What Chicago gangs and Al-Qaeda have in common

Following the tragic death of Fenger High School student Derrion Albert in Chicago, the question on many people’s minds has been ”Why?” In my opinion, though, the more important question is “How?”

A story in today’s Chicago Tribune began to address that question by quoting Bob Storman, former press secretary for the NAACP:

In the 1990s we knew who ran the streets, we knew the shot-callers. Now we have renegade gangs. There is no discipline. They just do whatever they want to do.”

For people not familiar with Chicago gangs, what Storman’s statement means is that in the past, gangs were run like Al-Qaeda prior to 9/11: There was a clear chain of command, and subordinates (e.g., terrorists and terror “cells” around the world) did not act without permission from the top (bin Laden or his deputies). Click on the “Gang Structure” link on the left side of this page to get a better idea of how Chicago gangs worked in the 1990s. The Chicago Crime Commission released that diagram, along with information on gang clothes, symbols, and hand signs, to the public in 1996.

The Chicago Police Department presented this information to me and my Teach For America colleagues as we began teaching in fall 2001. During my two years at a high school on the city’s west side, gang activity was pretty straightforward. We had 3 or 4 active gangs at our school, and large areas around the neighborhood “belonged” to one gang or another. Fast forward to 2008… Upon returning to Chicago to teach at a high school on the south side, I found out from my principal that gangs in Chicago had changed quite a bit. In our neighborhood, for example, there was one gang. However, that gang had numerous factions–each comprised of adolescents from just a few city blocks–that fought with one another. As police who worked with our school explained, organizing a meeting among the factions and working out a cease fire was near impossible. Gangs were now smaller, flatter (i.e., less room between the bottom and the top of the hierarchy, if one existed), and more numerous. There were no longer a few “shot-callers” who controlled hundreds of people. This resulted in, as one officer at our school put it, “little kids running around with guns shooting each other over nothing.”

How had this happened? Perhaps unbelievably, it was due in part to good policework. The Chicago Police Department had been cracking down on gangs for years (examples can be found here and here), but when gangs see their leaders get locked up or come under investigation, their hierarchies take a hit. Over time, this leads to looser associations and less structure and discipline. Let’s consider a hypothetical example of how things would have worked 10 years ago. Members of Gang A might have disrespected Gang B by posting graffiti of their gang’s symbols on Gang B’s territory. Once the news got back to Gang B’s leaders, they would determine a “proportionate” response and members of their gang would carry it out. Over time, this might escalate and lead to a large fight or a drive-by shooting. However, the actions taken usually would be deliberate, with the consequences well thought-out. And at some point the two sides would come together–sometimes with a third-party mediator from the community–to arrange a cease-fire agreements and get things under control (think of the meeting of the Five Families after Sonny’s death in The Godfather). For an in-depth description of how this actually looked, I recommend Sudhir Venkatesh’s book, Gang Leader for a Day, which details his experiences while studying a gang in Chicago in the 1990s.

To continue the Al-Qaeda analogy, think of what happened after 9/11. Osama bin Laden went into hiding, many of  Al-Qaeda’s top-ranking officers were killed or captured, and the organization structure that existed on September 10, 2001 effectively was dismantled. But while the United States has not suffered another attack since then, the job of “hunting the terrorists” has become much harder. Small splinter groups of Al-Qaeda–most not affiliated with one another–have formed around the world; they make decisions quickly and independently. And consider the recent arrest of a terror suspect in Texas. This man was not operating with instructions from higher-ups in Al-Qaeda; his intentions were discovered as he chatted online with other individuals. But this actually may have made him more dangerous. In a discussion with undercover FBI agents, he explained, “I have decided to change the target. God willing, the strike will be certain and strong. It will shake the currently weak economy in the state and the American nation, because this bank is one of the largest banks in the city.” Notice his wording: “I have decided to change the target.”

Where does this leave us? Well, I certainly do not advocate reinstating gang leaders to their former positions of power. But we should take a deeper look at how gangs operate–specifically how smaller gangs (or gang factions) form in the absence of a larger hierarchical structure, and how their individual members make decisions. Understanding this may help us prevent future violence in our communities.