Author Topic: Cops And Street Gangs  (Read 1127 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Cops And Street Gangs
« on: May 12, 2017, 01:09:13 am »
The Aging Rebel 5/11/2017

There is a law in Texas, Section 46.02 of the state penal code, that declares: “A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly carries on or about his or her person a handgun, illegal knife, or club if the person is…a member of a criminal street gang, as defined by Section 71.01.” And that section of the Lone Star State’s big book of dos and many don’ts defines a criminal street gang as “three or more persons having a common identifying sign or symbol or an identifiable leadership who continuously or regularly associate in the commission of criminal activities.”

Now a lawyer in Texas named William S. Morian, Jr. has filed a motion to dismiss charges against an alleged member of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club named Arvin L. Bartlett, III who has been charged with riding in a car with a gun while being a Bandido. Morian, who has numerous Bandido clients, plans to file similar motions “in Bandido cases across the state where they are being charged with unlawful carry of a firearm just because the Bandidos are classified as a ‘criminal street gang’ by various Texas law enforcement agencies.”
Gangs

The concept of “gangs” has been significantly redefined since University of Chicago sociologist Frederic Thrasher published his landmark book, The Gang: A Study of 1313 Gangs in Chicago, in 1929. Thrasher saw gangs as surrogate families.

According to James Hagedorn, a criminologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and one of the nation’s leading authorities on the gradual redefinition of the term “gang,”  “gang research experienced a revival” in the 1950s and 1960s. “As concern for minority gangs grew among nervous whites in central cities,” Hagedorn has written, “some researchers reframed the definition of gangs from being primarily a problem of wild peer groups to being primarily a law enforcement problem. This refocus from the Thrasher definition was in keeping with stepped up suppression efforts by police and a ‘war on gangs.’”

Hagedorn thinks that today gangs are best defined as “an arena for the acting out of gender. Most gangs today are unsupervised peer groups, but many have institutionalized in urban ghettos, barrios, and prisons. Male gang members typically display an aggressive masculinity expressing values of respect and honor and condoning violence as a means to settle disputes.”

Most current definitions of “gang” are intended to stigmatize criminal defendants and to deprive them of rights other defendants enjoy.
Overly Broad

In his motion, Morian writes “The (Texas) definition of a criminal street gang is overly broad and unconstitutionally vague because it captures activity outside the intended scope of the statute.”

“It seemingly categorizes a criminal street gang as a group of three or more people who share a common identifying sign or symbol;” Morian argues, “or, in the alternative a group of three or more people who have an identifiable leadership who continuously or regularly associate in the commission of criminal activity. By this definition, members of a political party who work together during elections to engage in voter fraud are to be considered members of a criminal street gang. Status as a member of a criminal street gang could extend to members of the political party who had no part in the voter fraud.”

More: http://www.agingrebel.com/15329