Iraq : Street Gangs are being signed up

In the 70's there was aclub called Rotters in Manchester. It's owner demanded that no-one could enter who had visible tattoos. It was a door policy that caused trouble .. but only outside, not inside.

The US Army has a policy on tatoos, but so desperate are they to recruit that some laxity and fearsome tattoed gang members has been allowed to creep in. Jeffrey Stoleson, an Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq is a correctional officer and co-founder of the gang interdiction team at a Wisconsin maximum-security prison.He's an expert on gang tattos in the undergroung drug and gun culture on the streets and in the prisons.You can get a book from Amazon about these tattoos Gangs And Their Tattoos : Identifying Gangbangers On The Street And In Prison (Paperback) here

Indeed it is the basis of much academic study in California as sociologists get their thrills by mixing with the Crips and the Demon Kings.Stoleson told the Chicago Sun Times of his Iraq experiences and they have lots of pictures.

In a year in Iraq Stoleson has assembled a large collection of photos of "tagged" armored vehicles, concrete barricades and bathroom wallswalls, and spoken to over 1500 gang members.
Scott Barfield, a Defense Department gang detective at Fort Lewis in Washington state says "Army recruiters eager to meet their goals have been overlooking applicants' gang tattoos and getting waivers for criminal backgrounds.

"We're lowering our standards," Barfield said.

"A friend of mine is a recruiter," he said. "They are being told less than five tattoos is not an issue. More than five, you do a waiver saying it's not gang-related. You'll see soldiers with a six-pointed star with GD [Gangster Disciples] on the right forearm."

Fort Lewis offers free tattoo removal, but few if any soldiers with gang tattoos have taken advantage of the service, Barfield said.

The Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and Vice Lords were born decades ago in Chicago's most violent neighborhoods. There is concern that Army life will and training will make them deadly urban warriors when they return to civilian life and if some are using their access to military equipment to supply gangs at home.

Stoleson said he has spotted soldiers in Iraq with tattoos signifying their allegiance to the Vice Lords and the Simon City Royals, another street gang spawned in Chicago.

Barfield said most of the gang members he has identified are black and Latino. He has linked white soldiers to racist groups such as the Aryan Nations.

The Gangster Disciples are the most worrisome street gang at Fort Lewis because they are the most organized, Barfield said, he says gangs are encouraging their members to join the military to learn urban warfare techniques they can teach when they go back to their neighborhoods.

"Gang members are telling us in the interviews that their gang is putting them in," he said.

He pointed to the case of Marine Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, (see pic with his M16) a suspected Norteno gang member who shot two officers with a rifle outside a liquor store in Ceres, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2005, before police returned fire and killed him. One officer died, and the other was wounded by the 19-year-old Raya, who was high on cocaine. Raya had spent seven months in Iraq and been involved in the Fallujah sacking before returning to Camp Pendleton near San Diego.Go here for the full story and here.

"Yesterday, he showed up in Ceres with an SKS assault rifle. He had the shootout all planned out. He knew what he was going to do. He would stage a situation where the cops will respond and he will ambush them with the military precision he learned so well in the US Marine Corps. A security video camera caught most of the action. We have provided a link to the video below so the reader can see for themselves."

A Fort Bragg soldier -- a member of the Insane Gangster Crips -- is charged with a gang-related robbery in Fayetteville that ended in the slaying of a Korean store owner in November, was a veteran of the elite 82nd Airborne based at Fort Bragg.

My father used to tell me, with what truth I am uncertain, that the Scots regiments in WWII recruited from the street gangs of the Gorbals in Glasgow and sent them into the front line - they took no prisoners.