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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 11:15 pm
Time: 11:15 pm
Results for transnational crime group
1 results foundAuthor: New Jersey Commission of Investigation Title: MS-13 Summary: Introduction Since its founding on the streets of Los Angeles three decades ago, La Mara Salvatrucha, commonly referred to as MS-13, has spread across the Americas and has seeded members in countries as distant as France, Egypt and Australia. It has grown, too, in the public imagination. The gang’s documented atrocities and penchant for butchery stoke fears and headlines. In October, the Justice Department declared MS-13 a graver threat than any other transnational crime group, including the cartels that have flooded the United States with cheap, potent heroin, contributing to an unprecedented spike in overdose deaths. This report, in keeping with the State Commission of Investigation’s mandate to examine organized crime in all its forms and to report on matters of public safety, offers an assessment of the gang’s scope in New Jersey and its impact on residents. The findings are drawn from interviews with federal, state, county and municipal law enforcement officials, as well as from public documents, intelligence and indictments. The Commission also participated in law enforcement gang summits across the state. The examination found that MS-13 remains a persistent threat in New Jersey, preying primarily on immigrant communities through extortion of businesses, robbery and street-level drug sales. The gang’s ceaseless thirst to command respect through fear, its ideology of advancing in rank by means of violence and its rivalry with other groups, chiefly the 18th Street gang, mean that murder is always just a spark away. Moreover, the Commission found that a decade-long effort by MS-13 leaders in El Salvador to exert greater control over U.S.-based cliques, or sets, has fully taken root. Once disorganized and semi-autonomous, particularly on the East Coast, these cliques now take orders from El Salvador, seek permission from El Salvador for killings and pay tribute by wiring cash to leaders in the Central American nation. Cooperation among cliques also has flowered within the United States. The Commission found evidence that members of different cliques share weapons, shelter suspects and order up assassins for sanctioned hits. New Jersey has played no small role in this movement, with prominent leaders from Long Branch and Hudson County directing operations along the East Coast. One of those leaders, arrested earlier this year and now awaiting trial in Nassau County, N.Y., had been working to build a more robust drug-distribution network and had personally signed off on planned killings in Maryland and New Jersey, prosecutors allege. The other leader, deported and jailed in El Salvador, used a smuggled cell phone to order that a North Bergen restaurant be shot up because the owner had stopped paying for “protection.” That same leader sanctioned the 2015 execution of a suspected rival gang member in West New York. At the same time, law enforcement officials told the Commission that visible MS-13 activity in New Jersey has waned considerably in the past three years, the result of aggressive prosecutions at the state and federal levels and a close partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Dozens of MS-13 members now sit in prison for crimes that include racketeering, conspiracy and murder. In several communities, law enforcement officials said MS-13, despite its outsized reputation, is less of a concern than other nationally recognized gangs, such as the Bloods and the Crips, and violent neighborhood-based gangs composed mainly of teens. It is a fraught proposition for any investigative agency to declare that a criminal group has been subdued, and the Commission does not do so here. Just as La Cosa Nostra replenishes its ranks, MS-13 continues to recruit new members in our schools and on our streets, whether through enticements, a sense of family or coercion. In addition, some who were members of MS-13 in their native countries cross illegally into the United States, establishing ties with cliques here. Authorities suspect, too, that immigrant communities, fearful of cooperation with police because of the risk of retaliation or deportation, continue to be quietly victimized. Law enforcement estimates that more than 700 MS-13 members are scattered throughout the State, from Union City to Morristown, Trenton to Red Bank, Lindenwold to Lakewood. While an integrated, proactive policing strategy appears to have muted the gang’s more violent activities, no one in law enforcement believes the threat has been eradicated. In the following pages, the Commission outlines the gang’s origins, expansion, structure and activities. The report also highlights approaches law enforcement officials have used to tamp down violence and to prevent vulnerable teens from bolstering MS-13’s ranks. Details: Trenton, New Jersey: State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation, 2018. 17p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 16, 2019 at: https://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/MS-13report.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://www.state.nj.us/sci/index.shtm Shelf Number: 154190 Keywords: 18th Street Gang Central America Drug Dealers El Salvador Gangs Immigrant Communities La Mara Salvatrucha MS-13 New Jersey Organized Crime Public Safety State Commission of Investigation Transnational Crime Group |