Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...From 1970 to 1975, the arrest rate of girls under 18 for serious offenses climbed 40%, v. 24% for boys. In 1975, 11% of all juveniles arrested for violent crimes were female. Last month Chicago police finally caught a gang of six girls, aged 14 to 17, after they had terrorized elderly people for months. Their latest crime: the brutal beating of a 68-year-old man. "I was amazed," says Police Lieut. Lawrence Forberg. "They were indignant toward their victims, and none of them shed any tears. This is the first time I've encountered young girls this tough...
Frightening enough when they are alone or in pairs, youths in a gang are a formidable engine of mayhem. Today's urban gangs commit roughly 25% of the juvenile crime, and they are better organized than ever, more heavily armed and less queasy about the blood they spill...
Particularly in the ghetto, the gang gives a kid the structured life he has never had at home or anywhere else. The peer pressure to enlist is almost irresistible. Rico, 17, joined a Puerto Rican gang in Chicago for "protection, man, protection. I was a skinny little kid, and I was tired of having hassles. You don't last long if you don't belong to a club. You can always count on having someone stand up for you." A 14-year-old boy who committed frequent robberies in Central Falls, R.I., and once smashed 350 windowpanes...
Nothing pussyfooted about the average gang or "click," as some kids like to call it. At the top of the heap is the "prez," who, if he wants to stay there, had better respond to every threat and challenge. The "veep" supervises internal affairs, especially dues and initiation rituals; the "war counselor" plans the "ripoffs" and "gang-hits" and commands the "gestapo" squads, which consist of the enforcers; the "armorer" keeps the weapons functioning in a safe place such as an abandoned building or a girl friend's apartment. Even automatic and semiautomatic firearms-like...
...great numbers in a gang seem to suppress the last vestige of conscience. In New York City, members of a gang sat on either side of a man on the subway, stuck him with knives from both sides, robbed him and kept him propped up until they disembarked. To finish off rival mobs, gangs have invaded hospitals in The Bronx, and once were repelled from an operating room by a surgeon wielding a scalpel...