Word: crime
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...placid community east of the city, is torn by Chinese thugs. Orange County, home to tens of thousands of Indochinese immigrants, has a severe extortion problem. Hispanic gangs, some of them using identifying tattoos and hand signals, have spread throughout the area. The Mojados (wetbacks) specialize in small-time crime in downtown Los Angeles: pickpocketing and robbing motorists at knifepoint in underground garages. "It's find a buddy and go to Fifth and Hill for an easy hit or two," says Police Sergeant Joe Suarez...
...other unprecedented gangster phenomenon is the Marielitos, who arrived in Florida in 1980 when Fidel Castro loaded up a refugee boat lift with the dregs of his prisons. The crime rate in Miami's Little Havana jumped an astonishing 83% within months of their arrival. The Marielitos have since fanned out around the country, and special police squads have been set up to deal with them in cities as varied as Las Vegas and Harrisburg, Pa. With no central bosses or structure, the Marielitos operate as loose bands of conscienceless predators, uneducated and wild but also shrewd. One of their...
Most disaffected immigrants join gangs for the conventional reasons: a sense of belonging, easy money, the need to define themselves against a bewildering, alien culture. "They group for protection, then quickly graduate up when they see the big profits in crime," says Garrison. Many authorities believe that the problem is here to stay. "Today the fellows do not leave the gang," says University of Chicago Sociologist Irving Spergel. "They are not educated. There are no more unskilled jobs. There is no place to go." Others think the new bands will fade, just as most older ones did. "Gangs last only...
...principle of making the punishment fit the crime has rarely been taken so literally. After Neurosurgeon Milton Avol, 61, was found guilty of failing to correct repeated violations of health and fire-safety codes in the ramshackle, rodent-infested apartment buildings he owns, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Veronica Simmons McBeth sentenced him to spend 30 days in a public cell and 30 days in a private one: a grungy one-room apartment in one of his own buildings...
...knowingly laundering money, they admitted laxity in complying with a 1980 rule requiring financial institutions to report any cash transaction involving more than $10,000. At the moment, the federal clampdown is relying on tools like the reporting regulation because there is no law that defines laundering as a crime. Earlier this month the Reagan Administration introduced legislation that would make it a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison...