 Hi and welcome back. During the second part of the program, we'll be talking with four Federal Probation Officers about their experiences in supervising and managing gang members. Specifically, we'll examine the identification of gang members, issues associated with risk control and treatment, and officer safety. Each of these officers is from a different part of the country and brings unique perspectives and practices. We're using this broadcast as a forum for sharing their ideas with you, but are not advocating one approach over the other or advocating one approach is more correct than the other. So always check with your chief or supervisor to be sure that you follow your district's policies. As in our first segment, after we speak with our guests, we'll take your questions. So continue to phone and fax them to us at the numbers on the screen. We want to hear live call-ins here. We'll get to the first questions in about 25 minutes. Now I should also tell you that while they won't be on camera for this part of the program, we do have Craig Trout and Dale Welling in another part of our studio where they will be listening in and available to respond to your questions as needed. With us for this part of the program are Victor Casillas, a supervising U.S. Probation Officer from the Western District of Texas, Tom Miller, U.S. Probation Officer from the District of New Jersey, Rachel Scott, U.S. Probation Officer from the Northern District of Georgia, and Daryl Larry, a supervising U.S. Probation Officer from the District of Nebraska. Welcome. Glad you're all here with us. Let's start by giving our audience an opportunity to learn just a bit more about each of you. I'm going to ask you to simply describe your experience with gangs in the districts that you come from. And Daryl, I'm going to start with you. Experience with gangs in the District of Nebraska? I'm from the District of Nebraska, as you mentioned. I've been in service since 1974. In Nebraska, we have various street gangs including white, Hispanic, and black street gangs. But we also have a chapter of the Hell's Angels. So we have a good variety of street gangs in Nebraska. Okay. Tom, how about New Jersey? Well, like I've said before, we are the melting pot in New Jersey and we have a wide range of gangs and experience with gangs from Asian gangs to Russian organized crime, bikers, some neo-Nazi factions, and your more traditional black street gangs, the Bloods, the Crips, the Five Percenters. Okay. Rachel, how about Atlanta? Atlanta is a lot like Tom's District in New Jersey and we have a wide variety of street gangs, the biker gangs, Asian gangs, Latin gangs. We also have a fairly large Nigerian fraud ring percentage in our caseloads, which I've dealt with specifically the Nigerians and the bikers and a few of the black street gang members. Okay. And finally, Victor, saying in turn. Well, the Western District of Texas is a pretty large district and we have several large metropolitan centers. So we have a variety of offenders. For example, in the San Antonio Division, we have about 600 street gangs, maybe about 12 of those are really hardcore gangs. We have, that's the headquarters of the Mexican Army, which you've heard about earlier, the Texas Mexican Mafia. In Austin, we have the Latin Kings, the Texas Syndicate. In Waco, we have the dirty white boys. In our El Paso Division, we have the first prison gang that we believe is going to become the first major international prison gang and that's the Barrios Azteca. Barrios Azteca. And basically in San Antonio, we've been tracking gangs since about 1986. So I guess the better question for you is what groups don't you have in Texas? Good start. Thanks for that additional information and we're getting ready to move on to our first topic. Now, in the first part of our program, you heard Craig Troutendale willing talk about some of the common issues and concerns that they hear from officers throughout the country. And one of those concerns was how to identify gang members. Tom, I'm going to start with you. Identification. You've got an individual in your caseload. You suspect as a gang member. What do you do to try and identify them as such? Well, ideally, Mark, you're going to start in the early, probably the pre-release phase of the case when the person's still at the institution. You want to get a hold of that case file and become what I call intimate with it and cover it front to back, find everything about this individual that you can prior to his release. You want to make contact definitely with the Sacramento Intelligence Unit and see if they've gathered any intelligence over time while the person's been involved with the Bureau of Prisons. After that, you want to look at the pre-sentence report itself, the instant offense, co-defendants, prior record on the part of the individual, what type of crimes he's been involved in. That could be a telltale sign. You then want to speak maybe with the pre-sentence writer, the AUSA who prosecuted the case, the case agent that investigated the case. And hopefully, all that will paint some type of picture for you one way or the other. In addition to that, you can reach out to your law enforcement sources in the community, state and local law enforcement, where they might be more expert in the area than perhaps the case agent was, and could give you a better idea, has this person been identified in our area as a definite gang member? I see your point about the criminal, the offense focuses on, goes back a little bit to what Craig Trout was talking about earlier with the criminal behavior versus visibility issue. Absolutely. Rachel, how about Atlanta? How do you identify folks in Atlanta as gang members? Well, to continue on what Tom said, all of those issues. And additionally, you know, there are times you can just ask the defendant. Just fly out and ask them. Just ask, you know, if they're a gang member. They may or may not, you know, respond to that question. But if you have clues and suspicions from other things that you've looked at in the case, they would lead you, you know, to believe that you need to at least ask the questions. If they don't give you a yes or no answer to begin with, or if they say no, you might want to continue, you know, backing off of that. Well, is anybody in your family a gang member? Do you have friends that are gang members? Are there gangs in your community? You know, where do you live? What kind of neighborhood is that? Something else that you can look for in identifying, one thing in particular, for instance, and everyone has their own distinctions, but with the Nigerian fraud rings. If I walk into somebody's house and I look and instead of there being a telephone on the kitchen wall, like is in most people's homes, there's a six-digit business line, a six-line business phone. There's a fax machine. There's a credit card machine. I don't have them in my house. I don't have much. You know, things like that. Just be aware. Victor, I can't even comment on that after that. Rachel's correct. You cannot discount the offender as a valuable source of information, but you also need to be aware of the distinctions between the different gangs, for example, like the street gangs. They're very proud of their affiliation and they wear it and they boast about it. They brag about it. Whereas, for example, the prison gangs, just by the nature of the type of organization they are and their own rules, they sometimes will not tell you about their affiliation. Is that a way to differentiate if you have somebody who's a prison gang as opposed to a street gang, their willingness to come forward? Does that help discern who you're dealing with? Or should you not use that as a criteria? Let me give you an example. One time I had a prison gang member who was a member of the Texas syndicate. SIU told me he was coming and during the first visit, we went through the initial interview. And midway through the interview, I asked him, are you a member of the Texas syndicate? And he said, oh, no, sir, I'm not. But so we proceeded with the interview and following at the end of the interview, as he got up to leave, he said, oh, Mr. Casillas, by the way, Raymond and Tony, and he threw out about five names that I knew were Texas syndicate members. Who's parole I had revoked. I said, they said to say hello to you. So that was his way of saying, yes, I am a member, but I'm not really admitting it. He was getting back to you and letting you know in his own way. Right. Darrell, identifying these folks in Omaha. Well, I think it's really important during the initial home visit, particularly for pretrial service officers and probation officers, to look for gang paraphernalia and photographs. Many street gangs will take photographs of themselves and their colleagues, displaying their gang signs, and also displaying tattoos. If you do look for these in the initial home visit and see them, that's a sure sign that someone's in a gang. Okay. Darrell makes a good point there with the pre-sentence phase. I mean, if you can identify someone in the pre-sentence phase, the investigation prior to the person being committed or released to supervision, that's key. Okay. Guys, good start. Good start. Now, in addition to what you've just heard about identifying gang members on your caseload, we'd like to take a minute to show you a brief video segment on gathering intelligence on gang members from LETN, the Law Enforcement Television Network. And this reinforces what our officers have just said and presents a few additional ideas as well. Now, certainly, risk control is a very big concern when supervising any offender or defendant, particularly those considered to be high risk. But before we talk about what the risk control issues are for probation and pretrial services officers when supervising gang members, let's hear what our online participants said about this topic. Denny? Thank you, Mark. During the online conference, discussion was actually all over the board when it came to the issue of managing risk. Although the majority of the participants indicated their district did not really have a gang policy per se, everyone shared the tips, techniques, and practices they used to manage these cases. Now, many mention they rely heavily on local law enforcement agencies and task forces, in many cases, using their databases to obtain identification information. A pretrial services officer noted he often uses a third party custodian as a requirement for bond when dealing with high risk defendants, such as gang members. Other participants mentioned strategies such as requiring non-employed offenders to call in every day and explain what they did to look for a job, or requesting a copy of an offender's visitors list from the institution where he or she was incarcerated. Several officers indicated they use special conditions that prohibit offenders from wearing colors, associating with known gang members, or carrying pagers. You know, Mark, these are just a few of the ideas the participants shared during our online conference. Well, Denny, thanks for that, and we're going to turn the question around now to our four panelists. Victor, I'm going to start with you. Risk control and treatment. You heard them talk about issues of third party, early morning home visits, what have you. Sound familiar for San Anton, and what are the risk control issues that you deal with? Well, in essence, when you're dealing with a gang member, basically you're dealing with the typical risk issues that are associated with any case, except they're magnified. So if you look at your page two of your initial plan, where you have your techniques that you're controlling, you're basically doing the same thing. You're just carrying it a little bit further. For example, a lot of these gang members, they really have a support network to kind of cover up their false employment when they don't live, or when they say they live. So you really need to just kind of dig more in depth. But basically you're doing the same risk control techniques. Okay. Daryl, let me go to you. Risk control in Omaha with these folks. I think it's very important. It's very essential that you verify employment for gang members. Meantime, gangs will take the money they make in illegal activities such as drugs, and buy into legitimate businesses, such as car washes or car detailing shops or restaurants. When they do buy into these businesses, then they will give phantom jobs to gang members. So it's very important that the officer verify the employment of gang member. Phantom jobs. The person has a job on paper. They get a W-2 form, but they never go to work. And unless you go there and verify the employment, you'll never see the person at the job. Now, can you, okay, gang members that own legitimate businesses, can you, do you get a prohibition on the conditions to keep a gang member on your caseload from working in those places? Or do you have to sort of like find it out after the fact or? When we identify that someone is working at a gang owned or controlled business, then we prohibit that person from working at that agency. Okay. How difficult is it to make the link between gang ownership and those businesses? That's very difficult. I think it's very important to establish a report with your local or regional gang intelligence unit. They will have a lot of intelligence information that will indicate which businesses are involved with gangs. Okay. Let's switch gears a minute now. Talk about treatment briefly. Tom, let me start with you. Role of treatment. What's the role that it plays in supervision? I'd like to say there is no role for treatment with these offenders more, but that's not entirely accurate. Don't say that. When there are treatment issues with a particular case or a particular offender, substance abuse, alcohol abuse, employment assistance, whatever they might need, you do need to offer the same thing to that individual that you would offer to a normal case or a general case. The difference is your level of tolerance is much closer to zero. If you meet any type of resistance, you're going to move for revocation and get the person off your case or off the street. Design more to protect the public than anything else. Okay. Rachel? Where's the criminal issues? I agree with Tom. Treatment issues with gang offenders The thing that we have to remember, most treatment forms require that a person change where they're coming from as a person. They have to change their attitude. They have to change their actions, their behaviors, their environment. And for most hardcore gang members, that gang is their family. And that is who they go home to. When they leave our office, when they leave prison, that's the environment, the attitudes and the behaviors that they go back to. And therein lies their support mechanism. Exactly. Whether it's a support mechanism and actuality or not. Tom, you mentioned, use the phrase high-risk offenders. And I know, Victor, you mentioned it too quickly. Safe to assume that each of you has a gang member on your case load automatically that's a high-risk offender? Absolutely. Yes. No doubt about it. No questions asked. No. And not only because you're just dealing with the individual, but also because you've got this other gang issue. These other folks that will support them, that will lie for them, or whatever. Exactly. Supervising a group. You're supervising a group. And I think that's important too for the gang member that's on a general case load too. Possible that we don't have rooms on our case loads at that particular time to put that individual on our case load. The officer who does have the case needs to know it's a high-risk situation and they have to pay closer attention to that individual. Certainly we'll have implications for safety when we get to the next topic. Quickly, again, any success stories on dealing with gang members and providing treatment? Not really. Now, now. Far and in between. Yeah. Far and in between. Yeah. Well, someone's actually involved in gang activity. They're not really conducive to change. And that's what you need to have when you're in involved in treatment. Sure. Sure. That makes sense. Well, I think we're ready to move to our next topic. Good. The topic of officer safety has surfaced in every discussion on gangs that I've had with these folks since we first began planning this program. And certainly most would agree that good safety practices are called for in any situation, regardless of whether you're in the office or the field and regardless of whom you're supervising. Yet in our discussions on gangs, safety continues to be an area that generates a lot of discussion. And this was especially true with our online conference. So let's start this segment and go back to Denise to learn the morning star with our final report from the online. Denny. Thanks, Mark. Differences among district policies and allocation of resources really came out in our discussions on officer safety. For example, many participants talked about partnering in the field, whereas others indicated they primarily go out in the field alone. Some officers mentioned they wear casual attire when conducting home and employment visits. Others said they must wear professional attire at all times. Now, despite the differences in district policy, it was really fascinating to hear our participants discuss strategies for officer safety. For example, driving by a house and kind of scoping out the environment before getting out of the car, making sure you're not wearing gang colors when you're in the field, scheduling early morning home visits, or coordinating your reporting days so you don't have rival gang members sitting in the reception area at the same time. But the best advice had to do with attitude. As one participant reminded his colleagues, it all starts with you and being prepared. We should never let our guard down. Never be in the white zone. No matter how well we think, we know the offender. I understand our guest panelists have a few additional comments on officer safety. Well, Denny, they sure do. And we're going to begin that discussion. And I'm going to go to Darrell. Officer safety. Put you on the spot. Let me, let me, let me. Don't jump ahead now. Give me a minute here. I got my shtick to get in here. We heard from Denny about our, the comments about partnering, about the practicality of early morning visits, what to wear. Certainly a tire is always a big issue. Above and beyond the safety issues that we normally hear about, and we presented them in federal judicial center programs. I know districts have the ongoing safety training. They talk about these normal concerns. Above and beyond the things that we generally talk about, safety considerations, dealing with gang, gang members from Omaha. Officer safety is paramount. Whenever you think about gangs, you have to think that gangs, whenever you think about gangs, there's drugs and guns involved. So whenever you see a gangster, think there's going to be guns around somewhere. Your friend, there may not be the one having the guns. He's a felon. But someone else, maybe a wannabe, may have those weapons. But they're always going to be around when you're dealing with gang members. So particularly when you're doing home visits, but also in the office, you have to be very observant. When you go to do a home visit, perhaps you want to drive around the block first and see what the atmosphere around the block is like. You might want to see who's in the neighborhood, how they're acting. If you see a group of people that may not be friendly, you may want to not do the home visit at this time. You may just want to drive away. Furthermore, when you stop to do the home visit, you may want to leave your car two or three houses up, not directly in front of the house where you're going to do the home visit. If you're going to do a home visit at an apartment complex or a high rise, what you may want to do when you get out of your car is look at the rooftops, see what's around you before you get out of the car and before you go into the building. Okay, good start. Tom, safety considerations in Jersey. You need to know the offender and that's true with any case. It's just with the high-risk offenders. It's a little more heightened. You know, what does that person bring to the table? Is there a propensity for violence? Are there weapon convictions in the background? As Victor mentioned before, the network is there gang members in or around the area living with the individual, family members that are inclined towards violence. To follow up on a couple of things that Darryl said, when there's a group of individuals maybe in a certain project that you're going to and they don't look too friendly towards you as the officer, maybe a good idea would be to call from the cell phone call the individual and say, you know, I'm here to do a home visit but why don't you meet me out at the car? You can walk me in or we'll conduct business out by the car. The other thing as Darryl mentioned was looking towards the rooftops, the higher floors at the buildings you're going into. The individual maybe has nothing to do with your offender, somebody that just lives in the area but has a problem with law enforcement identifies you as a member of law enforcement they might be willing to throw things off the rooftops or out of those top floors, heavy objects, cement, garbage cans, whatever just for the sole purpose of inflicting in a problem. Make calling each one of your day just not too long. Absolutely, that's right. Victor, safety issues in San Intern? Well, you know, I'm a big believer in farms training and safety programs and such but I really think that when you're dealing with gangs what you don't know is what can hurt you. Before you even hit the street you really need to be familiar with the case and I mean in a in-depth way. For example, your offender might, you might not have a problem with your offender but what about his brothers? Are they members of the gang? Are they part of the gang? What's going on within the gang itself? Gang dynamics are very fluid. Things are always moving, alliances shifting, even factionalism within the gang. You need to be aware of all these things before you hit the field. You have a good story in terms of knowing your offenders, knowing the culture. I think we have a few minutes and remaining I'm going to ask you to tell the folks that story. Well, it was during a fiesta week. I don't know if you guys are familiar with fiesta week in San Antonio but basically it's a- Oh, we have fiesta week all the time. It's a one week party but I had attended fiesta week with my wife and we were going home and we had to go through this kind of desolate little park, the Hemisphere Park area in San Antonio and as I was crossing this park I ran into a Texas syndicate captain that I had under supervision with some of his bodyguards and as I stood there talking to him my wife sat down on a park bench and she was surrounded by his bodyguards normally you might think, well, this is a threatening situation but actually it was a sign of respect. While I was talking to their boss they were kind of guarding my wife so that's the way I interpreted but you also need to be familiar with the culture of the gang per se and again all the gangs have different cultures. I've heard the story a couple of times and I wanted our audience to hear it. I think it's a fascinating lesson again knowing who you're dealing with. Rachel, I'm going to give you the opportunity to have the last word on this topic. Well, I would bring out a couple of points. Number one, we need to remember that when we're dealing with gangs law enforcement is at the bottom of their list of people to respect and number one you represent law enforcement and the second for female officers they need to also understand that females get no respect in gangs they hold no place of esteem for the gangs and you as a female law enforcement officer represent someone who deserves no respect from the gang. So you need to remember that when you're dealing with gang members the individual gang member that you're supervising may not have any confrontational moves or actions towards you may always be polite but that doesn't mean that that person respects you in any way and you also need to remember that when you're dealing with gangs or when you're supervising a gang member you're not just dealing with that gang member if you offend him you have offended his entire gang his entire family. And you don't know who's going to come back after you do? That's true because the person that you have offended may not be the person sent to do the retaliation. Safety is a near-deer topic to my heart and I could go on talking to all of you about it for a long long time. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time. So are you ready to take some questions? Sure. Okay. The facts have been coming in fast and furious. So let's start with a couple of those and again let me let me just remind folks that call in. We've got some lovely graphics up for the city if you call in so take an opportunity. Rachel I know you were just transferred to the pre-sentence. Unit this week in your district. So let me let me throw this question to you. Okay. What criteria for inclusion of gang information or what's the criteria for inclusion of gang information in PSI reports? Well a couple of quick things. First of all as was discussed on the previous panel need to be real sure that you're not labeling somebody because this is going whatever you put in the pre-sentence report is going to stay with that person. Don't label them a gang member unless you know that they have been validated as a gang member either through self-admission plus corroborative sources as was mentioned earlier. If they're already in the state system as an active you know gang member and they have been validated that's fine. And whatever the person tells you in the pre-sentence interview put that as their words you know they discussed on the previous panel that there might be some problem with just a self-admission. So if you're doing a pre-sentence interview and somebody says yes I'm a member of so and so because they think that'll get them kitchen detail instead of garbage detail you know at the prison that that could be a problem but phrase it in their words and then put what you find to corroborate with it in that section of the report. Good information. Okay we have a call from California Northern and it is for Craig and Dale who I reminded you earlier are in another part of our studio. So hello California. Hi Mark this is Dan Capobano. Hey Dan. My question goes to both Craig and Dale and it had to do with validation. We've been speaking a lot about it and since it appears obvious that with the validation model that they've given us anyone has the power I guess to validate someone. Once we do validate someone would it be a good idea to call either the national major gang task force or SIU kind of go over it with them and then authorize the release of that information through their agencies to anyone who calls in with a right to know and the need to know. Yes I think that's an excellent idea. The as you go through the validation process obviously if that information is provided to the Bureau of Prisons through the Sacramento Intelligence Unit I think you can understand we're probably going to go through the same information again and more or less verify and confirm the information to make sure it meets our same criteria. After we've been through that process if that information has been provided to us with your approval for release when various individuals call in for information we would be able to share various intelligence items that came in through the validation process. So yes that's exactly right on target in terms of sharing that kind of information with us and we go through some quality control things and verification kind of things and then that's exactly the kind of information we can share back that's part of our total intelligence database is some of the information that we've gathered through the validation package process. Dan did that take care of your question? My last comment is I want to thank you Mark and the FJC who I'm always impressed with that you get so much done with so little money in this public conference is certainly something that has been waited for by me and my colleagues that are special offenders especially so thanks a lot. On behalf of my colleagues I thank you for the comment Dan good hearing from you. Okay. Okay we have another phone call from New Orleans. Hello New Orleans. There's this. Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Tom Livingston U.S. Probation Office New Orleans. Hi Tom thanks for calling. All right we have a large Vietnamese population here. Can you give us some insight in terms of what information has been gathered in terms of Vietnamese or Asian gangs? Vietnamese or Asian gangs in New Orleans. Let me uh Greg Dale might that be a question one of you would like to jump in on? What I would suggest that you do would be to contact the gang intelligence unit in New Orleans police department. Also you contact SIU to see what they have in New Orleans. And then also you might even contact the Louisiana State Police to see what they might have available in that area. I might kind of add to that a little bit too. Again going back to the issue of being specific we would need to know very specifically what type of tattoos might be present like there might be a BTK for born to kill. There might be a coffin. There might be several other tattoos to be very very meaningful. And if the person came from say Vietnam or in another example possibly Hong Kong or wherever need to know specifically where they're from. What part of Vietnam might make a difference in terms of whether we think that they're a hasty gang or what kind of Vietnamese gang they might be. And the same thing is true of Hong Kong, Huynh Thong or Triad or whatever that they might be associated with. So again this is another case I think where specificity is very very important as we look at the intelligence that might be available to us. Tom do we lose you? Okay I hope we answered your question. We want to come back real quickly to Rachel because Rachel wants to have wants to add a few things to that question. I just wanted to let Tom know that if he wanted to give me a call in the downtown Atlanta office I have a good bit of general information on a number of the Vietnamese Cambodian Laotian and Hmong groups that might be of interest to him if he can't find what the information is looking for with his local police department. Great outstanding. Okay we've got another call coming in from Detroit and I'm thankful you all took me up on my offer to get those cities up on. Hello Detroit. Yes how are you? Fine how are you? Good. What's your question? My question is if gang members have little respect for law enforcement and probably less than that for female law enforcement officers are we placing our female officers at a higher level of danger by letting them supervise gang members? Good question. Hold on we'll get you an answer. Gee I guess who I'm going to direct that question to. Rachel take it. I don't think so. An officer presents themselves with the presence and confidence that they carry as an individual and whether you're a male or a female you still carry that confidence and I don't think you're necessarily putting a female officer in any greater danger. The reason I brought those points up was just to let the officers know that even though the person may be being polite to you and respectful to your face that is not how they really feel about you. Okay thank you. I agree with you. I just thought maybe you needed to touch upon that a little bit. Thank you. Appreciate the question and we're going to have Victor wants to jump in as well. I would just add to that comment that when you're dealing with gangs really the strengths that you need are competencies as far as the expertise in the gang itself and your attitude toward dealing with the offender and those things really transcend gender so really that's not even an issue. Okay we have another call coming in from Richmond and this may be the last call for this segment but hello Richmond. Hello hello good afternoon. Good afternoon what's your question? Well I understand that all gangs are dangerous and the different cultural points and activities have a lot to do with it. However where does the 5% nation fit in because I haven't seen any shootings or things of that nature here in the Richmond area. Only in the prisons are they on some religion type set. Okay well maybe Dorian it's time to talk about that briefly. Thanks for your question hold on. I'm not going to speak about the 5% as an anti-type of expert but I can tell you that it originated in the northeast. In fact in New York I believe and yes they do pass themselves off as a religious sect but in fact if you speak with law enforcement authorities in New Jersey and probably in New York as well they're going to tell you it's organized crime plain and simple. They stand behind the religious facade to do their 30 deeds. They're really just nothing more than organized crime violence weapons drugs you know the whole thing. Caller does that help? Yes I'm here. Does that help? Does that help your question? Oh yes it does. He set a little light on that thank you. Well thank you for calling and I appreciate it. Well you took me up seriously and I appreciate that again. Thank you for all of your calls and facts as thus far. Now we have more time in the program however that concludes the formal part of our program and we still have your questions and we want to respond to them so we're going to take our remaining time and do just that so don't go anywhere hang on there but before we get to the questions I want to thank all of my guests for taking time from their busy schedules to be here with us today for this broadcast and to thank my colleague Denise Orlando Morningstar for her reports on the gang's online conference. I also want to thank the folks at the law enforcement television network who gave us permission to use some of the footage that you saw in today's program. Also please note the two special resources that two of our panelists mentioned today the Sacramento Intelligence Unit which again is a cooperative venture among the Bureau of Prisons the U.S. Marshals Service and probation pretrial services and the National Major Gang Task Force which we heard about from Dale Welling. The information about these agencies again are listed on pages 20 and 21 of your participant guide. Now you should have also received a program evaluation please use this evaluation to tell us what you liked about the satellite broadcast and what we could improve because your feedback is very important to us. Now we're going to take our remaining time and get to the rest of your questions and for that I've got a number of facts here be patient with me while I weed through some of them here's a question obviously from a participant who was involved with our online conference so during the online gang conference it became clear that gangs and drugs are often associated. The focus of probation pretrial services officers therefore should be on safety and the identification of risk issues. However many of the gang members being placed in supervision have drug after care conditions. Are there any special considerations that officers or the service provider should be aware of when providing correctional treatment to gang members? We talked a little bit with the officers but I think the interesting one interesting twist on this question is what involvement when interaction what do you tell the service provider? In San Antonio we've dealt with the Texas Mexican the Texas Mexican Mafia the Mexican of me and the Texas syndicate for years now and they've had an ongoing struggle which is just about coming to an end for about a decade and they really are a large part of our drug after care caselet. And we generally notify the agency we tell them if a person's a gang member when we see the groups that are forming for example we try to make sure that we don't have rival gangs in the same groups. If there's really a big issue say someone has a contract out on them which has happened before ahead on them we won't send them to a contract agency we'll send them to an agency by themselves or we'll do we'll do the drug after care services ourselves. You'll provide an house? Anybody else want to jump in on that before we go to the next question? My only thought for a drug contract would be to make sure you verify the urinalysis. Meantime gang members try to fake or sniff false urinalysis so you have to do all the procedures necessary to verify the urinalysis you're taking. The adulteration panels is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Okay. All right we have a call from Chicago. Hello Chicago. Yes. Hi how are you? Good how are you? I'm doing great. I have a question pertaining to is there any validity to what criminologists believe where gang members get out of up in age to get out of the gang and are more functional in society? Good question. Let me ask any one of our panel here and then I make throw that to Craig and Dale's will to follow up. Victor did you want to? Well I would just say that for you have again the distinction between the gangs for example the prison gangs are blood in blood out or most of them or anyway. Once you join the prison gang that's it you're in it for life. You're in it for life. But some of the street gangs some of the more youthful gangs there is a in some instances an aging out process where they do leave the gang they burn out on the street life and they leave the gang some do some don't some gangs are multi-generational but yes there is some validity to that you know you can leave the gang if you're a street gang member for the most part. Okay good question good question Craig Dale any additional on that? I think Victor pretty well hit it on the head and we both Craig and I agree that I with the street gangs the commitment level is not as high as it is with the prison gangs. I think I'd add one thing though as the gang members get a little older get a little more mature at times they almost have a calming influence on the rest of the gang they try to keep some of the younger kids kind of in line a little bit. So in my experience I found that as I'm working with a gang that sometimes the older members are more responsive to my attempts to interview and frequently gave me better insights in terms of what the current motivations were what the current problems were and so even if I think Victor already made the point it might be blood in blood out where they can't actually drop out sometimes they have a calming influence and they're worth a little extra time in terms of working with them and talking to them and then sometimes in the extreme they're just wanting to distance themselves from the gang and they may attempt to drop out or may try to look for separation status or whatever but yes there definitely is a difference by age in terms of what kind of activity we seem to see Chicago how's that take care of your question great thank you thank appreciate your call all right let's go to one of our faxes a little bit of a different twist here can you give us specific information about women in gangs and how the women gangs differ from the male oriented gangs I'm getting some interesting looks anybody want to jump in there we can I can ask our good friends in the other studio to I can address the issue of females in prison gangs female prison gangs generally they kind of act as auxiliaries they assist in moving the drugs moving the guns carrying messages back and forth in and out of the institutional setting but by and large they're not allowed to be members of the gang okay that's prison gangs that's just prison gangs I'm not speaking about street gangs oh you've got to go go ahead well there we have seen an increase in the Atlanta area in female gangs not auxiliary gangs to the male gangs but female gangs and this is not a large population that it's not a large number of gangs but we have seen an increase in that a lot of the activity is very similar to the male gangs the theft rings burger rings vehicle theft rings and the girls will do the drive-bys just like the guys do the shooting the weapons the drugs that it's all there okay Craig and Dale how about that question dealing with with women gang members anything to add there well I think the first thing that I would would jump to my mind would be some gangs actually have female chapters or factions if you will I think the one that jumps to mind for me is Latin Queens which would be a faction of the Almighty Latin King Nation it would be a female faction of the gang where they're very very active involved in drugs and violence and all the issues that the male counterparts might be involved in but then you have other groups possibly among the Crips and the Bloods and some others who see female associates as almost chattel property of the gang but not really a member with full voice so it's again important that you not over generalize and assume that all female gang associates are only chattel property or in the other extreme all female associates are full-time participants you need to look at it case by case gang by gang and look at the specific issues involved to see how involved the the females might be in the gang that you're looking at relatively few female gang members in BOP custody but the ones that we do have I think as I think as Victor mentioned where every but every bit as much involved in the criminal enterprise as their male counterparts okay thank you very much for that and we've got a call coming in from Minneapolis hello Minneapolis hello hi welcome hi Mark my question for the panel is how are the other districts dealing with gang information that is acquired through the pre-sentence process that gets stricken during the hard copy PSI Tom I want to jump in well I think the point I made earlier about speaking with the pre-sentence writer that's imperative if something was stricken from the record they can simply inform you that we identified or someone identified this person as a gang member you need to know that when you're supervising the case so you have to have communication between the two units okay for the panel go ahead say that even if something's stricken from the pre-sentence report if you have valid information you might want to communicate that directly to SIU in Sacramento by memo form that way they can use the information that is at hand okay anybody else want to jump in Minneapolis does that take care of your question that does great thank you very much for the call in thank you let me this question actually may dovetail facts question that we have and Craig this may go to you when gang information about defendants is in the PSI which then goes to BOP after sentencing does this information automatically also go to SIU yes generally if we have information from the PSI that they that we work into our intelligence database is shared with SIU they get updates to refresh their database in terms of faxing in the original PSI document not necessarily but what we'll do is take information from that and put it in our database and then share it with SIU so they essentially have the main elements of the intelligence in their database but not always the actual document itself yeah actually for Craig Endale faxed in what do you you foresee as far as Asian gangs merging nationally or within a district I guess we're trying to decide among ourselves which one should start I'll go ahead and start within the the Federal Bureau of Prisons we have seen a number of individual gangs come to us out of say New York area such as the flying dragons and green dragons and ghost shadows and whatever so far in our experience they've maintained their own identities now as always with any other group in population people with the most in common have a tendency to walk together so you might see Southeast Asians walking together and generally cooperating where you might see ghost shadows or green dragons or whatever getting along fairly well in custody maybe even better than they did in the community but so far our experience is that they haven't merged as such but they might tend to walk with other individuals most like themselves they want to add to that or I think what Craig is saying is correct we haven't really seen on the state levels where the Asian gangs they don't mix and drop their their name or whatever they they maintain their individuality and then they have treaties and they work together and it's basically what Craig is saying okay and I should be mentioning to folks that that where some of these faxes are coming from when they're identified and looks like that last one was from Minnesota so thanks Minnesota for faxing that in we've got a caller online from Atlanta Atlanta yes there's your city what's your question do the FIU and the gang task force have any publication okay the yes the national major gang task force if you call the number that's in the handout if you're a member of the task force there is a newsletter we'll put out officer safety bulletins security alerts but you need you have to be a member in order to to get those publications so that would be one resource for you as far as SIU I'll let Craig address that in terms of the Sacramento Intelligence Unit they they have several briefing materials that they publish on occasion and if they're in response to your needs they could certainly share portions of those with you that are in response to whatever your question might be but in terms of a standing publication that goes nationwide like every week every month not as such but what they're going to do is be sending you things relevant to your inquiries okay thanks for that let me take an opportunity to remind our audience we originally had planned this additional question and answer period for about 15 minutes and because of the volume of questions that we're getting in now we're going to go as close to three o'clock as we can so again hang in there and continue to phone in-facts to us