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Any advice for me on dealing with Gang Bangers?
- Thread starter The King
- Start date
#1 Valuable personal property insurance.
#2 Considering they have taken ammo, they obviously know there are firearms in the house. Doubt you're going to be dealing with a home invasion. No right person in their minds wants to confront an armed individual on their own playing field. Did they take rifle rounds or small handgun rounds. This is some valuable information for the criminals to determine the route to take. Most likely if they are going to hit your spot, it's not going to happen when someone is home.
#3 Cams are a good deterrent, but being able to monitor them from wherever and whenever is pretty critical. A system with a tuned motion notifications is just as critical in my opinion.
#4 Alarm system with a stay mode. Hopefully hooked up to window sensors and motion in rooms you're concerned about. Example for me: my master has no "quick" entry points. All windows are barred, and the door is also a security gate. I'll be awake much before they get in there. So in my living room and family room/kitchen my motion sensors are on along with window sensors when I'm sleeping. (Can't stay up all night patrolling with the Rem 870.)
#4 If you home is being burglarized hopefully you have insurance already and can recoup your losses.
#5 A reputable safe that is bolted down. I don't know how many times I hear stories that their safes just disappear. It's safe to assume that they most likely are thinking there is a safe in the home and will try to take it.
#6 If you are pretty confident you're going to be a victim of a home invasion, make sure you are prepared at all times when you're home. The time to unlock the safe and obtain your defense weapon under stress will mostly likely end very badly for you, so make sure you have access quickly. I encountered a situation where I was woken up by my wife in the middle of the night saying someone was out front trying to get in our window. It took me a considerable amount of time to get my safe open because of the stress of being suddenly woken up and the situation. It was an electronic lock as well. Learn how to manage your anxiety in a situation like that.
#7 Notify your local neighborhood watch commander and/or your neighborhood senior lead officer. Inform them of your concerns and request extra patrols. I mean you're paying their check right?
I know the feeling about these types of people. I live right next to Compton and have lived in worse neighborhoods, but there is still a considerable amount of gang activity that takes place around my house. One thing to never do is to engage them unless you absolutely have to. Most of these hoodlums don't have much to loose and even less brains to calculate risks for their actions. Good luck to you and prepare for the worst. Expect the best.
Phil
#2 Considering they have taken ammo, they obviously know there are firearms in the house. Doubt you're going to be dealing with a home invasion. No right person in their minds wants to confront an armed individual on their own playing field. Did they take rifle rounds or small handgun rounds. This is some valuable information for the criminals to determine the route to take. Most likely if they are going to hit your spot, it's not going to happen when someone is home.
#3 Cams are a good deterrent, but being able to monitor them from wherever and whenever is pretty critical. A system with a tuned motion notifications is just as critical in my opinion.
#4 Alarm system with a stay mode. Hopefully hooked up to window sensors and motion in rooms you're concerned about. Example for me: my master has no "quick" entry points. All windows are barred, and the door is also a security gate. I'll be awake much before they get in there. So in my living room and family room/kitchen my motion sensors are on along with window sensors when I'm sleeping. (Can't stay up all night patrolling with the Rem 870.)
#4 If you home is being burglarized hopefully you have insurance already and can recoup your losses.
#5 A reputable safe that is bolted down. I don't know how many times I hear stories that their safes just disappear. It's safe to assume that they most likely are thinking there is a safe in the home and will try to take it.
#6 If you are pretty confident you're going to be a victim of a home invasion, make sure you are prepared at all times when you're home. The time to unlock the safe and obtain your defense weapon under stress will mostly likely end very badly for you, so make sure you have access quickly. I encountered a situation where I was woken up by my wife in the middle of the night saying someone was out front trying to get in our window. It took me a considerable amount of time to get my safe open because of the stress of being suddenly woken up and the situation. It was an electronic lock as well. Learn how to manage your anxiety in a situation like that.
#7 Notify your local neighborhood watch commander and/or your neighborhood senior lead officer. Inform them of your concerns and request extra patrols. I mean you're paying their check right?
I know the feeling about these types of people. I live right next to Compton and have lived in worse neighborhoods, but there is still a considerable amount of gang activity that takes place around my house. One thing to never do is to engage them unless you absolutely have to. Most of these hoodlums don't have much to loose and even less brains to calculate risks for their actions. Good luck to you and prepare for the worst. Expect the best.
Phil
Probably the best advice yet - I have taken all of these steps at this time except for the safe. All firearms but my ready firearm are now gone.
I have the Canary cameras all around - instant notification and recording.
I have the Canary cameras all around - instant notification and recording.
Move if you wish to, but in the mean time stay prepared, and kill as many as you have to when the occasion presents.
Truth right here.
Even suburbia and the far flung northern and southern reaches have seen the awesome that the pot legalization has brought. Larimer county sheriffs office did a study - universal property crime increase within 4 blocks of dispensary locations, some as much as 400%. Led to fort collins and other places banning dispensaries.
Even semi-rural locations like Fort Lupton have had to combat transportation locations for cartel associated transport of product from down south through US85 and Interstate 76.
Hate this crap. Don't care about medicinal whatever properties of the junk. Someone else can have that debate. What bothers me is the half-ass way that it was legalized, and the crap it brought with it. A rise in DWI based on marijuana products. Crime and rise in gang aggressiveness because turf has more types of action available to turn revenue - one of which is now transport/supplier relationships for an otherwise semi-legal product.
King, you don't have to go to ID or MT. A secondary city in the area like Greeley or Pueblo could be enough to get you "close" to what you like about CO but farther away from that crap.
Pueblo would be putting oneself further into the mire of gangland. I have heard it called north Albuquerque.
Yeah Pueblo is fucking toast. Totally toast. Hell, it IS Colorado’s spawn point for the Opfor last I heard.
I lived in pueblo for College. I actually liked it there. There are a lot of good spots around Pueblo especially in pueblo west. I also lived in Albuquerque most of my life. I was happy to move out of that shit hole. I love the food, love the mountains, but it was turning into an armpit. But I did work in Colorado Springs during college, and found that springs has tons of really nice and safe spots to live in. I can't imagine that you can't find a decent spot around there. I know it's all about finances, but ultimately, you can't put a price on your health.
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Some friends and family down there seem to think otherwise. In greeley, live west of 47th and you are good.
But its everywhere. Straight up, the war on drugs has been lost. Now we are fighting rear actions. Either we gear up and go after those people like the war this thing really is. Or we fight losing rearguard actions for the future.
But people want themselves, they want for them. Tiny minorities (the smoke weed crowd, really pick your isssue...) militarize and try to force action over everything. They want you to protect them, but don't do it at the expense of that one vice that they happen to like... And dont even get me started on today's "yellow" press.
If you want smaller, head south to RYE (Colorado City). It's a bunch of hillbillys there, but you get a lot of seclusion for your money, and you can fish becky (Lake Beckwith) all the time! I can't tell you how many hours I spent at that little jewel.
Is the crime in your opinion coming from people wanting more money to get said drugs or because they are on drugs that is making them more crazy?
So if the government was to let's say buy all the product themselves & deliver small amounts to users for a low or free controlled cost, would that curtail the crime, or make it worse?
Is the state allowing organized crime to get involved semi-legally in the growing / distribution / selling business?
That would sound like an invitation to hell if they actually were that stupid to allow it.
One thing not discussed is an insurance policy in case you do have to shoot in self defense.
After taking my states concealed carry class (It was legal heat instructors out of Utah), they also sent me information on this policy.
I think it was around $200 a year and would cover the cost of a lawyer/investigator and the trial fees (basically the total cost) in case you were taken to court. I think they said the average cost was in the $350,000 range going through a trial.
I hadn't gotten this yet, but am seriously considering it for myself.
Something to think about.
After taking my states concealed carry class (It was legal heat instructors out of Utah), they also sent me information on this policy.
I think it was around $200 a year and would cover the cost of a lawyer/investigator and the trial fees (basically the total cost) in case you were taken to court. I think they said the average cost was in the $350,000 range going through a trial.
I hadn't gotten this yet, but am seriously considering it for myself.
Something to think about.
You asked several questions, it's really a couple of things. This may be TLDR for some but you asked....
1) There's money in drugs. It's a captain-bozo-class obvious statement, but it's still a fundamental truth that drives the whole ecosystem.
2) Where money is, people want to make money. Good people and bad. More money can be made outside of the system than in the system. The state department of revenue had all manner of applicants when this stuff went legal. You wouldn't believe the stuff that people tried to pull. LOTS of hidden ownership, applicants who are enormously in debt yet magically had tens of thousands of dollars come out of nowhere so that they could apply to open a business semi-legally (attempting to get a state license yet clearly of questionable means and backing). Similarly a large number of background check violations.
3) Initial operations of legal MJ actually resulted in three interesting trends. First, many communities either could not find a regulatory path that gave them enough control and so as an alternative passed ordinances banning the business type within city limits. Second, some jurisdictions which initially opened to that business type, encountered teething problems with crime, taxation issues, etc, and subsequently grandfathered the handful of locations and closed to new applications. Third, and this may surprise some (and not others), but people involved in drugs sometimes aren't the most business savvy people in the world. Which means when it comes to paying rent, taxes, etc, a lot of locations ended up shutting down after the first 12-18 months because they just couldn't operate a business that they initially got into with a passion of "get rich quick" without the right planning for clients, sourcing, etc.
Which all results in...
4) The marijuana division of DoR, the primary licensing and enforcement authority in the state of colorado, cut back staffing in that division over time.
Which made it easier for...
5) There are many places in the system where more money can be made way off the table than could ever be made legally. Just taxation alone going off the table at retail expands profit in one of these enterprises from 50-100%. In this thread, we have already seen a lot of discussion about transport. MS-13 and local affiliated groups have hooked up with mexico cartels for sourcing product that often can be cheaper at wholesale to these MJ establishments than legal grows, not to mention can sometimes produce more volume. Secondarily, these same groups are getting more and more savvy at operating illegal grows at scale, learning about power taps, doing better at hiding obvious signs (e.g. through blackout, property choices, security, segmentation of the 'business', etc).
Which results in my position...
6) The whole idea that if you tax something and make it legal you will kill it off is full of crap. It made it harder for local jurisdictions to take action on MJ, increased the available market for anyone involved in the illicit supply chain, and has introduced a wider audience to a product that we should have just put/kept schedule 1 and been done with it. The secondary cost in our community, the risk that it has expanded for a lucrative market, is just too high. And poor bastards like the OP are paying the price.
Yes, opiates are a worse problem, but it may not surprise you to find out (especially those who are LE who already know) opiates, meth, MJ often end up being interrelated in the larger organizations. If you can move X, why not move Y to increase revenue and profit off of the already established transport and retail pipeline?
With the level of money involved in this "industry" - $109B in spending in the US alone on illegal drugs in 2010 - dwarfing the money in hollywood blockbuster movies ($11B/yr), and many other industries. To put that in perspective, the drug market is the size of about 1/5th the US auto sales, or about 1/3rd of the size of all online shopping in 2016. And that was in 2010 - before the spike in opiates.
With that much money, and only a relative trickle going to enforcement, is it any wonder that we see the expansion of MS-13, and other criminal organizations in sophistication and activity to capture and protect it? The scariest thing (to me) in the last 5 years has been the willingness of these organizations to pay for skills that they have never sought before - real firearms mechanics and instruction, better organization, business accounting, etc.
Good point. CJNG had a little operation get shut down where they were making CNC lowers a few years back. Never saw that before, or since for that matter..
Yep. It used to be that when a large department ran across a local gang splinter, etc, that was employing former LE, or even trained security guards that "went where the money is", that it was splashed about. Webcasts, intel bulletins, case studies were done on it, so that other departments could be aware of something that was run into. It was notable but still rare.
These days, the rarity of that kind of skill is still uneven in secondary markets, but both urban and suburban communities of most major metros have thier own stories of finding more sophisticated weaponry and equipment, as well as finding mechanisms to "train" and "qualify" thier people on countermeasures - both firearms and surveillance.
SOCOM these guys are not, generally speaking, (even when we are talking 'elites' in major metros), but some of the even basic things we have seen in recent years are scary enough. A publicly known example for instance, Gangs teaching people to look for contrast colors under the neck to use as an aiming point (under shirts of officers to target just above the vest) part of a basic elevation in firearm competency. They are getting much more sophisticated, though, in communication and surveillance. Getting onto TOR, WhatsApp and similar for comms. Starting to invest more in sophisticated cameras and DVRs for protecting of stash houses, grows, and the like. Alarms that trigger off site warnings to alert other people involved to dump evidence. The OP is not alone in hitting hte radar of some of these guys. Even police cars or investigator cars in some jurisdictions are getting targeted. Code in a break, go in to lunch at a place, and someone tried to jimmy your trunk hoping you have some hardware inside of use.
Investigations are getting more complex in the orgs above local dealer/distributor levels.
And against that, there are some awesome tools coming online at the fed level for certain parts of the police chain - drones at the border, "network investigative techniques" (aka hacking/malware plants), dedicated officers and forensics to the cyber side of things, increasing militarization of metro SWAT.
Sometimes its hard to stay positive about the future, when it seems like the good guys have to be right every time and still get blamed when the bad guys pull something awful. Plus, many aspects of what used to be called proactive policing are now decried as discrimination and unfair targeting. Statistics say X, community composition says Y, so the immediate conclusion is that the cops are bad. Can't get squeezed on funding, caught in some community growth or retraction, have little depth in cyber, and still expect local departments to come out on top every time.
Makes a pretty good reason both Civilians and LE need to have good access to effective semi-auto rifles with high capacity magazines, for when they happen to run into these scum.
Denver is a vibrant, diverse community. Diversity of course makes us stronger. Latino gang violence, you fool, is caused by poor White America's drug addiction, and Latino toxic masculinity. And Black crime, by the way, is caused by White Privilege, but I digress....
The overlords who control our universities, the news media, movies, television, and social media reletlessly promote these absurd ideas. These ideas must be resisted, but that is a topic for another day, and probably not appropriate for discussion here on the Hide.
So yes, move to a place with fewer POC's. Simple.
On a side note, there's an AW ban in Denver that's been in force for 10 +/- years, so I dunno why anyone who is a gun guy, er, firearms enthusiast, would choose to live there, for this reason alone.
Good luck...
The overlords who control our universities, the news media, movies, television, and social media reletlessly promote these absurd ideas. These ideas must be resisted, but that is a topic for another day, and probably not appropriate for discussion here on the Hide.
So yes, move to a place with fewer POC's. Simple.
On a side note, there's an AW ban in Denver that's been in force for 10 +/- years, so I dunno why anyone who is a gun guy, er, firearms enthusiast, would choose to live there, for this reason alone.
Good luck...
Granted I know this was across the border, but regardless, to support your examples - see here:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2013/01/more-on-los-zeta-radio-network.html
And what I mentioned earlier.. pretty impressive all things considered IMO:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2015/06/cartel-gunsmiths.html
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