Ongoing gangwarfare between the Bloods and Crips gangs in Sandtown-Winchester.

Two toddlers were shot on the city’s west side as they played in a small inflatable pool at the Warwick Apartments. Police linked the incident to ongoing warfare between the Bloods and Crips gangs in Sandtown-Winchester.Terrified witnesses said they saw a car filled with gang members pull up to a corner where rivals were hanging out. An argument began and within seconds, someone in the car opened fire with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun.As people scattered, two small bodies lay wounded. Steven Cole Jr., 2, and Talayha Mable, 3, survived after hospital stays. Mayor Sheila Dixon and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III denounced the shootings as “unacceptable” and “cowardly.”While this shocking incident could easily have come from a script of “The Wire,” it’s all too real these days.Linked by the Internet, cell phones, social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, and even global positioning systems, gangs are taking hold in all areas of the state.
Tentacles from multiple gangs, some part of national groups like the Los Angeles-based Bloods and Crips and the El Salvadoran gang MS-13, reach daily into crime scenes. Officials tick off a list of gang-related calling cards: street violence, murder, drug dealing, the illegal gun trade.“What we’re seeing is the recruiting of younger kids who are intrigued by the coolness of joining a gang,” said Baltimore police Lt. Col. Rick Hite. “They get duped into believing what they see on television — Snoop Doggy Dogg standing next to Lee Iacocca selling cars like he’s a hero. Life in a luxury house, and all that. At the end of the day, though, they find out that the cars were rented, the houses were rented, even the bling is rented. The reality is that when they go to prison, it’s not as glamorous as they make it out to be.”Hite, who for years has worked to help solve the social woes of Baltimore’s young violent offenders, said gangs are proliferating for many reasons. Kids join because they seek a haven from life on the city’s violent streets. Within a year of joining, he said, they are asked to ratchet up allegiance.“Now they are being asked to go out on a mission and attack or assault innocent people,” he said. “And then the kids want out, and they try to form subgroups to try to get away from the threat group.”“It’s a very serious problem and it is growing exponentially daily,” said Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, who made it a priority to seek out and prosecute MS-13 members when he was Montgomery County state’s attorney.Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey said his department also has made gangs a top priority.Police have identified 527 gang members who live in the county — those who police say have demonstrated knowledge and traits of street gangs, have gang tattoos, or use gang terminology, Toohey said. But he added, “It’s hard to gauge how much of the county’s crime rate is gang-related.”“We have a headquarters-based enforcement team and every precinct has a gang coordinator,” Toohey said of an anti-gang system started by county Police Chief Jim Johnson two years agoThe Interstate 95 corridor is a focal point for gang activity in Maryland, said Joseph I. Cassilly, the Harford County state’s attorney. He said the East Coast’s main artery makes it easy for national gangs to connect their New Jersey and New York branches with those here.It’s not clear how many gang members are in Maryland, Gansler said, but “it is safe to say there are thousands and they range in age as low as elementary school.”Gansler spoke of a visit to Calverton Middle School in Baltimore. There, the principal told him that 85 percent of the school’s teens were affiliated with gangs.
“I thought it was surprising that it was that high of a number, and also tragic,” he said. “You can’t expect children to learn in an environment which is that heavily laden with gang activities. And you can’t learn if you’re scared.”
For many teens, joining a gang begins by offering “a safe passage to school,” says Philip J. Leaf, head of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. But once teens get into a gang, allegiances and expectations escalate.
Plus, as the street saying goes, once you’re in a gang, there’s no way out except in a coffin.