A gang intelligence unit (GIU) (also known as an anti-gang unit, gang suppression unit, gang task force, or simply a gang unit, among many other terms) is an American law enforcement unit tasked with investigating, suppressing, and combatting

gang A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collective ...

s within a geographical location.
They exist to provide safety as well as information regarding gang activity in an area, and are also commonly found within Prison, correctional facilities. GIUs seek advanced awareness of gang activity as a method to suppress gang violence.

Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...

forms the foundation of GIUs' efforts to suppress gang violence and crime and maintain safety within the community.Parry, Brian. "Intelligence: The Key to Gang Suppression." Corrections Today. 2006.

Background

In 1967, the Chicago Police Department created a Gang Intelligence Unit (GIU) to respond to Black street gangs. Raids and arrests were conducted, and by the early 1970s Illinois' prisons had a growing Black gang population, including gang leader

Jeff Fort Jeff Fort (born February 20, 1947),

, co-founder of the Almighty Black P. Stone Nation. The need for gang intelligence units rose during an increase in gang activity in the 1990s. In 1995, the National Youth Gang Center conducted its first assessment of the national gang problem, and concluded that out of the 3,440 reporting agencies, 2,007 reported an issue with youth gangs. The survey counted a total of 23,388 youth gangs and 664,906 gang members, and concluded that many gangs were growing in size. Further studies by the Denver Youth Study and the Rochester Youth Development Study determined that consistent conclusions existed between gang membership and crime, and that being in a gang increases the level of

delinquent Delinquent or delinquents may refer to: * A person who commits a felony * A juvenile delinquent, often shortened as delinquent is a young person (under 18) who fails to do that which is required by law; see juvenile delinquency * A person who fa ...

and

criminal behavior In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

as well as violent offending. These findings prompted the formation of gang units within

police departments The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...

, as many began to realize that gangs should be treated differently than other groups of criminal offenders. However, by the new millennium, the number of GIUs in the country was a fraction of what it was in the early 1990s. In 1993, 76% of all major police departments implemented a GIU, while by 2000, only 48% of all large departments had a GIU. Furthermore, one “unit” was at this time defined as “a separate special unit with one or more full-time employees,” indicating that some departments only employed one single individual tasked with gang intelligence.

Functions and duties

The duties of a GIU include training law enforcement officers in recognizing gang activity as well as responding appropriately to that activity. The unit also promotes intelligence sharing among agencies with limited information, and allows them to prioritize their law enforcement activities as well as address trends of gang behavior. In correctional facilities, GIUs provide staff safety and prevent violence against other inmates, the public, and rival gangs. GIUs are also instrumental in identifying active gang members, developing confidential informants, and conducting interviews with other inmates in order to disrupt gang activity.Guidelines for Establishing and Operating Gang Intelligence Units and Task Forces. Bureau of Justice Assistance, US Department of Justice. October 2008. Gang intelligence units assist the administration of correctional facilities in planning, formulating, and implementing strategies and policies related to gang management. This allows for administrators to make informed strategic decisions, allocate resources, and request funds to ensure the safety and security of the facilities. In the past, GIUs have been instrumental in thwarting violent plots to injure or kill other inmates or corrections faculty as well as gangs’ planned criminal activity within the community. They have also been used to gather information on active or recently inactive gang members, leaders, or associates and developing confidential informants. This, in turn, can lead to the confiscation of weapons and contraband. GIUs, particularly those within correctional facilities, utilize both tactical and strategic intelligence processes. Tactical intelligence may be used for arrests, imprisonment, lockdowns of facilities, transferring an inmate, and conducting searches. Conversely,

strategic intelligence Strategic intelligence (STRATINT) pertains to the collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence that is required for forming policy and military plans at the national and international level. Much of the information needed for ...

supports long-term planning, identification of emerging problems such as new gangs or membership, and following trends and patterns of gang behavior. GIUs will often follow the processes of the traditional

intelligence cycle The Intelligence cycle describes how intelligence is ideally processed in civilian and military intelligence agencies, and law enforcement organizations. It is a closed path consisting of repeating nodes, which (if followed) will result in finis ...

in order to respond to gang activity in an area. GIUs seek to promote staff safety, violence prevention, crime solving, and the development of information sources.Guidelines for Establishing Gang Intelligence Units. Gang Intelligence Strategy Committee. 2008. General principles that are critical to operating a successful GIU include: committed leadership; commitment of participating agencies, policymakers, leadership, and team members; a clear mission; frequent and ongoing communication; attentive direction; evaluation; refinements and self-improvement; and sustainability of finances and personnel. A comprehensive data collection plan is also essential to GIUs, as is a definition that law enforcement can use to effectively identify gang activity. The development of indicators for gang activity will greatly assist the GIU in developing a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

of gang members and associates. Sharing this information with other levels of law enforcement will also serve to decrease redundancy and overlap of gang information within a particular area.

Challenges

GIUs also face several challenges with curbing gang activity. Distinguishing between “gang-related” crime and “gang-motivated” crime can be difficult, though it is an important distinction for GIUs to make. However, a lack of historic data on gang activity can compound the difficulties GIUs already face. The mobility and ease of communication among gang members also presents challenges for these units, and gangs are constantly evolving in response to the actions of law enforcement. Due to the challenges law enforcement agencies face in addressing gang activity on their own, GIUs promote collaboration and sharing of intelligence to combat gang activity and work with other agencies to dismantle larger gang networks. This sharing of intelligence remains a vital component to the operations of a GIU within correctional facilities, where the collaboration is sometimes referred to as police/corrections partnerships, as well as among law enforcement agencies. Intelligence sharing also helps to adequately train staff to respond to the gangs’ '' modus operandi'', which can change as a result of new law enforcement policies or operations. Officers, therefore, must possess strong communication and analytic skills as well as a working knowledge of gangs and how they operate both within and outside of a correctional facility. They must also be skilled at forming liaisons with other agencies, interviewing gang members and inmates, sharing relevant information with staff and keeping a proper chain of command, and advising parole staff of which active gang members may pose a threat. Community Oriented Policing (COP) is a strategy that GIUs use to address challenges with handling gang activity. In this strategy, officers will make informal contacts with the members of a community to address the community’s major problems and issues in anticipation of acquiring new sources of information (informants). By interacting frequently with the public, officers are notified of key concerns and can implement problem-solving techniques more easily.

Gang databases

In the United States, the

New York City Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...

maintains a gang database. The state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

has an electronically generated statewide database called "CalGang" administered by the state attorney general. To improve Gang intelligence, police officers have came up with a mechanism that ostensibly distinguishes "gang-related" crime and "gang-motivated" crime . This system provides a time-oriented form of Gang intelligence, that plausibly enhances officers' safety and identifies and tracks gang members within their community. These databases record information about individuals considered to be at risk for a crime or people suspected for past crimes.

Criticisms

Opponents of gang policing methods claim that they encourage

racial profiling Racial profiling or ethnic profiling is the act of suspecting, targeting or discriminating against a person on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or nationality, rather than on individual suspicion or available evidence. Racial profiling involv ...

and are not justified by the magnitude of gang activity. In 2013, the NYPD identified 264 gang-motivated crimes and transferred at least 300 officers to its Gang Division. Additionally, between January 2014 and February 2018, 99% of individuals added to the NYPD gang database were nonwhite.

References

{{reflist

External links

National Gang Intelligence Center
Law enforcement units