Virtually in the shadows of the seat of our nation’s government and the crowds gathered for the National Cherry Blossom festival, the residents of the Benning Terrace public housing development are mourning a triple tragedy. Two of their young people have been murdered, 13 youths have been indicted—virtually sealing their lives’ trajectory—and, perhaps most tragically, there may have been a way to prevent this devastation. A televised news report on the indictments included a statement from Bob Woodson, founder and president of the DC-based Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), who …
Would the discovery that, every day, nearly 6 million youths in America are immersed in abusive environments create a shock wave and a call to action? That is, in essence, the finding of a report recently released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University: The public outcry remains to be heard. The results of two concurrent surveys, each of 1,000 students aged 12 through 17, revealed that 27 percent of those in public schools reported that their schools were infected with both gangs and …
Nothing is more vital to a nation’s sovereignty than its ability to protect and control its territories, and that’s why it’s so appalling that the federal government essentially has given control over U.S. land to Mexican drug and smuggling gangs. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the federal government is charged with providing for the common defense, which includes protecting America’s borders. Although small compared to the vastness of the border, this implicit bequeath of U.S. territory occurred in 2006 during President George W. Bush’s Administration and continues …
While the days of the organized crime of The Sopranos are over, the policies that were used to fight them have been revived in the struggle against domestic and international organized crime. These strategies in combination with a new interagency coalition are seeking to not only combat gang crime, but take down the gangs themselves. Numbers put out by the FBI estimate that there are roughly 30,000 “violent street, motorcycle and prison gangs” with some 800,000 members. Many are hoping that this new strategy of interagency information sharing will help …
