It takes strength and cunning to fight the violent MS-13 gang, Suffolk County’s top cop says.
But when that’s not enough, a chain saw can sure come in handy.
“It’s Environmental Design 101, you know?” Police Commissioner Timothy Sini told The Post, describing how authorities used some creative landscaping to make a wooded plot in Huntington, LI, less appealing to gang recruiters.
Cops had learned MS-13 was recruiting teens from Huntington HS along a nearby secluded path shaded by overgrown shrubbery and trees, Sini said.
The path, a shortcut between the school and a parking lot, was just a three-minute walk, but the gangsters “were actually using this corridor almost as a symbolic passageway,” he said.
“They’d say, ‘If you want to get through here, you have to join the gang,” Sini recalled.
In February, “we partnered with the town of Huntington, and we cut down the trees, and that was one less spot where they felt comfortable.”
And for what a chain saw couldn’t solve, a good set of handcuffs could.
“We also took out the guy,” Sini recalled, referring to the top recruiter.
MS-13, a gang with roots in Central America, has been responsible for 17 murders in Suffolk County since the start of 2016 — including a quadruple homicide in Central Islip in April.
About 400 county residents, mostly in Brentwood and Central Islip, have been identified as MS-13 gangsters, Sini said. But the gang, which began in the United States in LA and has a heavy presence in California, is itching to grow.
“Their orders are to essentially develop what they have on the West Coast here on the East Coast,” the commissioner said.
To combat the gang’s rise, the Suffolk County Police Department has deployed anti-firearm and anti-gang officers to monitor individual members.
“We literally assign [officers] to specific gang members and/or locations,” Sini explained. “And we say, ‘Target these people and locations relentlessly with the street arrests.’”
Since rolling out the initiative in September, Suffolk has made more than 230 MS-13 arrests, Sini said.
Additional reporting by Leonica Valentine
http://nypost.com/2017/07/09/the-one-way-to-fight-the-violent-ms-13-gang/
“In February, “we partnered with the town of Huntington, and we cut down the trees, and that was one less spot where they felt comfortable.”
You should be cutting down the gang members.
Chain saws would work, but ammo is less messy.