Nashville's Operation Safer Streets Targets Hotbeds of Gang Activity

Anti-gang effort targeting familiar, as well as new gangs and areas

By Jared Allen
Nashville City Paper
July 12, 2006

While the Metro Police Department’s Operation Safer Streets is busy giving all of Nashville’s gang population a hard time, keeping their known gathering places in East and South Nashville under nearly constant surveillance, police are turning more attention to the more violent — and harder to find — Hispanic gangs.

Nashville’s Hispanic gangs — namely Sur-13 and the Salvadoran MS-13, whose members make their homes down Lafayette and Nolensville Roads — will take up arms against one another for no other reason than name identification, gang unit members said.

That is not true of the city’s black gangs, such as the Crips, Bloods and Gangster Disciples, who have a very low level of allegiance to their particular gang.

When Metro began breaking up many of the city’s public housing projects, they forced members of traditionally rival black gangs to learn to cohabitate in new environments, police explained.

As a result, the black gang members are less prone to strict gang-on-gang crime than Hispanic gangs.

“With the black gang members, these guys would be committing the same crimes they would be if they weren’t in gangs,” said Sgt. Gary Kemper, who heads up the weekend patrols.

For that reason, police have tried to gather as much intelligence on the Hispanic gangs as possible, seeing their higher level of organization and violence as more of a threat to city residents.But that has not been easy.

According to even the most productive sweeps, the number of Hispanic gang members either identified or arrested has been consistently lower than the number of black gang members.

Barely two months old, the Metro Police’s Operation Safer Streets is using weekday and larger weekend sweeps to shake down notorious gang hangouts, gather intelligence on gang-related activities, and make arrests whenever possible.

According to Lt. Mitch Fuhrer, a Specialized Investigation Division (SID) officer, each sweep builds upon the last one by incorporating new areas suspected to be hotbeds of gang activity. Those new areas have recently included more of the known Hispanic gathering areas.

The collaborative effort between precinct-based patrol officers, SID officers, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and U.S. Marshals is paying dividends, as local law enforcement officials have already made 26 felony and 187 misdemeanor arrests, and have made 39 drug and eight weapons seizures.