Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Some gangs are simply natural aggressors. The Norris Avenue corner is such a group of "crazies." Though the gang is small in number, each Norris is reputed to have two or three "bodies" under his belt. "Getting a body"-shooting someone in another gang-is the surest way a younger member has of "getting a rep" and climbing in the corner hierarchy. If he survives, by age 17 he is already an elder in the gang world and can gracefully step down from active combat in order to permit those coming up to do the corner's fighting...
Modern Corners. A car with two or three gang members might come cruising down a street past a group of rivals and suddenly a shot is fired into the cluster. The car speeds off, leaving a 16-year-old lying on the sidewalk. Or a sniper's bullet from a rooftop a block away may have the same result. Plans for revenge are made, and a single assassin is often sent out to get a body in return. Such guerrilla-style warfare is, of course, far more difficult for the police to anticipate and stop than the old-style...
...cope with the modern corners, the police have set up a special force, known as Gang Control, that is composed of 71 men and women. They work in two-officer teams, each team concentrating on a particularly active gang and trying to get close enough to the gang's leaders to sense when real trouble is brewing. "We turn the block every half-hour," explained one Gang Control officer, but "it only takes a few seconds to start a flare-up." The city has made one attempt to rid the gangs of their guns by offering a moratorium...
Some of the new gangs in New York are animated by antidrug vigilantism; often they were formed specifically to run drug pushers out of their neighborhoods, and most of them severely punish members caught using heroin or cocaine. There is little evidence of this in the Philadelphia gangs. That is partly because drugs seem to be less prevalent there. As one young member explained succinctly, "You can't nod and gang-war at the same time." When not warring, drinking wine and listening to records appear to be the gangs' principal definition of a good time...
...city's efforts to ameliorate the brutality of gang life and the gang neighborhoods have had mixed results. Of the nearly 200 Youth Conservation Workers that the city assigns to the gangs, few have been markedly successful in weaning youngsters away from their corners. Civic volunteers have established a leaders' council for settling gang disputes nonviolently. The meetings, however-scheduled for at least once a week-are so far taking place less than once a month. A North Philadelphia communications center called The Network tries to correct dangerous false rumors and get gang members into job-training programs...