ONE There's a cottage industry around gangs. You can buy "street gear for street cops"—things like special jeans that look like your basic thug pants but have an "ammo pocket, baton pocket, inner (hand)cuff pocket and inner concealment pocket," the sales material says. "Why are you chasing gangsters, dope dealers and thugs in ordinary clothing?" ($65.00)
Or you can buy laminated gang-buster certificates ($3); or books—The Rise and Fall of the Nuestra Familia, written by a former top prison gang member who is now in the witness-protection program ($25); or sets of posters that discourage gang participation (6 for $20); or recordings of actual gang members encouraging loyalty among members ($25). Plus, there are these conferences: $200 a head to the private business Know Gangs, run by a former Modesto, California, officer who says, "We're just an organization trying to help the community."
TWO The San Francisco Police stayed out drinking too late Thursday night and didn't make it to the Friday afternoon seminar: "Where are my guys from the Crimes Unit in San Francisco?" Metro Sgt. Dave Stansbury, a seminar speaker, asked. "I Just want to know if you're sober. They were out all night long and were proud of it."
THREE Everybody wants a video, not just the 311 Boyz. This month, Clark County School District educators are being treated to a video that tells them how to spot hateful behavior that may fester into hate crimes. It's produced by the Anti Defamation League and PBS. According to Stansbury, the evolution of the how-to-spot-haters video in Clark County schools went something like this: A few months ago, somebody yelled, "White power!" and took a shot at a black man in a car in an apartment complex on Eastern and Sahara. Shortly thereafter, some racist threats were made to a local hip-hop radio station. Long story short, cops traced both incidents back to an 18-year-old white kid who lived with his middle-class parents, had a Nazi flag in his bedroom and owned a couple of handguns and a semi-automatic. He admitted to the shooting and was pinned with the radio station threats. His story, according to Stansbury, was that in junior high he got his ass kicked on Clark County school property by three black teenagers and one Hispanic teenager. He complained to school authorities but nothing was done. A couple of years later, he was supposed to start Valley High, and when he got there, he saw the four teens who had beaten him up—so he dropped out of school for good and turned into a hate machine. His case sparked the educate-the-educators campaign. "It went back to the fact that the school district had turned their backs on him," Stansbury said. "So Carlos Garcia told [educators] they will do [the video training]."
FOUR Gang names would be better used as band names. As in: Did you hear the (Peckerwoods', Featherwoods', Black Guerilla Family's, Nortenos', Texas Syndicate's, Sacromaniacs') new CD?
FIVE When the Riviera's fire alarm mistakenly goes off for two minutes, cops think of it as a chance to refill their drinks and/or leave a seminar and not return.