Gangs, Drugs, and Youth Violence Growing in Alabama

BALDWIN COUNTY Ala.
September 29, 2024

By: Rick McCann

The Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Warriors, Newsies, MS-13.
Real gangs, committing lots of crimes, and killing a lot of people across this country.

If you watch a lot of police situational TV shows, crime dramas like The First 48, or movies that depict real street life, then you’ve probably heard of these names before.

In your head, you probably associate this violence with big cities like Atlanta, New York City, Detroit, L.A., and even New Orleans.
Maybe you’ve even moved to Alabama to get away from that crime thinking surely, it hasn’t made its way this far south yet. But you’d be wrong.

Though many in this country would rather believe that most places are safe and that the further out of the city that they move, the safer that it is, unfortunately, that’s a falsehood and far from the reality of our world today.

The trend for almost twenty years has shown that big city gangs, mid-level drug dealers, and violent felons have repeatedly moved away from big cities and have chosen to set up shop in small rural towns away from prying eyes, large police task forces, and federal law enforcement.
Even murderers are often apprehended living the quiet life in places just like the small towns that make up most of Baldwin County.

Small towns have few cops and fewer resources. Some, even those in Baldwin County, operate with just one officer on duty and sometimes, no officers at all, relying instead on the county sheriff’s office to patrol the area and respond to emergency calls.
Criminals rely on these types of “Mayberry” communities to blend into the rural landscape and escape the constant surveillance of police investigators or nosey neighbors.
Movies and books have even used this theme as a backdrop to their stories.
 “The killer among us” or “They hid in plain sight”.
When police in rural areas do discover that a gang or drug dealer has come to town it’s usually because of a minor traffic infraction and interactions with the driver.

Ralph A. Weisheit, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University recently wrote that the prevailing image of youth gangs with their symbols, colors, and territorial graffiti—is that they are found in the poorest neighborhoods of America’s large cities. Certainly, they are. In recent years, however, such gangs also have been popping up in outlying rural areas, far away from urban decay.

Some theories for the shift in residency include that there is less competition, less police, and less likelihood that they’ll get busted.
Several other assumptions about these rural gangs are popular in the criminal justice research literature. For example, researchers commonly believe that once a youth gang establishes itself in an area, it will be around for quite some time.

Just this past week, an unexpected violent shooting happened in Silverhill.
It has opened a few eyes but still no one has pulled the alarm. Some have said it was just a few teenagers who let things go too far, or that they lost their cool and someone even used the words “an isolated incident”.

The shooting which occurred between some juvenile rival gang members happened in a normally very quiet area near Hwy 104 and West Blvd.
It’s not clear what occurred before the shooting but police say that one vehicle was following a second vehicle both containing teenage gang members and as they neared the intersection, the second vehicle fired at least 19 shots into the direction of the victim’s car. The driver was struck in the right arm by a projectile, but the other occupants of the vehicle were unharmed.
While law enforcement did publicly state that both vehicles involved were suspected gang members, there has not been any mention of which gangs the teens were affiliated with or further mention of gangs or gang activities in Baldwin County even though gangs have existed in the region for years.
Overall the lack of information and news about the increase in crime, drugs and drug overdoses, gangs, and violence in general continues to be hidden and rarely makes local headlines.
In fact, nationally organized gangs and locally formed neighborhood gangs have been identified throughout Alabama since the early 1990s, and more recently just last year when they were suspected in several homicides and drive-by shootings.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have moved into Baldwin County.

Last year, we were the first to report on a shooting at the Lake Forest pool in May that involved two groups of teens that had “scheduled” a time and place to fight each other.
One of those teens involved brought a handgun and shot another teen who was driven to Thomas Hospital in a private vehicle.
Three juveniles were arrested in that incident and although there was no mention of gang affiliation, that doesn’t mean that those involved were not part of an organized group.

One of the issues according to retired federal agent Mark Stein is that people think that gangs are those people in the movies with tattoos across their bodies holding wads of cash and multiple guns in their social media photos.
And while there are plenty of those types of gang members still around, gangs can be just a few teenagers who plot to commit crimes, sell dope or control their neighborhood not allowing others to play in a certain park or hang on a certain street corner.
Gangs are not all bad.
Gangs have numerous meanings and are not all related to criminal activities.

Some are just a group of friends that are always together. When you see one, you’ll also probably see them all, together, wherever they go. A “click”, a gang.
The current meaning of a gang is a group or society of associates, friends, or members of a family while other gangs like those who have formed a criminal enterprise, have a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectively, in illegal, and possibly violent, behavior, with such behavior often constituting a form of organized crime.

A friend of mine posted on her social media a few days ago that she met up with her “gang”. They consisted of four recently retired female law enforcement officers who were headed out to play a round of golf. Hardly a criminal enterprise!

Lieutenant Andy Ashton, an investigator with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office said that the “gangs” in the county generally consist of teenagers with guns, some committing minor crimes but at this time there’s no indication that any nationally established gangs have moved into Baldwin County.

Another local law enforcement officer echoed the lieutenant’s comments and stated that this area has had mostly the “garden variety” of gangs. Young kids or teens who have grown up in the area, sometimes mixing with kids that have moved from other parts of the country who come together for the purpose of committing crimes including selling a little weed or other drugs, maybe to do a few robberies, or to steal cars, but that can escalate into something more violent he said.

Gang violence has taken the blame for many shootings in Mobile County. A shooting on New Year’s Eve 2022 in downtown Mobile that injured nine and killed one had gang ties, according to Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson. In January 2024, a shooting on I-165 was also found to be gang-related by investigators. An 18-year-old was killed and a 9-year-old was injured in that shooting.
And, regularly, drive-by shootings and neighborhood violence have also been blamed on the rise in gang activity in the port city though most gangs are considered to be low-level, local gangs, made up of mostly teens, sometimes as young as ten years old.
In recent years, Mobile has become popular for rappers to record their music and shoot videos which sometimes attract gangs, drugs, and trouble.

In July of this year, the Mobile County Sheriff held a press conference stating that he was fed up with the gang violence that has been ignored for years.
“For a long time, law enforcement denied that there was a gang problem in Mobile and we’re starting to see the results of that,” said Sheriff Burch.
“I’ve stated publicly several times that we are targeting these gang members and if they continue the activity they’re going to see us and we’re going to lock their a** up,” said Sheriff Burch.

Mobile Police said 44 gang members were arrested in 2022 after a wave of gun violence in the city.
After the 44 people were arrested, former Director of Public Safety Lawrence Battiste said, “It starts out as juvenile gangs, and it continues with many of these young people into their young adulthood.”

And while that was over two years ago, gang shootings, drug sales, and overall street violence have not gone away. From the dark streets of low-income city housing to the brighter, cleaner, upscale parts of the city, it’s alive and thriving.

Mobile police last week used their resources to conduct multiple raids and round up 26 more persons now charged with mainly street-level drug dealing.

Police often are unable to adequately keep gangs, drugs, and violence at bay because of budget constraints, manpower shortages, and a relaxed judicial system that continues the revolving door that continues to seek alternative punishment for drug crimes instead of demanding longer prison sentences even when the person has a long history of committing various offenses.

Fentanyl, a highly potent narcotic that until recent years was used for pain management by the medical profession is now killing people across the country and right here in Alabama. It’s a leading cause of drug overdoses and criminal activity.
Frequently, the drug is mixed in with other illicit narcotics without the user’s knowledge and they quickly overdose and if not treated immediately can die quickly.

The Seminole Volunteer Fire Department’s Assistant Chief in 2023 responded to such a situation where a person had overdosed on Fentanyl and after treating the patient with Naloxone (NARCAN) the patient inadvertently exposed the firefighter herself and she was rushed to a local hospital for treatment.

Drugs and gangs often go hand in hand followed by violence and an increase in shootings.

A mass shooting this weekend in Birmingham left four people dead and seventeen injured at an entertainment venue in the Five Points South neighborhood. Police have stated that it was a targeted shooting and that the intended target is among the dead. One investigator suggested that it also involved rival gangs.
The shooting was the third quadruple homicide in Birmingham in 2024. In February, four men were killed in a drive-by shooting near a car wash, and in July, four were killed and ten were injured in a drive-by shooting at a birthday party hosted by a nightclub, which at the time, was the city’s largest mass shooting in 2024.

Birmingham has struggled in recent years with a rise in violent crimes, shootings, gangs, and drugs which many attribute to the rise in gangs.

South Alabama is not immune from such violence nor is it something that many local jurisdictions will be able to handle on their own, with their non-existent or small police forces.

To think that the bay stops crime or drugs from crossing over to Baldwin County or that Florida criminals don’t frequent our beaches and sell drugs and commit crimes in our local communities is “stupid thinking”, said a retired law enforcement officer who asked not to be identified.
“We have gangs, we have quite a bit of drugs and we’re beginning to see much more violent crimes in our growing cities and even out into the rural parts of the county.
To me, the retired officer said, it’s an indication that there’s definitely some “structured” criminal activity being driven by some level of gangs and organized criminals but it still doesn’t happen as frequently here as it would in the bigger cities, he said.
And then of course, we also have other violent crimes that really are just isolated incidents where someone decides to rob another person or where people have disputes and grab a gun and go to shooting.

As for the gang members themselves in Mobile County, Sheriff Burch has a message.

“We’re coming in heavy and we’re going to eradicate these gang members,” said Burch. “They haven’t seen us come hard yet, but they’re about to.”

In Part Two, we’ll further explore youth violence and drugs and how they are affecting South Alabama.

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