Download or read book Operation Devil Horns written by Michael Santini and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Special Agent Michael Santini offers an inside account of the takedown of MS-13 in San Francisco—one of the largest federal takedowns of a criminal gang in U.S. history. In a bid to take down MS-13’s criminal network in the Mission District of San Francisco, Michael Santini, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, recruits a pair of hardened gang members and convinces them to risk their lives as criminal informants. Set in a city with one of the strictest sanctuary policies protecting illegal immigrants in America, Operation Devil Horns illustrates how politically correct ideology impacts life-or-death crime fighting on the streets. Through the informants’ eyes, Operation Devil Horns offers a rare glimpse into the pervasive criminal subculture of MS-13, a gang of Spanish-speaking immigrants that still terrorizes pockets of American society today – including their own compatriots. The case begins with a focus on the gang in San Francisco, eventually widening to include a network that reaches across borders. Santini tracks down the gang’s leadership from the Bay Area to the prison cells of corrupt Central American regimes. Eventually, it takes the cold-blooded murder of three family members in San Francisco to shake the American public out of complacency and focus sober attention on a growing and violent threat. This is the story of a dedicated team of special agents, federal prosecutors, and local police who overcome political and legal challenges to take down more than two dozen violent criminal targets.

Download or read book Chinese Playground written by Bill Lee and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stark and unsentimental recollection of childhood and coming of age in the back alleys and bustling streets of San Francisco Chinatown reveals the sinister and pervasive influences of organized crime. "Chinese Playground: A Memoir" traces author Bill Lee's maturation from innocent child in a troubled family to a street punk, gang member, and college graduate struggling to break free of his involvement in escalating violence. Lee's personal accounts of two high-profile murder incidents are engrossing. The 1977 Golden Dragon Massacre in San Francisco that left five dead and eleven wounded, was carried out by his blood-brothers who were engaged in the most violent Asian gang war in U.S. history. A decade later, a mad gunman killed seven and injured four at ESL, a high tech firm in Sunnyvale, California where Lee was employed. An unlikely hero emerges as he accepts his fate, employing his street instincts to save coworkers during the murderous rampage. Startling details on both crimes are revealed for the first time. This true story is a provocative read providing valuable insight into Chinese American culture, organized crime, distressed families, at-risk youths, personal recovery, Bay Area history, and Silicon Valley.

Download or read book The Streets of San Francisco written by Christopher Lowen Agee and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Sixties the nation turned its eyes to San Francisco as the city's police force clashed with movements for free speech, civil rights, and sexual liberation. These conflicts on the street forced Americans to reconsider the role of the police officer in a democracy. In The Streets of San Francisco Christopher Lowen Agee explores the surprising and influential ways in which San Francisco liberals answered that question, ultimately turning to the police as partners, and reshaping understandings of crime, policing, and democracy. The Streets of San Francisco uncovers the seldom reported, street-level interactions between police officers and San Francisco residents and finds that police discretion was the defining feature of mid-century law enforcement. Postwar police officers enjoyed great autonomy when dealing with North Beach beats, African American gang leaders, gay and lesbian bar owners, Haight-Ashbury hippies, artists who created sexually explicit works, Chinese American entrepreneurs, and a wide range of other San Franciscans. Unexpectedly, this police independence grew into a source of both concern and inspiration for the thousands of young professionals streaming into the city's growing financial district. These young professionals ultimately used the issue of police discretion to forge a new cosmopolitan liberal coalition that incorporated both marginalized San Franciscans and rank-and-file police officers. The success of this model in San Francisco resulted in the rise of cosmopolitan liberal coalitions throughout the country, and today, liberal cities across America ground themselves in similar understandings of democracy, emphasizing both broad diversity and strong policing.

Download or read book Hatchet Men written by Richard H. Dillon and published by Silverstowe Book. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story of a handful of well organized Chinese criminals who ruled Chinatown from the 1880's until the earthquake of 1906.

Download or read book The Barbary Coast written by Herbert Asbury and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2022-08-17 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Barbary Coast properly begins with the gold rush to California in 1849. Owing almost entirely to the influx of gold-seekers and the horde of gamblers, thieves, harlots, politicians, and other felonious parasites who battened upon them, there arose a unique criminal district that for almost seventy years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but which at the same time possessed more glamour, than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent. The Barbary Coast is the chronicle of the birth of San Francisco. From all over the world practitioners of every vice stampeded for the blood and money of the gold fields. Gambling dens ran all day including Sundays. From noon to noon houses of prostitution offered girls of every age and race. This is the story of the banditry, opium bouts, tong wars, and corruption, from the eureka at Sutter’s Mill until the last bagnio closed its doors seventy years later.

Download or read book MS 13 written by Steven Dudley and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the year’s most important books, a gripping meticulously reported account of the rise of one of the world’s most notorious street gangs.” —Mitch Weiss, Pulitzer Prize winner Winner of the Lukas Prize An NPR Best Book of the Year The MS-13 was born from war. In the 1980s, Alex and his brother fled El Salvador for the US and formed the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners. Initially bound by a love of heavy metal music, the group soon took on a harder edge, selling drugs, stealing cars and killing rivals. Gang members like Alex were incarcerated and deported. But in the prison system, the group only grew stronger. Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth—and also largely misunderstood. Longtime organized crime investigator Steven Dudley brings readers inside the nefarious group to tell a broader story of flawed US and Central American policies and the exploitative, unequal systems that shape them. “A remarkable feat of reporting; the ways in which the United States is complicit in the creation and preservation of MS-13 might well keep you awake deep into the night, as it did me.” —Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises “By detailing the experiences of gang members and victims alike, he anatomizes the complex, fluid dynamics of this elusive transnational network. A startling book.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times–bestselling author of Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks “The definitive account of MS-13 . . . An outstanding book for true crime readers.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Download or read book Legions of Boom written by Oliver Wang and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-17 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed with speakers, turntables, light systems, and records, Filipino American mobile DJ crews, such as Ultimate Creations, Spintronix, and Images, Inc., rocked dance floors throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. In Legions of Boom noted music and pop culture writer and scholar Oliver Wang chronicles this remarkable scene that eventually became the cradle for turntablism. These crews, which were instrumental in helping to create and unify the Bay Area's Filipino American community, gave young men opportunities to assert their masculinity and gain social status. While crews regularly spun records for school dances, weddings, birthdays, or garage parties, the scene's centerpieces were showcases—or multi-crew performances—which drew crowds of hundreds, or even thousands. By the mid-1990s the scene was in decline, as single DJs became popular, recruitment to crews fell off, and aspiring scratch DJs branched off into their own scene. As the training ground for a generation of DJs, including DJ Q-Bert, Shortkut, and Mix Master Mike, the mobile scene left an indelible mark on its community that eventually grew to have a global impact.

Download or read book The Gangs of New York written by Herbert Asbury and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Iced written by Stephen Schneider and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-12-09 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "You're lucky he didn't have an ice pick in his hands. I know how this guy performs." -Mobster Paul Volpe speaking about a Buffalo-mafia enforcer named "Cicci" Canada is lauded the world over as a law abiding, peaceful country - a shining example to all nations. Such a view, also shared by most Canadians, is typically naïve and misinformed. Throughout its history, to present day and beyond, Canada has been and will continue to be home to criminals and crime organizations that are brilliant at finding ways to make money - a lot of money - illegally. Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada is a remarkable parallel history to the one generally accepted and taught in our schools. Organized crime has had a significant impact on the shaping of this country and the lives of its people. The most violent and thuggish - outlaw motorcycle gangs like Hells Angels - have been raised to mythic proportions. The families who owned distilleries during Prohibition, such as the Bronfmans, built vast fortunes that today are vested in corporate holdings. The mafia in Montreal created and controlled the largest heroin and cocaine smuggling empire in the world, feeding the insatiable appetite of our American neighbours. Today, gangs are laying waste the streets of Vancouver, and "BC bud" flows into the U.S. as the marijuana of choice. Organized crime is as old as this nation's founding, with pirates ravaging the east coast, even as hired guns by colonial governments. Since our nation's earliest times, government and crime groups have found that collusion can have its mutual benefits. Comprehensive, informative and entertaining - as you will discover in the remarkable period pieces devised by the author and the illustrations commissioned specially for this book - Iced is a romp across the nation and across the centuries. In these pages you will meet crime groups that are at once sordid and inept, yet resourceful entrepreneurs and self-proclaimed champions of the underdog, who operate in full sight of their communities and the law. This is the definitive book on organized crime in Canada, and a unique contribution to our understanding of Canadian history.

Download or read book Gangs and the Military written by Carter F. Smith and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-09-20 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past several decades, there has been a continuous and growing focus on street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and domestic extremist groups. Many of these groups have members with military training, and some actively recruit from current and former military veterans and retirees. That military experience adds to the dangerousness of veteran gang members, as well as those groups they associate with. Communities everywhere are experiencing the damaging impact of gang criminal behavior. By observing gang activity from the Revolutionary War to today Smith examines the presence of military-trained, often veteran, gang members in the communities. He looks at the turning points in gang investigations in the military, and also looks at the laws and policies designed to specifically counter the criminal activity the threats of gang activity pose on a community. Grounded in current knowledge and research, Gangs and the Military successfully addresses the growing presence of criminal gang members in the United States. As well as reflects on how the authorities that counter and combat them are doing so on a national and global level.

Download or read book Unforgetting written by Roberto Lovato and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An LA Times Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Editors' Pick • A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year "Gripping and beautiful. With the artistry of a poet and the intensity of a revolutionary, Lovato untangles the tightly knit skein of love and terror that connects El Salvador and the United States." —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes and Nickel and Dimed An urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerrilla warfare, intergenerational trauma, and interconnected violence between the United States and El Salvador, Roberto Lovato’s memoir excavates family history and reveals the intimate stories beneath headlines about gang violence and mass Central American migration, one of the most important, yet least-understood humanitarian crises of our time—and one in which the perspectives of Central Americans in the United States have been silenced and forgotten. The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming in California. In his teens, he lost friends to the escalating violence, and survived acts of brutality himself. He eventually traded the violence of the streets for human rights advocacy in wartime El Salvador where he joined the guerilla movement against the U.S.-backed, fascist military government responsible for some of the most barbaric massacres and crimes against humanity in recent history. Roberto returned from war-torn El Salvador to find the United States on the verge of unprecedented crises of its own. There, he channeled his own pain into activism and journalism, focusing his attention on how trauma affects individual lives and societies, and began the difficult journey of confronting the roots of his own trauma. As a child, Roberto endured a tumultuous relationship with his father Ramón. Raised in extreme poverty in the countryside of El Salvador during one of the most violent periods of its history, Ramón learned to survive by straddling intersecting underworlds of family secrets, traumatic silences, and dealing in black-market goods and guns. The repression of the violence in his life took its toll, however. Ramón was plagued with silences and fits of anger that had a profound impact on his youngest son, and which Roberto attributes as a source of constant reckoning with the violence and rebellion in his own life. In Unforgetting, Roberto interweaves his father’s complicated history and his own with first-hand reportage on gang life, state violence, and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States. In doing so he makes the political personal, revealing the cyclical ways violence operates in our homes and our societies, as well as the ways hope and tenderness can rise up out of the darkness if we are courageous enough to unforget.

Download or read book Community Policing and Peacekeeping written by Peter Grabosky and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern industrial societies, the demand for policing services frequently exceeds the current and foreseeable availability of public policing resources. Conversely, developing nations often suffer from an inability to provide a basic level of security for their citizens. Community Policing and Peacekeeping offers a fresh overview of the challenge

Download or read book Infinite City written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a place? Rebecca Solnit reinvents the traditional atlas, searching for layers of meaning & connections of experience across San Francisco.

Download or read book Gang Injunctions and Abatement written by Matthew D. O'Deane and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As gang violence continues to rise across the country and the world, police departments, prosecutors, and community members are seeking new methods to reduce the spread of gang-related criminal activity. Civil gang injunctions have become a growing feature of crime control programs in several states across the nation. Gang Injunctions and Abatement

Download or read book California s Social Problems written by Charles F Hohm and published by Pine Forge Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PLEASE UPDATE SAGE INDIA AND SAGE U.K. ADDRESSES ON IMPRINT PAGE.

Download or read book Lanza s Mob written by Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-06-27 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting sociological as well as historical perspectives, this book supplies readers with a fascinating, unprecedented look at the most successful organized-crime family they've probably never heard of. From the 1920s until the early 21st century, one Sicilian mob family defied everyone from the California attorney general to J. Edgar Hoover to chart their own American Dream. Unlike their flashier rivals in New York and Chicago who met their end by the knife, the bullet, or a judge's gavel, this crime family prospered and grew alongside their adopted home of San Francisco. This book tells how they did it. Readers will learn how the Lanzas managed to retain control of their patch from the end of Prohibition through the Summer of Love and into the beginnings of the dot-com era, gaining insight into not only what the west-coast branch of the Mob did, but also why they did it. The documentation of how this mostly unknown crime syndicate formed, evolved, and eventually folded is set against the backdrop of the city of San Francisco transforming itself from a gritty port and manufacturing hub dominated by Italian- and Irish-Americans into the multicultural intellectual and services capital it is today.

Download or read book The Valley of the Shadow of Death written by Kermit Alexander and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Former NFL star Kermit Alexander tells the ... true story of the ... massacre of his family and his subsequent years of despair, followed by a spiritual renewal that showed him a way to rebuild his family and reclaim his life"--Amazon.com.