[Baltimore Citizen’s Academy] Gangs

To be completely honest, gang activity in Baltimore has been pretty invisible to me. Maybe I am naive to think that gang activity isn’t occurring when there are muggings, robberies, or roving groups of kids looking for trouble. Its easier to see potential gang activity with the homicide activity that the city has, as the homicides appear to be more of hits or retaliatory as opposed to random killing.

However, the most visible gang activity I have seen was the conviction of Tavon White, the Black Guerrilla Family head that was basically running the city jail. There were also the reports that the Baltimore Police put out saying that the Bloods, Crips, and BGF were teaming up to target the police on the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral.

So yes, Baltimore has gangs, but its more nuanced than that.

When the BPD talks about there being gangs in Baltimore, there are the more organized ones like MS13, Crips, Bloods, Black Guerrilla Family, Dead Man Incorporated, and Outlaw Bikers. But a gang is really just a group of three or more people that primarily engage in criminal activity. The police usually are able to associate them together because of hand signs, clothes/colors, tattoos, witness statements, admission, association with other known gang members, or behavior.

They actually went through some of the different gangs, and showed pictures that they had gotten from Facebook or other social media and were able to show a lot of the things they use to identify gang members. Like if they have a known gang member, they might look for group pictures they post where kids are throwing gang signs and wearing the colors.

Remember, there is nothing illegal about being in a gang, but they collect this kind of information so that when a crime is committed, they are better able to narrow down the list of suspects. Some of these guys are behind a lot of the crime in the city, and so they try to identify them and get them off the streets.

One of the big issues that was mentioned offhand was that if you are someone that gets arrested in Baltimore and are not affiliated with a gang, you almost have to associate yourself with a gang to survive in jail. So while we are arresting people to deal with the crime in the city, we are potentially feeding into the gang problem in the city as well. Its atleast a consideration when we discuss the issue of incarcerating kids.

Gangs also have different territories, which they are able to identify by identifying where the members are, and also identifying the grafitti in the area, and talking to members.

You might think that they would be able to identify the members based on where they live, but the bombshell of this session was the relevation that a lot of gang members come into the city from the county. Thats right, a lot of the people that are dealing drugs and instigating violence don’t want to live around the violence that they create, so they come to the city during the day, and then go back home to the suburbs.

But lets go through some of the gangs that the city has.

Black Guerrilla Gang — While this is the most powerful gang in the city, with their recent control of the Baltimore City Jail, they only have about 670 documented members (out of about 2200 total in the city). They are black only for their membership, but then have Dead Man Incorporated as the affiliated gang for white members. It falls under BGF though.

EA Bloods — Eastern Avenue Bloods. They stand for “Brotherly Love Overcomes Oppression and Destruction”. I didn’t write down where exactly on Eastern Ave that these guys are, but I did note that closer to Fells Point and Patterson Park is MS13 territory, so I believe this must be down closer to Hopkins Bayview.

There are 545 known Blood gang members in the city, but their main thing is about selling CD’s and writing rap music. I am not sure if that just means that Baltimore has a pretty tame version of the Bloods, because there are Bloods that are into much deeper stuff in the DC area.

Crips — There are 348 documented Crips, who stand for “Love, Life, Loyalty”.

MS-13 — While it may be in the news lately, its a minor player in Baltimore. While most members are in the Upper Fells Point, Highlandtown and Patterson Park area, they keep a low profile in general because of concerns about being deported. They are not a driver of violence or crime in the city.

Outlaw Bikers — Seems like a group of old, white guys. Kind of like Hells Angels. Again, a small player in the city.