Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Diaz-Parton, 33, joined Los Compadres at 13 and served three years in prison for shooting two rival gang members with a sawed-off shotgun. Since "retiring," she is frequently asked by frightened female gang members trying to get out of gangs to monitor their beatings. "They know I've got juice with the gangs," she says with considerable pride. She recalls the case of Priscilla, a 15-year-old who wanted out. Three other girls, all gang bangers, took Priscilla into a public rest room while Diaz-Parton waited outside to make sure things didn...
...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...