imported post
I have a friend who is a PhD statistician living in NoVa, and about 7 years ago, while working for Fairfax County, she helped author the report on Gang Activity in NoVa. She's pretty much an expert on gang-related crime statistics in that region, and she told me then that although the really bad gangs like MS-13 were growing in VA, that the REAL problem was going to happen when they branched out and becme established in MD and WV.
She said they would become established in VA, but would remain mostly underground and keep to themselves, because the VA LEAs were on top of the problem, and the gangs knew that Virginia law-abiding residents were pretty heavily armed, and the gangs had no idea which house or which random yuppie walking down the street in VA might be packing at any given moment.
She said it would be a problem in WV (particularly the Eastern Panhandle) because their LEA's weren't even remotely prepared for it. But they would probaly maintain a low profile in that area, because of all the firearms owners in WV, and the high probablility that law-abiding citizens in WV wouldn't hesitate to defend themselves and their property. Tags for MS-13 were first identified by the Berkeley County Sheriffs department in Martinsburg in 2001.
But she said the problem in MD would be different, because it would devolve into turf wars with the older established gangs, and also the law-abiding citizenry was essentially disarmed and posed no threat against home invasions, muggings, and random acts of violence. And they would become increasingly bolder, because they knew they would almost never meet armed resistance from law-abiding MD residents, due to widespread governmental diarmament of the citizenry.
Unfortunately it looks like she was right...
Now she works for the GAO, so she's dealing with an entirely different level of organized criminals...
