Part 1 of 2

By Jeremy Weldon

Gangs have been part of America since its beginning, and they thrive more now than ever. Started mostly as a way for young men to protect turf and secure their neighborhoods against outsiders, they have evolved to reach the most rural parts of the country and their reach is far beyond where they live.

In the early 1970s when law enforcement first began tracking and categorizing gangs and their crimes there were a reported 52,000 members in the nation’s 15 largest cities and very little organized activity in the South, according to Bob Morris, an assistant District Attorney in the 17th Circuit Court District which includes Panola County.

Morris is assigned to the DeSoto County office and is at the forefront of a new approach to identifying and prosecuting gang members in North Mississippi. He discussed the histories of gangs and their evolution recently in Batesville.

This group of gang members, Morris said, are considered first generation gangsters easily identifiable by their tattoos and long criminal history. By 1994 police could identify hundreds of thousands of second generation gang members representing 1,100 gangs in 115 cities around the country.

Speaking to the Batesville Rotary Club in November, Morris said the first generation learned the illegal drug business from their trainers, but began to branch out to all parts of the country  establishing cells and sub gangs under a large umbrella of organized crime that no longer concentrated on supplying just drugs in local areas. Soon, they discovered greater profits in illegal gun sales along with other merchandise.

“The more sophisticated they became the more problems it caused law enforcement because they stopped being typical gang members who you could easily identify and started being a lot more low key and less open to the public,” Morris said. “They were working behind the scenes and actually reaching out and making contacts with the cartels and the major drug operations especially in Mexico and South America.”

Those subsets of gangs can most all be traced back to the Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, Bloods, Crips, and MS-13, the notorious Latino gang that has exploded in size and scope in the last 25 years. These gangs, though small and operating in small places like Clarksdale, Batesville, Hernando, and cities in largely rural North Mississippi, have strong connections with the most dangerous gangs of the North.

“We have a large diaspora of people who have moved back and forth from the Delta to Chicago,” Morris said. “You don’t have to be in Chicago long to meet someone with family in Mississippi. Highway 61 and Highway 51 have always been brought people back and forth.”

Over time, the Clarksdale gangs – and those sub-gangs set up in surrounding cities and towns  – became intricately connected with Chicago gangs, namely the Vice Lord and Gangster Disciples. Morris said even the Memphis gangs are less organized and less connected nationally than those of Clarksdale.

“We have hundreds of gang members in databases in just our area and it’s a large part of law enforcement now,” Morris said. “My favorite one is a group we have in Memphis, and they’re  not very effective. They are more like the Apple Dumplin’ Gang, but they are called the Conservative Vice Lords. I’m not sure why, I guess they vote Republican. They tend to not do very well for some reason.”

As they have aged, the first generation gang members have stopped committing crimes and are now just “shot callers” who use juveniles and others without long police records to commit their crimes. Most worrisome, Morris said, is the number of gang members who have been groomed by older gangsters and placed inside the military and police departments all over the United States.

“This third generation of gang member very often has no tattoos and has some kind of education and military training. They use that training to get into police departments and to train others how to use military precision in their criminal operations,” Morris said.

The third generation of gang members are no longer only concerned with the drug trade and those profits, he said. “Their primary interest outside the United States is to take over areas and replace the government. We see this in Mexico right now. They want to control all transactions and therefore the economy. This will give them access to types of income their previously haven’t had access to.”

Morris said the gang problem hasn’t risen to that level in the United States, but that police in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago and some other large metropolitan areas are fighting every day, block by block, to retain control of some streets.

“I’m not trying to scare you, I’m just trying to tell you this is what we’re facing,” Morris said.

Next Edition:  Local law enforcement’s new approach in addressing the gang problems in North Mississippi.