By: Lou Savelli

As our borders receive more scrutiny and terrorists develop stronger partnerships with gang members, criminal adversaries become more adept at countering law enforcement and military tactics. In light of the more prevalent threat from 'homegrown' terrorists, these adversaries may even come from within our own ranks or simply have an intricate knowledge of our tactics. American gang members, foreign terrorists and domestic extremists have been excessively infiltrating the ranks of our military for decades and, to a much lesser degree, the ranks of our law enforcement community. This exposure to 'tactical' experience and intricate knowledge lends itself to bringing enemy combatants, whether gang members, terrorists or extremists, a step closer and more capable of defeating our tactical efforts.
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Over the years, I have investigated or learned about many individuals who were actually gang members, extremists or terrorists who have been privy to military and law enforcement tactical information and training. These infiltrators were able to observe military or law enforcement tactics first hand, putting them to use against us. These examples show the deadly potential posed by gangs and terrorists. Here are just a few: 

To better prepare our law enforcement and military to counter potential dangerous situations, we should establish and follow some additional administrative and operational guidelines. These guidelines are especially important for tactical and specialized units like SWAT, Narcotics and Gangs. These simple, but effective, procedures will help protect the integrity of the unit’s tactics and contribute to the safety of its members during tactical operations:

• First, carefully choose the personnel who will enter the inner sanctum of your unit. Scrutinize their background and motivations for wanting acceptance into your 'team'. Avoid ‘over anxious’ and ‘curious’ officers who seem to be hanging around the team’s office and showing up, uninvited, at training sessions.
• Limit inter-agency training to only those units that have the same 'high standards' as yours. Not every unit carefully chooses and screens their personnel, their background and motivations.
• When attending training, carefully choose your training providers. Sometimes the cheapest training company may not the best or even the most trusted and sometimes the most expensive or best advertised may not be adequate for what you need.
• When attending training provided by other units or private companies, build on that training and make it better suited for your team. 'Cookie-cutter' is good for making cookies but not for tactical training.
• Protect your 'tactical ops' plans. Don't leave them laying around on a desk waiting for someone like the office cleaners to 'snatch' them up and bring them home to their 'gangster' kids. Use a ‘security system’ that protects the integrity and tracks the chain of custody of the ops plans.
• Secure your 'training' videos, especially any recording of your team practicing your tactics. I can't begin to tell you how many times I recovered 'ops plans' and training materials in the homes of gang members in the hundreds of search warrants I executed.
• When conducting or attending a training conference or information sharing seminar in a hotel or non-law enforcement facility, insist on security to keep out non-law enforcement 'listeners' and to protect integrity of the training. In a recent gang training, outlaw bikers were discovered attempting to listen in on the information being presented at a training conference held at a hotel attended by law enforcement officers from across the US and Canada.
• Attempt to identify and control the use of any videos of your team in action that could compromise your tactics. If a video of your entry exists on a drug dealer’s surveillance system, make sure you obtain the original video and inform the prosecutor that the video shows ‘secret tactics’. Tell the prosecutor you don’t want it to be used in court unless it is absolutely necessary and it will be adequately redacted since it will greatly impact on officer safety. Once it is labeled ‘evidence’ it is subject to Discovery’ and, thus, scrutiny by the defense attorney, the defendant, the jurors and anyone else in the courtroom. It is common in the case of gang members to use ‘house counsel’ for their defense. House counsel is a term used to define a criminal defense attorney or law firm which represents members of the same gang or organized crime group on all their cases. These attorneys are often on ‘retainer’ and part of their purpose is to identify snitches and bring back information to the gang leaders.

Never before has it been time to ‘step it up’ a notch. These homegrown terrorists, domestic extremists, gang members, gangsters in the military, cop-haters, foreign terrorists, transnational organized criminals and our run of the mill bad guys threaten the sanctity of our communities and the safety of our nation’s law enforcement officers. Last year, multiple officers were killed on singular incidents and several involved ambushes. This year, it seems like every day another law enforcement officer is being killed and many on ‘tactical’ operations like fugitive apprehensions, warrants and  narcotics operations. Could these violent criminals have a ‘heads-up’ on our tactics and be prepared to take us on? I think the answer is simple.

By: Lou Savelli

Gang intelligence is the foundation of every gang case. Reports are the building blocks of the case structure.  Each report, regardless of the type, will add another block of information to the overall case.  While all reports can be useful, here are some of the most commonly utilized and valuable reports to document gang activity or compile information on a gang and its members:
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• Intelligence Report:  This report should be completed for any suspected criminal activity or incident that has not reached the point of being documented on a Criminal Complaint Report.

 

• Field Interview Card:    Field interview cards, also known as Stop, Question, and Frisk Reports, have proven to be extremely valuable in gang investigations and other criminal investigations.  Field Interview Cards should be used to document anyone, a group of people, at a specific location at a certain time and date.  This documentation can help build conspiratorial associations between gang members, document the gang clothing they are wearing, and track their actions which may prove to solidify an investigation later when such documentation is needed.

 

• Gang Incident and Intelligence Report:  This report should be completed for any incident or bit of gang intelligence information that has been reported involving a gang or gang member not targeted by an active investigation.  When an officer knows that a specific gang under current investigation, or one of its members, has been involved in an incident or activity necessitating documentation, an Investigative Report should be used instead.

 

• Investigative Report:  This report must be completed for any piece of pertinent information involving a gang under investigation or a gang that can potentially be under investigation.  The Investigative Report is the most frequently used report because it can be used to document surveillance results, undercover operations, informant deployment, informant information, information from other law enforcement officers, results of interviews and interrogations, and  to document a variety of investigative tasks such as Vehicle Registration information, Criminal History Reports, other official records, etc…

 

• Arrest Reports:   Obviously, Arrest Reports are filed when an individual is arrested.  The information on Arrest Reports can be extremely useful in investigations so it is important for a law enforcement officer to remember to fill out as much information as possible and to insure the information is accurate.  The information on the Arrest Report has valuable data that can be used during an investigation for the purposes of locating a suspect, documenting accomplices, establishing a criminal past, and other important information. These Arrest Reports are also valuable as an investigative technique used to track court appearances and jail release dates of gang members.  For a gang investigator, court appearances and jail release dates can help facilitate surveillances and missed court appearances, resulting in the issuance of an Arrest Warrant, can be a good opportunity for a gang investigator to arrest a gang member.

 

• Traffic Tickets, Parking Tickets, Minor Violations/Desk Appearance Tickets, Notices To Appear:  Tickets and Summonses used to document a minor violation such as a traffic infraction, parking ticket, code violation, quality of life violation, and sometimes minor Misdemeanor offenses can provide information on the gang member and help establish generally the same information as that of an arrest report.  Additionally, gang members tend to disregard these ‘paper’ infractions as insignificant and may fail to pay the fine or appear in court.  As a result of the failure to pay a fine or appear in court, many times, an arrest warrant will be issued.  As with Arrest Reports, it lends itself to another opportunity for a smart gang investigator to personally enforce the Arrest Warrant.

 

• Motor Vehicle Accident Report:  A good source of information to aid in the documenting of a gang member’s associations, whereabouts, vehicles used, and personal data, is the Motor Vehicle Report. 

Any report that can document a gang member’s actions, whereabouts, and associations can prove extremely useful in a gang investigation.  For example, a violent street gang member we were attempting to tie into a conspiracy case was adamant he never drove a black Honda sedan like the vehicle used in a recent drive-by shooting in which four people were shot and two were killed.  After a search of parking tickets around his residence, we determined the same type of vehicle was being tagged by the precinct summons officer.  A careful check of the gang member’s driving record showed him being issued a red light ticket several months prior while driving a black Honda sedan. 

​Furthermore, the owner of the Honda was identified and placed in a photo array in front of witnesses to the shooting.  While the witnesses could not identify our original target gang member, they did identify the owner of the car as the driver of the Honda on the day of the shooting.  The driver, after being arrested, gave up our target gang member as the shooter. 

Few effective gang cases, or other cases for that matter, were ever made without the use of paperwork.  As tedious as it can be, paperwork is an investigator’s friend.