UCLA Professor Solves Gangs

An amazing discovery that links gangs to animal behavior:

• A mathematical model that has been used for more than 80 years to determine the hunting range of animals in the wild holds promise for mapping the territories of street gangs, a UCLA-led team of social scientists reports in a new study.
  "The way gangs break up their neighborhoods into unique territories is a lot like the way lions or honey bees break up space," said lead author P. Jeffrey Brantingham, a professor of anthropology at UCLA.
  Further, the research demonstrates that the most dangerous place to be in a neighborhood packed with gangs is not deep within the territory of a specific gang, as one might suppose, but on the border between two rival gangs. In fact, the highest concentration of conflict occurs within less than two blocks of gang boundaries, the researchers discovered.

Wow! This is a brilliant insight into gangs. We expect McCompStat and that asshole Weis-inger will be using it to further refine the CompStat model of policing!

Of course, any cop who's been on the street for more than two minutes knows that where two rival gangs rub up against each other is going to be the spot where the most bodies turn up. For example, among the folks here at SCC, we've worked most of the districts, and many of them had places known by nicknames:

• the Zone
• the Square
• Bordertown

All were places where two gangs met and fought and shot at each other. It was a rare event when someone actually got killed deep inside known boundaries. In fact, most of the time someone got killed inside the territory, it was an internal conflict being solved.

Here's another brilliant insight:

• The model the researchers derived from the equation predicted that gang boundaries would form midway between the home bases of rivals and would run in a perpendicular line between them.

Wow. How many millions did someone spend on this study? Because they could have asked any copper in L.A. to explain it to them and saved the money.

This one made us laugh out loud:

• Using the Lotka–Volterra formula, Brantingham's team drew boundaries between the known gangs. Unlike law enforcement's maps, the resulting effort did not produce gang boundaries that neatly followed streets. Instead, the boundaries ran through the yards of homes and businesses and through alleyways. When the boundaries did land on streets, they were as likely to crisscross them as follow them.

No shit? Because it wouldn't be like you would have rivals crossing that invisible border and drawing graffiti in their rival's yards in an effort to provoke conflict, or draw their enemies into a position where a retaliatory shooting could occur, could it?

• The research, conducted in partnership with the Los Angeles Police Department, was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The Air Force? What the hell?