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Gang Members Utilize The Internet: Cyberbanging, Netbanging, Phone Banging, Text Flaming, MySpace, Rap Dissing, Message Post Bashing

Four stories below



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PPhotos by Rob Gallardo

The use of cell phones, MySpace, Soundclick, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket and other internet media and sites has proliferated in Hispanic youth gang culture. Threatening messages and other content can be construed as a terroristic threat. Non face-to-face communication has facilitated the exchange of disrespectful messages.





"MySpace gangsters who strike model poses, rap, dance, pimp the ladies and terrorize the neighborhood all at the same time. Hard to believe."



11/24/08 El Paso is the top U.S. city for text messaging according to consumer and media research firm Scarborough Research. Fifty-seven percent of cell phone subscribers age 18+ in El Paso text message, versus 48 percent of adult cellular subscribers nationally. Other leading markets for text messaging include Salt Lake City, Dallas and Memphis. Marketwatch






Symposium Offers Solutions to Violence: Discussion regarding gangster Internet use

By Jose L. Medina, Las Cruces Sun-News, N.M.

Jun. 12--LAS CRUCES -- Increasingly, gang members in southern New Mexico and El Paso are using the Internet as their venue for gang activity.

That was part of the information presented Wednesday during "Preventing Violence is Everyone's Business," an annual symposium at Las Cruces' Holy Cross Retreat Center, which covered topics ranging from gang activity to child abuse.

"The Internet is the newspaper of the street. Where once it was graffiti, now it's the Internet," Rob Gallardo, a gang intervention specialist, told the crowd.

He said gang members are using popular social networking Web sites like MySpace, Facebook and others, which have become venues for exchanging threats.

Some of the threats are in the form of videos or songs.

"So we get on the Internet, we post a disparaging song about him, and guess what?" Gallardo said. "He's not so happy about that."

Gallardo said some parents are largely unaware of these and other clear signs of gang involvement.

He added that text messages are also being used to send threats.

Gallardo also offered a profile of New Mexico gangs, which he said number 680 as of 2002, with a membership of almost 14,000.

"New Mexico gang members are rough and tough and not to be messed with," he said.

Earlier, Mickey Curtis, clinical director for Families and Youth, Inc. spoke about child abuse in New Mexico and Dona Ana County.

"The substance abuse issue has really driven child abuse reports up," Curtis said, responding, in part, to a question about the perception of child abuse cases escalating.

Curtis said there are different way to combat child abuse. A good method is offering support to services available to fight child abuse and tell others about the services.

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"Gang Members: Graffiti Out, Internet In"  KFOX-TV News Feature 8/30/07

Video
  story by Monica Balderrama

Gang members are using cell phones and the Internet to send messages to harass rival gang members.

Richard, a gang member who doesn't want his identity revealed, said it's becoming a burden.

"I've gotten texts, a lot, during the night. I'll gets texts saying they're going to hit up my house," said Richard.

He says it's constant.

"Yesterday, during the day, I got five different messages within 10 minutes telling me let's meet somewhere, just threats," he said.

Gang counselor Rob Gallardo said cell phones and the Internet have taken the place of graffiti. These venues give gang members the opportunity to send messages to rival members.

"They will also have a page with their enemies, they will cross out the names of their enemies, sometimes they will put the names in pink as a disrespect," said Gallardo.

Gang members even produce songs to insult other gang members and upload them to the web.

"Particular groups regularly exchange songs to each other and it's caused a war between them," said Gallardo.

For Richard, it's a war that feels it has no end.

 

KFOX -  TV www.kfoxtv.com
Original story at http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/14016979/detail.html 


01/30/08 Gangs Allegedly Use Pre-paid phones: Prepaid Phones May Be Harder To Get If Texas Senator Gets His Way, Angeeneh Adamian, KFOX-TV El Paso


"MySpace gangsters look Latinos look bad. Some of us actually have a life." YVETTE L.




 

Street gangs use Web sites to promote their agendas
Daniel Borunda  
El Paso Times    Friday, July 28, 2006

El Paso street gang members flash hand signs, boast and threaten rivals in one of more than a dozen personal Web sites related to local gangs and party crews.

The rise of "gangster" sites on the Internet is part of a national trend of personally-created Web pages, such as on the popular MySpace.com, gang investigators said.

"This is just another medium for gangs to express themselves," said Special Agent Andrea Simmons, spokeswoman for the FBI office in El Paso. "Traditionally, it's been (graffiti) on the side of a building. Now they have the ability to communicate their gang information in a much broader way."

Internet gang activity has become so widespread that it's known by the terms "net-banging" or "cyberbanging."

The Web sites are legal.

"The fact they are posting (photos with) gang signs or weapons doesn't make it illegal to post it," Simmons said.

The Web pages are being created nationally by individual gang members, said FBI Special Agent Robert Botsch, a member of the Safe Streets Gang Task Force in El Paso.

"The individual accounts often show guys standing around with their friends flashing gang signs, standing next to their girlfriends in bikinis or holding a weapon," Botsch said.

Sites are also often decorated with gang colors, marijuana leaves and photos with faces masked by bandannas.

There is also plenty of bravado.

One El Paso gang's site listed the crossed-out names of rival gangs that, for added insult, are written in pink.

Another Web site by a Socorro gang member identified only as "Joker" stated his gang, "Can't be denied porque we don't hide nada like the rest of them chavalas (girls) what we can't handle with words, locos we handle with balas (bullets)."

The Web offers gang members "a safe venue to flaunt their stuff," said Rob Gallardo, a gang prevention counselor with the OnRamp Youth Foundation of El Paso. Problems arise when Internet insults lead to real fights locally, he said.

Sgt. Reginald Moton of the El Paso Police Gang Unit said investigators started noticing local gang-related sites about two years ago. There are 478 active gangs in El Paso.

"My only concern is other people looking at them, kids who go into their Web sites. They are kids who are curious about gangs. It's a way of these guys recruiting them," Moton said.

Gallardo said the number of El Paso gang-related Web sites fluctuate as some are taken down -- likely after being discovered by parents, counselors or probation officers.

The El Paso Times, with the assistance of Gallardo, found 17 Web sites for El Paso gangs and party crews that included lists with members' nicknames, photos of teen party crews visiting Juarez nightclubs and blogged gang threats to tag rival turfs.

Gallardo cautioned Internet users should remember that anything posted online can be seen by anyone, including other gangs, police and employers.

The rise of gang activity on the Web is part of a generational change since the Internet boom began a decade ago, said Botsch of the FBI gang task force.

"Overall, the kids nowadays are cyber kids," he said. "They grew up with computers."


El Paso Times  www.elpasotimes.com

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"Online communication is increasingly becoming the marketplace for the criminal element," The Spokesman Review, April 20, 2008 (Red Orbit)

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Rodolfo - The young supposed gang member of today doesn't know that gang life is really about.








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