Fighting Street Gangs With Military Counter-Insurgency Software

An anonymous reader writes "After every major war, technology developed for a conflict gets applied to civilian life. The BBC recently reported that Army researchers have adapted advanced social network analysis software used for counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan to help law enforcement analyze the behavior of street gangs. With the growing problem of gang violence in major U.S. cities, this may provide a fresh perspective. 'Orca can figure out the likely affiliations of individuals who will not admit to being members of any specific gang, as well as the sub-structure of gangs – the gang ecosystem – and the identities of those who tend to dictate the behaviour of others. ... Having some knowledge of the links and affiliations between different gangs can highlight dangers that call for more focused policing. If a gang perpetrates some violent action on a rival gang, police will often monitor the rival gang more closely because of the likelihood of retaliation. But gangs know this, and so the rivals might instead ask an allied gang to carry out a reprisal. Understanding such alliances helps the police stay a step ahead.' The question is: will it work?"

Comments

Or we could just...

[rsilvergun]

give them jobs, families and a hope for the future instead of absolute poverty and a 'nothing to lose' life style. But turning military tactics against a sizable portion of our populace works too I guess.

Re:Or we could just...

[divisionbyzero]

give them jobs

Give them???? How many trillions of dollars have been transfered from the workers to the non-workers, and how effective has it actually been?

Besides, why work mowing grass and digging ditches (what else are they qualified for, given their piss poor grades in their piss poor schools) when (a) that's "Mexican work", and (b) you can make more by selling drugs and living off the dole?

Well, I'm glad we got the two most worn-out stereotypes out of the way so quickly. Now maybe we can have a useful conversation. How about legalizing or decriminalizing those things sold on a black market removing the financial incentives? How about early intervention through more funding for pre-schools in urban areas to provide the structure the kids' parents cannot? Or about a million other things that would be more effective than "hand-outs" or "policing the lazy".

Re:Or we could just...

[rsilvergun]

And plenty have died horrible deaths in thresher machines. A few outliers doesn't make the average. Most of them live life slaves with no hope for advancement. We remember the ones that made it big, we occasionally read about the ones who were cut to pieces, but we ignore the everyday misery the bulk live in.

Christ, just look up on google what working in a meat packing plant is like. Or look up that article that says a 'temp' agency is America's second largest employer (Walmart's first). You can fall back on your nonsensical capitalism all you want. Reality doesn't work that way. That's just not what happens in the real world. The real world is a horrible place where everything is stacked against all but a lucky few, who use their privileges to the detriment of the rest of us.

Re:Or we could just...

[Samantha Wright]

Lazy is not just one racial or ethnic group, it's every racial or ethnic group: the lazy rich whites steal money from the lazy black and Native American poor, while the lazy Chinese steal inventions and secrets and destroy the environment, and the lazy Indians and Hispanics steal jobs instead of fixing their own countries, and the lazy Africans accept aid instead of doing the same. "Lazy" is the ultimate, omni-purpose slur; it even transcends boundaries of race and nationality: lazy men expect the world on a platter from lazy women who can't compete on their own merits; lazy youngsters can't land the jobs that the lazy boomers who selfishly destroyed the economy demand they get; lazy atheists, Christians, and Muslims parrot rhetoric they don't really understand while making broad moral declarations they don't really adhere to.

So, y'know. Take your pick.

Re:Or we could just...

[aaaaaaargh!]

The USA is provably the most injust industrialized country of the world, and its getting worse all the time. On average, an employer used to get a 30 times higher salary than an employee in the 50s, nowadays he gets a 300 times higher salary. The USA is the only modern industrialized country in the world without legally guaranteed vacation - 25% of all Americans have not a single day of paid vacation per year. The top 1% of US households in terms of income own 35.4% of all privately owned wealth (in 2010). You have - before / without Obamacare - one of the most expensive health systems in the world, yet it doesn't even cover the whole population. Your Gini index is 0.49 - only select countries in Africa, parts of South America , and China have a worse Gini index. The list could go on and on. At the same time the US is the 15th richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita (according to the CIA world fact book), so the country is not poor at all.

Sorry if these facts annoy you, that's not my intention. I'm just mentioning them in orer to illustrate that there might be a social problem in your country. Of course, you could also just ignore it and explain it away as your politicians apparently prefer. But there is a good chance that one day in the more distant future the social justice problem will bite you in the ass.

Better question

[girlintraining]

The question is: will it work?

First; No. Technology doesn't fix social problems, it changes them. Take away guns and people use knives. Take away knives and they use big rocks. And so on. It's the same with any technology, for any social behavior. You can't fix relationships with technology, and fundamentally, all social problems can be expressed in relational pairings.

That said, the better question is -- are we willing to allow the government to change its relationship with us, the citizens, and if so, what will be the new boundaries for such a change? There must be things that are in and out of bounds -- and there needs to be more discussion than is happening now. Otherwise, we're going to wakeup one day and find that we're all wearing the Emperor's clothes, not just with the government, but with each other as well!

Re:it could be stopped

[sabri]

when gang members are identified, eliminate them. Simple and fully effective. let their worthless parents cry about how they were turning their life around blah blah blah.

I don't think you fully understand the problems of gangs. In some neighborhoods, young kids almost have to join a gang in order not to become a victim. It is a matter of becoming a predator vs prey, and those youngsters don't always have the world view that adults have to distinguish right from wrong in that situation, and the potential impact on their future.

Equally effective and simple would be to isolate these folks by taking them out of that situation. Move them to some flyover state in the middle of nowhere, where they can be drilled in a youth detention center. Not as a punishment, but as a form of education.

While it would be unfair towards the parents who were unable to raise their kids, I'm sure they would prefer to have the state take care of them, rather than execute them. Not to mention the cost of the death penalty, or difficulties in proving gang affiliation.

one small problem

[jfruh]

With the growing problem of gang violence in major U.S. cities...

This is a friendly reminder that violent crime in the U.S. has dropped every year for the past ten years, and in fact we're at the end of a fairly sustained 20-year drop in crime.

Re:one small problem

[cold fjord]

The 2nd amendment is because we didn't have a standing military at the time,

That is false two respect. First, the US Army as a force in being predates the Constitution, which is where the 2nd Amendment is found.

The U.S. Army as a permanent institution began on 3 June 1784, when the Confederation Congress approved a resolution to establish a regiment of 700 officers and men. Intended as a force to assert federal authority in the Ohio River Valley, the regiment deployed at a string of posts along the Ohio where it functioned as a frontier constabulary during the last years of the Articles of Confederation era.

Congress adopted this tiny force after the reorganization of the government under the Constitution in 1789. Responding to the outbreak of Indian war in the Old Northwest—and especially to St. Clair's defeat in 1791, the worst setback at Indian hands in the army's history—the government expanded the military establishment to over 5,000 in 1792. Organized as the “American Legion” and commanded by Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne, the army defeated the northwestern tribes at Fallen Timbers in 1794. During the same year, in response to European threats, the government launched a program of seacoast fortifications and added a corps of artillerists and engineers to build and man them. -- more

Second, the 2nd Amendment rights were not intended to be time limited.

II. A Permanent Right

Some people suggest the justification clause provides a built-in expiration date for the right. So long as a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state (or so long as the right to keep and bear arms contributes to a well-regulated militia, or so long as the militia is in fact well-regulated), the argument goes, the people have a right to keep and bear arms; but once the circumstances change and the necessity disappears, so does the right. 12

This reading seems at odds with the text: The Amendment doesn't say "so long as a militia is necessary"; it says "being necessary." Such a locution usually means the speaker is giving a justification for his command, not limiting its duration. 13 If anything, it might require the courts to operate on the assumption that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, since that's what the justification clause asserts. 14

--------

Having those firearms at that time served a legitimate need.

They still do. Besides, whether you recognize it or not, if you are an American man you have almost certainly been a part of the militia.

Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes

-STATUTE-
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

--------

Nice to see that you're pretty much completely ignorant of the reasons behind the 2nd amendment.

If I have more to learn I don't think you have anything to teach. What you "know" about the matter seems to be wrong.

Very effective

[rsilvergun]

I know you're trolling, but hey, the nonsense you spew is in the backs of people's minds for real. It's a 'Narrative'. A falsehood told to workers to make us fight amongst ourselves while the 1% laugh all the way to the bank with our time and money.

Start by googling the phrase 'working poor'. Then try to get on food stamps if you earn any amount over the poverty line. If you're single, try to get free health care. Won't happen.

And the meat packing plants are happy to hire you. Oh wait, you're a citizen? You can sue us if our dull knifes cause you to lose a finger? You want a steady food supply and health care for your kids? $4/hr isn't enough? 60 hours a week is a bit much? You want overtime? Sorry, you're just not what we're looking for.

Ironic, because this arose from police tactics

[HighOrbit]

One of the lessons learned by the military in Iraq was that investigation and interrogation sometimes trumps raw muscle. So the intelligence teams started studying police procedures and thinking like police investigators to establish who was linked to who (in Iraq its usually cousins/tribesmen or people from the same village). They also studied how the French conducted the Battle of Algiers (which the French won despite losing the overall war in Algeria). The French had discovered that figuring out who specifically was running an operation and kicking down his one door was far more effective than randomly kicking down 100 doors . So the French started extensively interrogating (unfortunately with torture) prisoners to figure out who were members of different cells. The French started keeping books of rap-sheets, family trees, organization charts, and mug shots of all suspected insurgents in the city. Once they had a good grasp on a cell's organization, then they merely had to pick them up. The US military learned some of these lessons. For example, if they found finger prints on IED fragments, and the prints matched a guy from the town of Ramadi, then the first place to look for him would be the local house of his cousin who was also originally from Ramadi.

Re:it could be stopped

[mjwx]

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?!

You mother fucking McCarthyist. Gods damn. Do I have to spell this shit out for you?!

I 100% agree with you. But the GP did unwittingly point out that a lot of kids join gangs to prevent themselves from being victims of gangs.

But to say the rest of his post was absolutely retarded is an insult to every genuine window licker throughout the entire world.

All detention centres will do is take them out of one gang and put them into another gang in another place (it would probably make them worse, teach them discipline, motivation and an absolute hatred of authority... That always works right, guys, right?).

If you want to stop gang violence then you need to look at why kids are joining gangs and target the causes, not simply target them once they've joined... Hey kind of like dealing with terrorists.

Re:Pigeonholing people?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As our testing in Afghanistan and Pakistan has demonstrated, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs; but you can break a fuckton of eggs without making an omelette...