Inside the Feds' War on Gang Violence

Until recently, this neighborhood in Aurora, Ill., was plagued by chronic gang violence.

Los Angeles police officers stand behind a table of cash and weapons seized during a sweep targeting the most violent gang members.

A joint gang task force of ATF agents and police question a suspect in Santa Barbara, Calif.

AURORA, ILL.—The second time a stray bullet from a gangster's gun hit one of her children, Mary Fultz had had enough. They were aiming for her nephew, she says, but when the bullets started flying on a Saturday this past March, an errant slug tore through the wall of the family's duplex and into her 21-year-old daughter's thigh. Fultz, 43, has seen enough gang violence to last a few lifetimes. Her son was also hit in the leg with a stray bullet during a drive-by shooting four years ago. At the time, the 15-year-old was playing the card game Uno on the front porch.

Seconds after the bullet hit her daughter, Fultz took matters into her own hands. The Aurora native and Wal-Mart greeter tore out the front door and down the street after the fleeing gunmen. She called the cops, who finally corralled and cuffed the suspected shooter in a nearby cemetery. At 15, he was barely old enough to shave.

Violent crime nationwide is hovering near its lowest levels in 30 years. But that's not the case in all of America's cities, where street gangs still account for an alarming share of death and destruction. After all, homicide—much of it gang-related—has been the leading cause of death for young black men ages 15 to 34 for more than a quarter of a century. Gangs are perpetuated by a cycle of despair that is nearly impossible to break, as they capitalize on the public's seemingly endless demand for drugs while protecting their business with brutal, often indiscriminate, violence.

Federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, are trying to make a lasting dent in the bloodshed by interrupting this cycle through dramatic intervention. It then falls to local police and social workers to seize on the resulting disruption in organized violence and attack the root causes of the gang problem. In cities from Baltimore to Los Angeles, the ATF and other agencies are focusing now on street gangs, in particular the groups' most violent enforcers, hit men, and toughs who rob drug stash houses, assassinate rival gangsters, and carry out home invasions. They're some of the deadliest gang activities, yet if they're committed against other criminals, they usually go unreported. "Violent crime is at historic lows, and much of that has to do with focused law enforcement attention to violence and gang violence in particular," says Michael Sullivan, acting director of the ATF.

But progress is slow and hard-won. Nationwide, law enforcement agencies are barely holding the line against street gangs—containing but not reducing their impact in major cities. In smaller cities, by contrast, one or two federal agents can make a significant dent in local gang problems, law enforcement officials say.

Take Aurora, where the ATF's strategy has produced some promising results. The mid-1990s was the height of gang violence, when police logged hundreds of shootings and around two dozen murders per year. Funeral parlors refused to hold services for slain teens, fearing, with good reason, that reprisal gang attacks would come at the gravesides. The local cops, meanwhile, were moving from shooting to shooting so quickly they could hardly keep up, much less close cases. There were so many shell casings at some crime scenes, the old-timers joke, that police started kicking them into the sewers to avoid the crime lab paperwork. "It became so routine," says Police Chief Greg Thomas. "It was shooting after shooting after shooting with no way to break the cycle."

Gunrunners. The strategy the ATF employed, in concert with local police and federal prosecutors, is one it is using increasingly. Federal agents spend their time on stakeouts, undercover busts, and working informants. They call on regional SWAT teams from the ATF to capture their most high-risk targets. The focus on major gunrunners has made it more difficult for gangs to regularly get their hands on dependable weaponry, experts say. As violence declines, local police and social workers can step in.

In the five years since Aurora began focusing on gangs, cleaning up graffiti and pulling dozens of the most violent gang enforcers off its leafy suburban streets, its homicide rate has plummeted. Credit some of that to agents from the ATF, the FBI, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arresting an increasing number of gangsters on conspiracy and racketeering charges that have sent key kingpins off to jail on long sentences. "Federal agents can focus on developing good cases against the worst of the worst and give the police more room to do their jobs with these guys off the streets," says Thomas. This year, Aurora has recorded only two homicides—both drug rip-offs gone bad—and there have been fewer than 100 shootings, compared with the peak of 354 in 1996. Michael Nilles, an Aurora police officer, was even named the national police officer of the year by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2008 for his antigang work with the ATF and the FBI.

There are still major gangs operating in the city—the Latin Kings, the Vice Lords, and the Insane Deuces—along with many smaller gang factions. They don't control territory like inner-city gangs. Instead, they usually run drugs out of ordinary-looking homes and businesses. Unlike inner-city gangs who frequently dabble in protection rackets, the gangs here generally leave local businesses alone. Part of the reason for that, law enforcement officers say, is that Aurora's retail scene consists mostly of big-box stores and national franchises rather than mom and pop establishments, which are more susceptible to extortion.

Nationwide, gauging the true scope of the gang problem is difficult, chiefly because law enforcement lacks a common definition of a gangster or what makes a particular crime gang-related. The FBI estimates that there are about 785,000 gang members in the country belonging to some 26,500 different gangs in 3,400 communities. That estimate excludes outlaw motorcycle and prison gangs. Even more troubling, a third of all communities say they have no gang problem when they actually do. It's a denial bred from either fear or stigma, according to the FBI.

The thousands of active gangs around the country each have their own signs, lingo, and culture. Drug dealing and gun violence are common denominators, but each behaves differently depending on its location. In the Northeast, for instance, there's been a rise in the number of neighborhood and hybrid gangs composed of members of several different organizations. Around Washington, D.C., and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs, meanwhile, the Latin American gang MS-13, best known for attacking its rivals with machetes, has become a particularly tough problem. There, cocaine and marijuana are the main drugs moved through gang networks.

In the Midwest, the amount of gang activity around college campuses and schools is on the rise. Hispanic gangs are using Native American surrogates to move drugs onto Indian reservations, where gang activity is also on the rise. And out West, street gangs are diversifying their criminal portfolios to include identity theft while continuing to supply narcotics, mostly methamphetamines and marijuana. Gangs in the West are also most likely to partner with organized crime, particularly the Mexican drug cartels and the Asian mafia.

Wherever they operate, gangs are increasingly turning to computers and the Internet. Often behind password-protected sites, they post photo-graphs of their own gang signs, colors, and tattoos. Police even report that some gangs are using their websites to take positions on local political issues. In fact, sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube have become quite useful to police gathering intelligence or investigating specific crimes. "Some gang members in Maryland are not too bright, and they will often post pictures of themselves and their gangs online or shoot videos of themselves defacing property or committing other crimes," says Charles Rapp, director of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, which helps scour open-source information for law enforcement agencies. For their part, the gangs sometimes post misleading information to fool police or rival gangs about potential meetings or activities.

Yet despite all their bravado, at their essence the gangs remain fraternities of lawlessness, replenished with scores of young men from troubled neighborhoods in the name of belonging, enterprise, or necessity. "The pervasiveness of gangs throughout society is undeniable," the Justice Department concluded in its latest National Gang Threat Assessment in 2005. "As they migrate across the country, they bring with them drugs, weapons, and criminal activity."

Gangs are, however, also vulnerable because of their insatiable demand for guns, a weakness that federal officers are learning to exploit. Put simply, they are always looking for more guns to protect themselves and their illicit merchandise. Ammunition is also often in low supply for street gangs. Most gangsters use guns only once. They know that after a crime, the ATF enters the bullets or shell casings into databases to trace them. "Gangsters watch shows like CSI as homework and watch History Channel documentaries about gangs as research," says one veteran gang investigator. Guns are also lost, seized by the police, or broken during normal use. "Gangs will try to have enough guns for each full member to have access to one, though they also share between themselves," says Jared Lewis, a retired cop from the Modesto, Calif., antigang task force who now researches street gangs. Fortunately, that makes them easier targets for undercover operations. Add to that stricter laws under which those caught with guns and drugs face harsh sentences, and the effects are starting to be felt.

In places like the bowels of an Aurora police barracks, ATF agents keep some of their most effective tools of gang fighting in a locked filing cabinet—audio and video recorders, hidden cameras, bugs, and other electronic gadgetry used not only to spy on gangs but to convict them in court.

The feds have far greater surveillance authority than local police and are also able to bring stiff charges that send criminals away to distant federal pens. "When the federales are involved, gang bangers start coughing up information, because they are going away for a long time in a prison far away from their mothers and girlfriends," says an ATF special agent in Aurora, who requested anonymity because he still works undercover.

The same tactics are also at work in larger cities, though it's far more difficult for a few agents to make enough arrests to shift the momentum against the gangs, as they can in smaller cities. In Los Angeles, one of the national epicenters of gang culture, ATF agents spent months gathering evidence against members of the Bloods, Crips, and Black P-Stone Nation gangs this summer. Using phone taps and undercover drug and gun buys by agents, they targeted the Baldwin Village neighborhood of L.A., the setting for the movie Training Day and long a gang hotspot.

"Guns off the street." Just hours before the ATF and the L.A. Police Department are set to raid a key gang hideout, the nightly news carries the all-too-familiar story of an 8-year-old girl playing with friends in the courtyard of a South Los Angeles apartment building when she was hit in the chest and killed by a stray bullet from a drive-by. "We're the violent crime police, and that means taking guns off the street and away from gangs however we can," says John Torres, who runs the ATF office in L.A.

It is still dark outside when members of the SWAT team gear up in a parking garage, strapping on stun grenades, giving their assault rifles a final once-over, and adjusting their body armor. They look more like a military unit preparing for battle, but the extra firepower is warranted. By the end of the operation, the ATF and the L.A. Police Department will capture 38 gang members and 119 guns, including AK-47 assault rifles and Uzi machine guns.

But this particular raid does not go well. The team arrives at the suspect's home and bangs on the door. Tossing in a stun grenade, the team batters down the door only to find a middle-aged woman—the suspect's mother—asleep on the couch. The grenade delivers a terrific noise, giving the startled woman chest pains. The team quickly calls for an ambulance.

"Too familiar."Outside in the dawn light, neighbors peek out of their windows, but no one comes out. "It's all too familiar," says Donald Wilson, 52, a preacher at a local church who just the day before helped his neighbors scrape the bark off trees after gang members marked their territory on the palms with spray paint. Wilson was out walking his dog when the SWAT team drove by. "Sure, that house is a gang house—good riddance," he says. "But I understand that to survive around here, you have to side with someone."

A common refrain, even in middle-class towns like Aurora, is that the gang replaces the family by protecting and providing for young men who see few other options. Chris Blitch, 25, is typical of many young men with difficult childhoods who fall in with the wrong crowd. His mother is a social worker who serves battered women at an office that happens to be in the same building where an ATF task force targets gangs. It was several of those agents in 2006 who caught her son on tape planning to knock over a drug stash house. He boasted to undercover officers that he'd use a machine gun to cut people in half if they got in his way, according to a criminal complaint.

At his sentencing in September, Illinois District Judge Elaine Bucklo said she wasn't altogether happy with the undercover operation that caught Blitch and several others plotting to rob the stash house and kill those inside, implying that the operation verged on entrapment. But the tapes were damning, and Blitch was convicted by a jury. "The fact that you will be 50 years old and unlikely to continue this behavior is sufficient punishment," Bucklo told Blitch as he stood handcuffed before her in a bright-orange jumpsuit.

Breaking the cycle, however, is the hardest part. Some 70 percent of former felons will commit a crime upon release from prison. A recent report from the National Alliance of Gang Investigators Associations glumly concluded that "incarceration of gang members often does little to disrupt their activities." By the time they are released, many are even more deeply enmeshed in gang life because of their time behind bars. "We can't even help our confidential informants find jobs," says one law enforcement official in Aurora. "They do criminal background checks to work in fast food." Without a steady job and continued counseling, most ex-cons end up back among the same guys who got them in trouble in the first place, officers say.

The task of solidifying any gains after these high-profile raids falls to social workers, churches, and other community organizations. They're in a bind too, as evaporating state budgets often hit these groups first and hardest. Joanne Furnas, who serves as Aurora's director of crisis services, says that these nonprofits are critical to killing the roots that nourish gangs. "No one believes we can arrest our way out of this problem," says Furnas. "You have to educate communities to take on the gangs themselves." That's the long-term challenge for a community where gifts given at christenings were sometimes emblazoned with gang signs. Years ago, Furnas and other social workers tended to focus their antigang efforts on high schools, but it was often too late. They moved to middle schools but found the same problem. Now, they target elementary schoolers.

Furnas spends the rest of her days making sure victims of gang violence are listed under false names in regional hospitals, teaching young women that they are not the property of the gangs to which their pimps belong, and helping to organize community activists. "The only way that we've been able to make progress here is by joining together community resources, churches, and other groups," she says.

One of the community organizers who often go their own way is Mary Fultz, the mother of the two children injured by stray bullets. Some members of her own family have been connected to gangs, and the police are no strangers to her block. But she's challenging some local gangs anyway. Sometimes she chases them off street corners with a suitably authoritative, motherly voice. She has also worked to organize local parents and arrange neighborhood activities, like a block party cookout in a vacant lot. Even though she doesn't apply for city permits, social workers and some in law enforcement admit that her unorthodox work has shown some results. But that all stopped after her daughter was shot. Now, Fultz has moved temporarily out of town, fearing for her safety. "I'll do what I can," she says. "But I don't want this to be another one of those stories where the woman gets shot at the end." l

• Read an interview with the ATF's acting director, Michael Sullivan.
• Read about ATF's efforts to go after unscrupulous gun dealers.
• Read more by Alex Kingsbury.