"They had the same mentality I had: Get rich or die tryin'" Crew member Eugene Rhodes.They dynamics of open source conflict continue to show up in the US. In Milwaukee, gangs and syndicates have been replaced by ad hoc "crime crews" that form for a spree of violence/crime and then disband -- a variant on the ad hoc organizations formed for phishing and IED attacks. Derrick Nunnally at the The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a recap of their experience with crews:
The article also contains a lengthy description of the birth and death of a single crew. Worth the read.Big gangs have a shadow of their former influence here, but they have been replaced by small, loosely organized bands of young men who commit strings of violent offenses before breaking up, or ending up behind bars. Their unpredictability has come to confound even veteran street cops and prosecutors who despite years of studying street-crime patterns are suddenly behind the times.
"They are the least predictable; they're the toughest to break up because they can be so spontaneous," said Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who led the county's gun-crimes prosecutions for six years and has considered a specialized prosecution team to go after crews. "They would really require the most resources to get rid of. . . .The damage just one crew like that can do is significant."