Gang Violence in Chico, CA

Thanks go to Harold for this one….

Lets see if we can get back on topic of Gang violence in Chico, we need too!

(some points by myself, and a lot of this from prior news reporting)

CHICO, Calif. – 5/2012 – There are more than 1,200 documented gang members in the city and only one detective dedicated to tracking them.

In 2011, gang crimes were up 64% from 2010, and this year the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

With budget cuts at the city, the gang unit was cut down to one detective (Liberal Majority in Rule)

It’s a lot to handle and what happens is there is just not as much suppression that goes on as it pertains to criminal street gangs, Said the only Gang Unit Detective.

One man to track the 9 active gangs in Butte County; however It is policy for the police department to never send an officer out alone, so the single detective gets two other officers, a Sergeant and Detective in investigating Street Crimes, after they have occurred.

Operations are spread thin. The ONE (and only) officers goal is to try and keep a lid on gang activity to take place, but there are far too many gang members to put a stop on it completely

This ONE officer also relies heavily on the public; Chico PD want and NEED people to report any suspicious activity they see in their neighborhood.

Everyday new generations of gang members are being raised in the lifestyle,

4/2014
With 6 gang related murders between 2008 and 2011, Chico still has a” head in the sand” attitude toward gang violence by the public at large.

In one case, an innocent bystander was shot because of gang violence” as reported by a Chico Officer.

The shooting occurred at Second and Broadway streets on a Friday night, a time when many people are downtown

Gang violence happens all over Chico, “These guys do not care about random acts of violence, and they certainly don’t care about some innocent person getting stuck in the crossfire,” Some gangs will purposefully go to downtown Chico on the weekends and start fights with people so they can assault them.

Chico currently (2014) still has about 1,150 documented gang members

High concentrations of gang members exist in the neighborhoods in both the south and north end of Chico. Any gang goal is to recruit as many gang members as possible by doing that, they are creating soldiers to further their criminal enterprise, and they are very good at recruiting.”

There is a major problem Chico PD has in fighting the problem; and the number of documented gang members in Chico would be much higher if it was easier to identify them,
Lawfully identifying and documenting a gang member is difficult because of the ‘Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act’, a California penal code of 1988 that defines (now possibly old and outdated, and well known to Gang members) what a street gang is, the goal of the law was to prevent law enforcement from being able to arbitrarily accuse someone of being a gang member.

Gang members can also be identified if the individual was reported to the police by a reliable source, like a probation officer.

In 2014, the Chico Police gang unit was reinstated in June after being disbanded for almost a year.

Sadly, a major problem in solving Chico’s gang problem, is the public seems to ignore helping the police because they refuse to admit there is a gang problem.

“If you ignore the signs — if you ignore what’s going on — “The fact is that the more you ignore it, the bigger chance it has to grow”

The public should be more aware of how sophisticated the gangs in Chico, and they need to understand they need to get involved in curtailing it!