Word: ganged
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chance. Even those who endure a beating are not spared future harassment. And getting out means losing the protection of your gang while retaining all your old enemies, who don't stop to ask questions. Those who do manage to escape their gang while remaining in the neighborhood are often sucked back in by a confluence of raw fear and sheer necessity. "The pressure is just too damn strong," concedes Commander Robert Dart, who heads the Chicago police department's gang unit. "You can't be an island out there...
Police in Wichita (pop. 300,000) arrested their first transplanted L.A. gang members in 1989. Now Sedgwick County, which includes Wichita, is riddled with 68 different gang sets boasting 1,400 members. Last August, Regnaldo Cruz, 15, was taken to a park, forced to his knees and fatally shot in the head and chest with a .410-gauge shotgun. Though the suspect remains at large, police believe Cruz was executed for trying to get out of a gang called the Vato Loco Boyz. Says Kent Bauman, an officer with the city's gang-intelligence unit: "People who aren't familiar...
Local residents seized on a creative response early one morning last May, when members of Pastor Chuck Chipman's congregation descended on a gang- infested neighborhood to rescue a 12-year-old boy being forced to work as a drug courier for a gang that was threatening him and his family. Before gang members could react, the entire family of four and all its belongings were whisked away to a safe house...
That evacuation prompted a local group called Project Freedom to construct a network dubbed the underground railroad to funnel gang members and their families to safety in cases where all else fails. Six former gang members and two families have been shuttled to safety through a patchwork of churches both in and out of the state. The relocations are coordinated with the Wichita police, who check for outstanding warrants. Project Freedom pays for the initial move, while local congregations agree to assume housing costs and arrange for jobs and education for as long as two years. "It's a stopgap...
...underground railroad may be impractical, but so are most of the other options available to a young gang banger who wants out. At least Project Freedom is saving lives. Frances Sandoval, founder of Mothers Against Gangs in Chicago, gets tearful phone calls from parents with kids too scared to leave a gang but terrified of staying in. "Unfortunately, there is very little I can offer them," she says. "In most cases it's hopeless unless they can literally pack up and leave. And we're talking about moving to another state...