The Importance of Networking...And a Note about G.R.E.A.T.
Networking, prevention of gangs focus of summit
By Daniel Sillimand
silliman@news-daily.com
Clayton News Daily
Law enforcement officers from Clayton, Fayette and Spalding counties sat around a table in Atlanta, eating lunch and talking. In the room around them, hundreds of other officers, educators and experts sat around other tables having the same conversation — one centered around how to fight gang-related crime, how to prevent children from joining gangs and how to work together.
“Anytime we can [we] get together and network,” said Clayton County Police Lt. Mark Thompson. “That’s essentially what we try to do here.”
The United States Department of Justice hosted the second annual Gang Prevention Summit this week, bringing together agencies and officers from across metro Atlanta to discuss their work and work on gang prevention.
“Today’s gang prevention summit shows that law enforcement understands that we cannot solve the gang problem alone,” U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said Tuesday.
Thompson and the other officers from the Southern Crescent spoke about the need to work together, and share intelligence on suspected gang members who move from county to county.
With increased pressure from the police in Clayton, gang members are being pushed south, Thompson told other officers. Thompson, who has been working on gang intelligence for eight years for the Clayton Police, offered to share some files on the Southside Mafia and the Hit Squad gangs, and offered to help other departments start gang databases.
“The south side of town is slow getting into it,” Thompson said. “Some counties in the south are trying to keep things low key.”
Police have to balance the need to focus attention on increasing gang problems, with the panic that attention can cause.
“One thing that will drive commerce into the ground is the mere mention of gangs,” Thompson said.
Riverdale Police Chief Thetus Knox told the audience gathered at the summit how the city of Riverdale ignored the problem for too long, until three children were killed in gang-related shootings.
“They knew they had a gang problem, but nothing was done about it,” Knox said.
Since 2005, she has been working with the city and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to do something proactive and preventative.
The Riverdale Police have used saturation patrols, aggressive curfew and truancy enforcement and education enforcement and the ATF’s education program to help reduce gang activity and bring crime down by 9 percent this year, Knox said.
In the spring of 2005, Riverdale began to work with the ATF’s Gang Resistance Education and Training program, working with elementary school students. The program, taught in classrooms by uniformed officers, trains students in setting goals, preventing violence, communicating, resisting peer pressure and resolving conflicts.
“What they’re hearing from officers in uniform, who are bonding with them, is that they are the future,” she said. “Just as they listen to rap, they’re listening to G.R.E.A.T.”
The program has been dramatically effective, Knox said, and will soon be taught in Riverdale’s middle schools and, she hopes, brought to schools throughout the county.
The county police have followed a similar policy, increasing the pressure on gang-related crimes like auto theft and burglary, but also adding positive interaction with children who aren’t involved in crime.
Thompson pointed to the effectiveness of the police’s recent efforts in both enforcement and encouragement. He mentioned the Burglary Suppression Task Force and the Armed Robbery Task Force, recently started by Interim Police Chief Jeff Turner, and the Summer Strike Team which put officers out in the parks and playgrounds, interacting with children over basketball and bicycles.
“We don’t want their only involvement to be when there’s crime scene tape and dead bodies,” Thompson said.
Nahmias said the annual summit encourages this proactive, two-pronged approach. The first summit focused on the scope of the gang problem in the Atlanta area, and strategies to fight back with arrests and convictions. The second summit was focused on prevention.
“What we also realized is that’s not going to stop the gang problem. By the time we arrest and convict them, it’s unlikely they’ll ever become fully productive members of society,” Nahmias said. “We rely on our partners in education, social organizations, juvenile justice and elsewhere to show young people that there are real and better alternatives to joining gangs.”
By Daniel Sillimand
silliman@news-daily.com
Clayton News Daily
Law enforcement officers from Clayton, Fayette and Spalding counties sat around a table in Atlanta, eating lunch and talking. In the room around them, hundreds of other officers, educators and experts sat around other tables having the same conversation — one centered around how to fight gang-related crime, how to prevent children from joining gangs and how to work together.
“Anytime we can [we] get together and network,” said Clayton County Police Lt. Mark Thompson. “That’s essentially what we try to do here.”
The United States Department of Justice hosted the second annual Gang Prevention Summit this week, bringing together agencies and officers from across metro Atlanta to discuss their work and work on gang prevention.
“Today’s gang prevention summit shows that law enforcement understands that we cannot solve the gang problem alone,” U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said Tuesday.
Thompson and the other officers from the Southern Crescent spoke about the need to work together, and share intelligence on suspected gang members who move from county to county.
With increased pressure from the police in Clayton, gang members are being pushed south, Thompson told other officers. Thompson, who has been working on gang intelligence for eight years for the Clayton Police, offered to share some files on the Southside Mafia and the Hit Squad gangs, and offered to help other departments start gang databases.
“The south side of town is slow getting into it,” Thompson said. “Some counties in the south are trying to keep things low key.”
Police have to balance the need to focus attention on increasing gang problems, with the panic that attention can cause.
“One thing that will drive commerce into the ground is the mere mention of gangs,” Thompson said.
Riverdale Police Chief Thetus Knox told the audience gathered at the summit how the city of Riverdale ignored the problem for too long, until three children were killed in gang-related shootings.
“They knew they had a gang problem, but nothing was done about it,” Knox said.
Since 2005, she has been working with the city and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to do something proactive and preventative.
The Riverdale Police have used saturation patrols, aggressive curfew and truancy enforcement and education enforcement and the ATF’s education program to help reduce gang activity and bring crime down by 9 percent this year, Knox said.
In the spring of 2005, Riverdale began to work with the ATF’s Gang Resistance Education and Training program, working with elementary school students. The program, taught in classrooms by uniformed officers, trains students in setting goals, preventing violence, communicating, resisting peer pressure and resolving conflicts.
“What they’re hearing from officers in uniform, who are bonding with them, is that they are the future,” she said. “Just as they listen to rap, they’re listening to G.R.E.A.T.”
The program has been dramatically effective, Knox said, and will soon be taught in Riverdale’s middle schools and, she hopes, brought to schools throughout the county.
The county police have followed a similar policy, increasing the pressure on gang-related crimes like auto theft and burglary, but also adding positive interaction with children who aren’t involved in crime.
Thompson pointed to the effectiveness of the police’s recent efforts in both enforcement and encouragement. He mentioned the Burglary Suppression Task Force and the Armed Robbery Task Force, recently started by Interim Police Chief Jeff Turner, and the Summer Strike Team which put officers out in the parks and playgrounds, interacting with children over basketball and bicycles.
“We don’t want their only involvement to be when there’s crime scene tape and dead bodies,” Thompson said.
Nahmias said the annual summit encourages this proactive, two-pronged approach. The first summit focused on the scope of the gang problem in the Atlanta area, and strategies to fight back with arrests and convictions. The second summit was focused on prevention.
“What we also realized is that’s not going to stop the gang problem. By the time we arrest and convict them, it’s unlikely they’ll ever become fully productive members of society,” Nahmias said. “We rely on our partners in education, social organizations, juvenile justice and elsewhere to show young people that there are real and better alternatives to joining gangs.”
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