As 14-year old Charez Jones is laid to final rest this weekend, I find myself wondering more and more about gang violence in the Twin Cities and across America.

Two 16-year olds and an 18-year old were arrested for the murder of Jones, all three members of the Tre Tre Crips gang. The shooter, Ken Dillard (16), opened fire on rival Taliban gang members who were a block away, and sadly Jones got caught in the crossfire and was killed when a stray bullet struck her in the head. Jones wasn’t involved in the gang activity. She was just an innocent bystander who was at a birthday party in the neighborhood.

But the story gets even worse. Apparently these three Tre Tre Crips gang members were trying to gain revenge for the shooting of another gang member, and tried to gain access to the birthday party. Since everybody entering the party were being patted down for weapons, the three left. When the rival gang members left the party, they were confronted by Dillard and the other two, who told them to “take off” and then opened fire after them. The Taliban members grabbed a shotgun that was stashed in a near by yard and opened fire in return.

A few days later, another 18-year old gang member, a cousin of Charez Jones, shot a Tre Tre Crips gang member in the foot in retaliation for the murder.

I wish I could say that this sort of thing was uncommon, but it’s not. In fact, not only is it becoming a regular thing these days, it’s becoming more prevalent. I don’t think a week goes by these days where there isn’t one or more articles regarding gang violence in the Twin Cities… And in the bigger picture of big city violence, the Twin Cities in probably one of the tamest areas for gang violence. Yet, just look at the Minneapolis shot spotter maps. You wouldn’t think that there would be so many shots fired in the city proper, so it’s a bit shocking to check out the maps. It reminds me of something you would expect to see in Baghdad.

So, bombings and mortar attacks aside, what’s really the difference between what’s going on in Baghdad and what’s going on in urban (and now increasing in rural areas as covered in this article) America?

If you take politics out of the picture and look at gang violence as a form of non-political terrorism, the picture doesn’t look that much different than the political terrorism seen in Iraq. According to the National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, non-political terrorism is defined as:

“Terrorism that is not aimed at political purposes but which exhibits ‘conscious design to create and maintain high degree of fear for coercive purposes, but the end is individual or collective gain rather than the achievement of a political objective.’”

I don’t often want to give gangs enough credit to place them in the same category as terrorists, but the overall effect is all too similar. After all, gang activity and violence certainly works to create and maintain high degree of fear for coercive purposes and the goal of gang activity is most certainly to achieve some sort of individual or collective objective. So with that in mind, what’s the difference between gang violence and terroristic violence in a community? Even though the communities are half a world away, the outcome is the same. Violence. Death. Disorder. Fear. Power.

Now, I don’t necessarily advocate mobilizing the National Guard to come and start performing counter-terrorism operations in Minneapolis, but I do think that gang activity needs to be handled differently than it currently is. The liberal attitude that these “youth groups” are people who have been victimized by society or the economy and need to be rehabilitated rather than punished is a bunch of crap. It’s no different than saying that terrorist jihadists in Iraq are victims of society, yet the reaction and opinion as to how they should be handled is different. But why? Is it because gang members are Americans in America? If these same people were running around Baghdad and acting the same way, would people’s opinions to response be different? I bet it would.

So, short of authorizing a militaristic campaign against gang activity, what else can be done?

What about treating gang members like we treat domestic terrorists? Severe punishment works a whole lot better than lenient “rehabilitation-based” punishment. Sending these people to a standard prison where their gang activity can continue and grow is probably not the best punishment, especially when they have the possibility of returning to the streets. So what about severe confinement? Or how about a more liberal use of the death penalty for gang related murders? After all, most violent gang members show just as much (if not more) disrespect for human life as terrorists. So why not move violent gang activity to federal jurisdiction and open it up to the death penalty?

Part of the problem is deterrence. The current justice system has become all together too lenient and liberal to act as an effective deterrent to crime. Individual crime is hard enough to deal, but collective crime - such as that seen with gang activity - needs something much more severe to help deter the violence. Unlike most individual crime, gang activity often has some sort of ideological motivation behind it, which makes it more similar to terrorism than anything else.

So how do you deal with ideological motivations? Swift and severe punishment. Terrorists worldwide often find their swift and severe punishment in the form of military action. Domestically, things work differently, but shouldn’t be less swift or severe. To combat ideology, you need to break it. To break a gang, you need to remove its motivation. If gang members were treated as terrorists and punished severely, the likelihood of new people thinking it’s a good idea to get involved drops. Granted, breaking religious ideology (such as that in Iraq) is different than break territorial or drug-related ideology such as that seen in gangs, but the principle is the same. You have to make their violent activities not worth their while. Hell, approach gang activity the same way that Israel deals with terrorist activity. If houses or neighborhoods are known havens or hot spots, then get rid of them. Roll in with guns and bulldozers and level the area.

The formula should be simple. Get rid of the haven spots. Remove the perpetrators. Respond swiftly and severely to activity.

Yet, this isn’t what happens. We have a need to reign in this problem, yet we’re confronted by a justice system that is being overrun with liberalism. Until these people allow for proper actions in response to crime, the problem will continue to grow. The “feel-good” mentality just allows this sort of thing to fester. Assuming that these people are good people at heart and that they can be rehabilitated into contributing members of society is an absolute pipe dream. Most of these people are animals with little regard for human life. These are not the kind of people that can be fixed. Prison just makes them harder.
Reaction needs to be adequate to the action.