like the Sinaloa cartel,) and terrorists in the Middle East (except the ones it cuts deals with, like half of them.)
On the tactical level, the guys doing it are just responding to incentives. You don't get a big promotion, bonus or boost to your budget by rolling up De'Entree and his four small-time corner buffoons. The DA might not even charge them with felonies unless you caught them doing something very bad red-handed. Roll up BGF, now you're talking major cachet. This is even though BGF probably affects the lives of the people in its neighborhood in much less negative ways than the equivalent amount of De'Entree's does.
On the strategic level, to the extent that there's a conscious strategic justification for all this, beyond just fighting drugs, crime and terrorism, it's probably the same as that of the Byzantines and then the Brits. Shoot the closest alligator to the boat. Keep any of them from becoming a major threat. Not that BGF is likely to become a threat to USG on a federal level, but you never know.
I had a friend who was a UDT guy in the Mekong in the 60s. He was still training people down in Panama to work for the DEA. I also have a friend that was in a special warfare unit who was shot providing cover for a DEA OP in South America. He wouldn't say anything more. My brother Rich fought in Panama, and Tony trained there. They both got very bad vibes about the setting.
Do you know if anyone has written a book on this South American craziness from the grunt U.S. perspective, or did he and he's missing his toes now? Every Spec Ops memoir I read has this stuff redacted or omitted.
Thanks fort he perspective B.