via Wikimedia
.jpg){kind=link}
You don’t have to be in a gang to be swept up in the arrests of gang members. Police often arrest people they think are associated with or even just look like gang members to them. The way they operate probably isn’t what you’d imagine.
For instance, gang databases like the ones used by police in New York and Chicago have overwhelmingly targeted Black people. In New York, Black youth made up MORE than half the database, which made sweeping generalizations about what constitutes a gang member.
Chicago’s gang database was so controversial for its backwardness and racism it was terminated. Hundreds in the database weren’t even alive! It had tons of people listed as “unknown” and “null” members of gangs. It may seem odd, but it can play out in the worst of ways.
In 2016, NYPD conducted the largest gang sweep in history and charged a bunch of people with conspiracy. Now years later, the Intercept found: “More than half of the 120 indicted in the ‘largest gang takedown’ in New York City history were never actually alleged by prosecutors to be gang members at all.”
In Mississippi, they have a gang law and plenty of white people in gangs, but ONLY Black people were arrested, according to Jackson Free Press findings from 2018.
For many police across the country, it seems that being in a gang has more to do with being Black than crime.