NWSCA
| Northwest Security Coordinators Online Newsletter |
Volume 10 Issue 2 - April 1999
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Support Law Enforcement’s Effort to Track Criminals
Annette Baldwin, West District
The State of Texas now has the dubious honor of ranking third in the
nation behind Illinois (Chicago) and California (Los Angles) in number
of gangs and gang members. Membership in gangs has long been tracked
by other states in statewide data bases. Texas currently has no such
provision in the state law for providing this crucial information to the
law enforcement community.
Gang members can strike anytime anywhere. They have been arrested
in all four Districts of the Sheriff’s Department. They are found
in modest and affluent neighborhoods. Gangs and their individual
members are responsible for some very sophisticated crimes as well as horrendously
violent actions.
Our Legislators have begun to address this problem in the 1999 Session.
However, there are many bills which have been submitted which are cumbersome
in both management and implementation. There are those in both the
House and Senate who would prefer that this problem be handled tenuously.
The law enforcement community needs a direct, easily implemented method
of addressing this serious issue.
HB
1712 and HB
861 provide the necessary potency to quickly implement a law which
would provide specifics for inclusion in the data base and offer simplicity
of implementation. Our state’s scant law enforcement resources will
be focused on an easily understood code which gets the job done with either
of these two House Bills.
We urge you to write your State Representative as well as your State
Senator about these two bills. While many other bills have been submitted
in both the House and the Senate, these two bills include the solid tools
which are need to track these vicious, predatory gang members.
In the meantime, if you want to keep up on the Gang problem and the
legislation and laws in Texas, the quickest way to get an answer is at
the TGIA’s web site: Make this
one of your favorite places on the internet. |
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