Slashdot Mirror
Tweets and Threats: Gangs Find New Home On the Net
cold fjord send this quote from the Associated Press:
"Social media has exploded among street gangs. ... They're turning to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to flaunt guns and wads of cash, threaten rivals, intimidate informants ... sell weapons, drugs — even plot murder. 'What's taking place online is what's taking place in the streets,' says David Pyrooz, an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University. ... 'The Internet does more for a gang's brand or a gang member's identity than word-of-mouth could ever do. It really gives the gang a wide platform to promote their reputations. ... On the crime-fighting side ... this activity ... is transforming how police and prosecutors pursue gangs. Along with traditional investigative techniques, police monitor gangs online. [A] Cincinnati police officer who trains other law enforcement about social media says by the time gang members appear in court, authorities have a dossier of their words and videos online that challenge how they want to portray themselves. 'If a guy goes in and says, "I'm a good person. I've never held a gun," we can say, "Look at what he puts out about himself on social media. Here he is with a gun."'"
Online footprints nearly reach fingerprint parity
And, since the criminals won't stop at just one crime, they can even turn around and cyber-bully the officer who took them down
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/alleged-gang-member-cyberbullies-cop-on-facebook.html
-- just another casual observation on why gang members can sometime gather notoriety for being as dumb as regular social media users.
Well, is it? The Mafia used all the tools of legitimate business such double-entry accounting techniques and computers long ago to run their businesses. Just because these thugs are less classy than the Mafia doesn't make them any less willing to use modern tools.
But my concerns go beyond how the gangs are using these tools to do their dirty business. In the past, courts have outlawed gangs and ordered gang members to not associate with each other. Are these restrictions, restrictions which are constitutionally iffy, going to soon extend into cyberspace? Yes, they are criminal organizations and those who join them criminals, but does that necessarily mean that these people can never use cyberspace?
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Not the sharpest tools in the shed are they.
These are gangstas. Gangstas are poor, urban, uneducated, semiliterate, illmannered young black men who were raised by bitchy, morbidly obese single mothers, who think being a street thug is cool, and have terrible marksmanship. They don't wear belts and let their pants hang off their flabby asses because their homies in prison aren't allowed to have belts and they think prison is something to celebrate. They get teardrop tattoos to mourn the homies who got shot but it doesn't occur to them that a better solution would be to stop killing each other. Oh they also think their gutter street-slang dialect that they mostly got from the media is a sign of great sophistication.
Of course these are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Hell, it's a miracle their daddy was smart enough to get Tab A into Slot B! That's what gangstas are good at of course: breeding. Every babymomma is a trophy! 'Sides that means more SNAP, WIC and EBT payments yo!
Gotta love the ivory tower, smug liberal Slashdotters that are so numerous lately. Never actually being in a real ghetto and seeing real gangbangers, they can comfortably sit on their cozy little Lazy Boy and bitch about me because they honestly don't know what the fuck they're talking about. The only young black men they know about are the doctors and lawyers on TV. But whatever you do, don't question your conditioning.
Street thugs don't strike me as particularly conscientious.
Anyone who ever had some fingers in the organized crime, on either side of the fence, knows that there are things to avoid. Being the guy to pick up the money from a money laundering deal is not where you want to be, since it's the point where the police can actually get busy. Likewise, being the guy selling the drugs on the street ain't the best position in the drug train since that's where you're easy to grab.
And it's unlikely that being the social media guy for gangs is a very popular position unless you're planning to be a vital part to the federal prison system and job security for wardens. But someone's gotta do it, and some poor idiot will be doing it. Just like there's always some poor idiot willing to sell drugs or be the money mule.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One thing I've wondered about of late is the reliability of evidence collected on the internet.
We've heard cases where someone was arrested because they admitted to something on Twitter, or had a picture of themselves doing something wrong on Facebook, and so on.
Absent any other evidence, is admission of guilt on the internet sufficient to convict someone in ideal circumstances?
Does anyone here with legal knowledge know the answer?
(I understand that you can get convicted of anything for any reason, and even for no reason, but I'm wondering about theory here. What's the situation, given an honest judge and correct representation?)
(And no, I'm not seeking legal advice on the internet since I'm not accused of a crime.)
Some examples of late: picture of teenager holding a beer (or holding a joint) leads to alcohol/drug charges, tweeting that you were driving drunk, and so on.
It can be but that wasn't the point of "affecting the severity of the sentence". Presumably, someone would have already have been convicted of a crime before being sentences. The person has an opportunity to say something to the court before the sentence is passed down. Often people will plead for leniency by downplaying their actions as un-ordinary or a special case or something and describe themselves as otherwise upstanding citizens who pose a benefit to society or having them serve time would create an extreme hardship for an innocent party. Most of the time, the lawyer will make this case but sometimes the convicted do it themselves. It goes to the character of the accused and a judge can sometimes impose less of a sentence if you persuade them you are a good person who made a mistake. This is also often the difference between a lawyer and a good lawyer- how well they can convince a judge of your good character can often get you by with a slap on the wrist compared to the maximum penalties.
What this allows is the police or the prosecution to step in afterwards and say, this is not true, see from his face book page, he is around guns all the time and talks about participating in criminal activities either he or people his associates participated in. Most of this would already be included or summarized in a pre sentencing investigation report but instead of asking your neighbors, you are telling the police directly what kind of person you are or want to be seen as.
No its called "impeaching the witness" and honestly? kinda hard to have a problem with it, really.
Imagine I'm brought in because the church down the street burns. they find me with a smell of gas and paint in my truck, people saw a truck matching mine in the area, etc. Now I go on the stand, under oath mind you, and say "Oh I never had a problem with that church, not a bit" are you gonna HONESTLY argue that nobody should be able to bring up the fact i was caught on video not a week before calling the members of that church every filthy name in the book and wishing it would burn down, really?
Because THAT is what these brain trusts are doing folks, they are broadcasting brags about their crimes in public and then are shocked! Shocked I say, that somebody actually notices they are posing with a bag of dope and an AK47? I got a friend in the state crime lab and believe me, not like the cops have to entrap these knuckle draggers, they ALL think they are fricking Tony Montana! I mean do you have ANY idea how many copies of the "scarface coke shot" he has seen? If it was less than 500 I'd be amazed. these bozos have this shit set to public, practically broadcast this shit to everyone that has ever said hi to them even because they WANT this shit to be seen, because they think they are "big pappa bad ass" that an do like some movie and just flip off the world.
So are we REALLY gonna bitch when cops bust somebody waving a pile of money in front of a mound of dope surrounded by guns and stolen shit and then tweeting that shit to the planet? Really? You might as well say the moron that gets busted at 3AM for driving 80 in a 30 with a half a pound and guns in his car should get a do over because "Well he was stoned, duh". I mean give me a break, if anything they should get an extra 5 years for being so fucking stupid, in the hopes of minimizing the risk to the gene pool!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This has been used on slow news days for years. 2012, 2011, and 2006, for example.
They get teardrop tattoos to mourn the homies who got shot
I was going to mod you down but then you had to go and make that comment about teardrop tattoos. Those mean you killed someone in prison and are not about their friends/hommies. Bangers pour out 40s and graffitti names to remember their homies.
What was that about liberals who don't know about the real world again?
PS Programs like SNAP, WIC and EBT generally reduce crime and you fools just cut it. Hope you have a good home security system...cause you might be meeting some of these fine upstanding citizens in the near future if you get your way too much longer...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
It's not stupidity that motivates them to show off AK's, pounds of weed and fuckloads of money. It's linked strongly to status, ego and hierarchy.
These are gangs remember. Their image is absolutely vital to their status. No-one is going to fear or respect you if you don't show off. If there's three or four big street gangs in a major city, you need to stand out and show yourself to be higher in the pack than the others.
Think of old school pimps and their massive chrome encrusted Impalas. Looking in from the outside, you might be tempted to say "you're fucking stupid, drawing attention to yourself like that". But that's the entire point. It's showing you, not someone else, is top dog around here. That you can protect your posessions, that you have enough status to drive such an outrageous car in a neighbourhood where it sticks out. Others don't touch it because they know who you are, you're that fucking important. No one is going to believe that you're shit if you drive a fifteen year old Saturn.
It's like a celebrity lifestyle in so much that it isn't enough just to be rich, you have to *show* that you are. Same with street gangs, it isn't enough to be bad ass, you have to demonstrate it. Gangs don't just work by their acts, they work by the way people percieve them.
They might be uneducated, but I wouldn't call them stupid.
"PS Programs like SNAP, WIC and EBT generally reduce crime and you fools just cut it."
It does and it doesn't. WIC, EBT and SNAP benefits single mothers with children and other disabled people. But very often those services often help nurture the "ghetto family". Basically an irresponsible woman has multiple children from multiple men. She finally has enough kids to live comfortably without a job and eventually a man (often one of her baby daddy's) sees the perfect opportunity: free living! Since the woman will settle for any man willing to put up with her and her kids the leech will happily move in to her welfare paid apartment and eat welfare paid meals. So he gets a nice free ride. And with so much free time on his hands he can no go out and mingle with the other respectable family men in his neighborhood. Often the man needs a little money on the side and knows damn well that work is for suckers. So he turns to dealing drugs and other criminal activities to give him some pocket money. He of course is still screwing more women on the side but he doesn't care because he has his sugar momma waiting at home. What happens when his sugar momma's welfare money dries up? Well duh! He has been screwing women the whole time and has a trail of kids. One of those women is bound to have a brood of young children he can leech off of. Plus he can wave around a bit of his ill gotten cash to lure her in. So he leaves the now former sugar momma for another and the cycle repeats.
Some people will find this racist. It isn't. Its a sad truth that no one wants to hear. So they plug their ears while shouting racism! And I have witnessed it first hand through a few families I know. Its sad when you see children growing up in a household where their siblings all have different men who aren't around and no one is actively encouraging them to break the cycle. Everyone is uneducated and frustrated in life because they have nothing to show for it. The men often only have their street cred to show off which keeps the cycle of violence going.
The solution is simple: education. Though this has to start at home with at least one caring parent. And often the parents are so ignorant and uncaring that they are useless.
A while back I went to a cannabis site to look at pics of grow ops. There were all kinds of photos taken with iPhones with the EXIF data still intact.
Meanwhile these guys were regularly accusing each other of 'narcing' about their grows. They didn't get that it wasn't someone jealous over how tall their plants were, but that they were bragging their GPS coordinates to the public with every photo attachment.
If it's not legal, don't take pictures of it.