Cracking Down on Gangs

Chicago police have recently started a huge effort to stop gang violence in the city that started with a gang audit.

"We identified gang turfs, membership, who's in conflict with who, put it into a database and put that into the hands of beat officers," Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy [Below] said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Photo courtesy of: gunssavelife.com

This information can help officers focus on particular gangs and members and move quickly to where these gangs might attack.

McCarthy, formerly the police chief in Newark and a high-ranking commander in New York, said officers have also alerted gangs that if one of their members kills somebody, police will go after everyone in the gang for any infraction — from "welfare fraud to failure to pay taxes."

The Chicago Police Department has also enforced some strange, as some say, practices. Some alderman claim that the department is coddling the criminals.

Some of the practices are providing gang members with information about social services and setting up meetings between them and the parents of murder victims "to give them a sense of what they are doing to the community."

Despite adverse opinion by those alderman, this program is going to be expanded this year.