In short, a significant number of kids are in gangs—but a small percentage of them are actually committing serious or violent crimes.

The study goes on to examine these kids' social networks to find out whether the old adage about "the company you keep" is true. Unsurprisingly, it found that a few "central actors" were committing most crimes—and contributing to delinquency in others.

Photo by Darrow montgomery

Read the letter after the jump.

Graham writes:

"Friends:

Police report to me there have been up to 8 different incidents since Sunday involving 2 well know gangs in the Shaw neighborhood.  As reported on this listserve and confirmed by police, these shots are being fired in the vicinity of 7^th and o and 8^th and S.  Up until Wednesday, no one was hit.  On Wednesday, a person was grazed on the side of his head.  He is hospitalized.  But he is also under arrest for possession of a large quantity of cocaine.

The feud between these two gangs has been going on for decades.  Most of the feuds between gangs in the District have been going on for a long time.  MPD and specialized gang units within MPD know who these guys are.  MPD works hard in making arrests.  But more needs to be done.  The violence needs to stop.

The feud between these particular groups, which happen to be based in two different Wards of the city, reinforces the argument I have repeatedly made.  We need a CITYWIDE strategy on gang intervention. Gang violence crosses ward and MPD District boundaries.  And so should our law enforcement efforts and intervention programs.

I have been at the forefront of fighting gang and crew violence for the entire 11 years on the Council.  I have sponsored bills for increased law enforcement powers and authored funding for targeted, community based intervention and prevention programs.  In 2003 I helped Chief Ramsey form the very successful Gang Intervention Partnership.  Over the last three years, I have authored approximately $2.5 million in funding to establish and sustain the Citywide Coordinating Council on Youth Violence Prevention (CCCYVP).

In June, Chairman Gray and Councilmember Mendelson joined me in presenting the Blueprint for Action: Responding to Gang and Crew Violence. The Council has already passed the first 2 recommendations of the Blueprint as part of the Omnibus Crime Bill.  The Mayor is required to form a working group of MPD officials, CCCYVP and key government agencies to coordinate targeted and sustained interventions of enforcement powers and prevention resources in areas where we have seen the most gang violence.

I am also convinced law enforcement officials need additional tools to target the most active and potentially violent gang members. On two different occasions in June, 2009 I fought for civil gang injunctions.  Mayor Fenty and Councilmembers Bowser, Catania, Evans and I understand how gang and crew members’ feuds not only endanger the lives of gang and crew members, but all of our lives.  We understand how gangs and crew member intimidate and sometimes claim to “own” certain blocks, recreation centers, corner stores, schools.  The Council voted down both bills.  We need to give the MPD Gang Fusion Unit the tools to put gang members on notice.

I am committed to doing all I can to make sure this violence stops.

Councilmember Jim Graham"

Police charged Troy Renard Thomas, 18, of the 3000 block of Third Street N.W. , with first-degree premeditated murder while armed of Ryan Randy Trotman.

Arrested in the Columbia Heights case was Robert Larry Brock, 28, of Beltsville in the shooting of Marcus Robertson on May 15. Brock was also charged with first-degree premeditated murder while armed.

The story, reported by Theola Labbé-DeBose, makes no mention that the two homicides, while apparently unrelated, are both allegedly tied to gang beefs going on in different neighborhoods.

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham told his constituents last month that Brock was targeted for the shooting in "gang beefs that have been ongoing since the murders in Dec/Jan.  Another young adult, Paul Jones, was shot and killed by LaFonte Carlton this past January on the 1300 block of Columbia.  Carlton is now facing two murder charges," Graham reported in a May 16 post to the MPD-3D Listserv.

Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, meanwhile, has said police are investigating Trotman's killing and another gun-related incident later that night as gang-related.

Trotman, 28, of the 7400 block of 7th Street, N.W., later died of his injuries. The name of the other victim, a woman who was shot in the leg, is being withheld because she witnessed the crime.

But a quick call the police didn't net anything new about whether the shooting and another incident a few blocks away the same night were part of a beef between rival gangs in the Petworth-Park View area.

“There are no updates” Officer Quintin Peterson in the police department’s Office of Public Affairs said this afternoon.

Today, the various crime bills are being debated as I write this item. You can read the complete and competing bills here. The Post has gathered up the pro and con surrounding the controversial proposal to take gangs or gang members to civil court. The Post writes:

The provision — drafted by the administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) — would allow authorities to target alleged gang members in civil proceedings. A prosecutor could obtain an injunction barring an alleged gang member from engaging in a range of activities, including such nuisance offenses as harassing passersby on the street.

Loose Lips is liveblogging the big crime bill debate. This afternoon, I talked to a veteran D.C. Police official who has vast experience with drug and gang cases. I wanted to know their thoughts on the crime bills and the civil-court provisions.

They basically thought the crime bill(s) were a waste of time.

Here are their thoughts:

"We got plenty of laws in place. Drug laws and gun laws. But it's a rotating door down at the courthouse. The youth system sucks in the city. You look at the history of these criminals, come on.

You need laws that the courts are going to pay attention to. Go down and sit in arraignment court and copy down names of people that walk out the same day and run their records.

The problem is not the mayor or anyone else. It's the court system. It's the judges in the courts. Sometimes you got to keep a criminal behind bars. If you got someone who sells drugs to a police officer—he should be in jail. He should be locked up.

[We] experience this on a daily basis. Especially our street tasforces.

Why do we need new civil charges? For harrassing people on the street, cops could charge criminals with disorderly conduct."

Here's an interesting but not really shocking D.C. crime fact: The District is home to about 130 criminal street gangs and smaller crews, whose members are involved in a disproportionate number of the city’s homicides, according to the report “Responding to Gang, Crew and Youth Violence in the District of Columbia.”

Gang members make up more than 60 percent of the city’s homicide suspects and four in every 10 of the victims, according to the report, commissioned by the D.C. Council and published by the Healthy Families/Thriving Communities Collaborative Council. It goes on to issue recommendation on how city officials, police and the community could do a better job of defusing youth violence and preventing teenagers from joining gangs.  You can find the full text here.

Even in these troubled economic times, some groups are thriving  – take organized gangs of shoplifters, for instance.

According to the National Retail Federation’s fifth annual Organized Retail Crime survey, nine out of ten retailers say they’ve been robbed by organized gangs in the last year. And, nearly three-quarters of the stores and restaurants surveyed say the collective thievery is on the rise.

Maybe they should follow Universal Gear’s example and get creative with the crime fighting. Last month, Universal’s owner posted surveillance video from a brazen spree at the 14^th Street clothing joint.

All the publicity from the YouTube posting has really taken a bite out of crime, says Kristopher Johnson, the store’s sales manager. Universal hasn’t had a single group-shoplifting incident since the visuals went online. On the other hand, the police presence at the store has gone way up, says Johnson. (It probably didn’t hurt that the Washington Post ran a Metro-front story about the video.) 

But Johnson doubts YouTube’s crime-fighting abilities over the long haul.

“It’s definitely not a long term solution. But for the last month or so, it’s worked for our store,” he says.

Yes. Gangs are scary. But D.C. has plenty of tools already on the books. The District does not need to go into civil court with these new crime-bill tools. The Feds have long used RICO to take gangs off street corners. They've been quite successful. RICO is scary, too. Gang leaders like Kevin Gray and Tommy Edelin have found that out. Death penalty cases are now part of D.C.

There are also already civil tools the city has used like nuisance property laws that can target crack houses and shut them down. The results have been mixed. Innocent families have been targeted based on flimsy evidence.

There are also plenty of stay-away orders issued every day in D.C. Superior Court. It's now almost automatic for drug-related defendants (dealers and users) to be given a stay-away order from the area in which they were busted. So I'm not sure that the proposed civil court weapons are necessary.

There are some great things in the crime bill particularly aimed at stalkers. But the gang stuff seems redundant and wrongheaded. These amount to quick fixes that aren't very imaginative. Gang laws are already on the books, police and residents just need to use them in consistent and just ways.

• In WaPo: The MPD has tied the death of 14-year-old Giovanni Sanchez to Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13).
• New Columbia Heights alludes to a new restaurant coming to 14th St.
• Now that the recession has reduced individual spending power, says Penn Quarter Living, is it finally acceptable for good people to buy those cheap Prada knockoffs at the metro kiosks?
• Word of new shopping options coming to Petworth, courtesy of Petworth News.
• Braveheart over at River East Idealist sounds a call to arms: "Let us not develop River East just for development's sake. Let's fix broken windows and everything they represent."
• And Now, Anacostia has some good news and some bad news: Verizon FIOS is coming to Anacostia, but it won't be fully in place for 9 years. (That's kind of like Georgia Ave. resident fantasizing about the supposed trolley system that's on its way.)
• Also in WaPo: Police confiscate cocks in Virginia.

Update: Asher Corson, Mary Cheh's communications director, writes in to clarify the FiOS deal: "The build out deadline is just that, a deadline, not a timeline.  What I mean to say: FiOS is more likely than not to be entirely built before the 9 year deadline."