Going after street gangs

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State Attorney General Henry McMaster announced at the close of the year plans to use the multijurisdictional state grand jury as a crime fighting tool against the growing problem of street gangs in South Carolina.

When warranted, the state grand jury could prove to be a valuable tool in compelling typically tight-lipped gang members to testify about their organizations and leadership. According to McMaster, 95 percent of gang activity involves drugs, a category of crime the state grand jury is authorized to prosecute.

But there is no consensus on how large, entrenched or serious the gang problem is in South Carolina. So the state grand jury's role in gang prosecutions is still unclear. McMaster is responding to this fact: gang-related crime jumped from 370 incidents in 2002 to 522 incidents in 2003, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. SLED says there are 84 groups in South Carolina that have been identified as gangs. But the definition of a gang in South Carolina — an organized criminal group of three or more people who commit crimes such as murder, kidnapping, robbery and aggravated assault — sheds little light on whether these are just groups of criminals or whether they are hard-core, highly organized crime syndicates.

So clearly this state needs to get a handle on its gang problem and define in detail what state and local law enforcement are up against. Perhaps a good place to start is the Criminal Gang Prevention Act, prefiled by West Columbia Republican Sen. Jake Knotts. It is certainly not a perfect bill. But the Legislature could use it to develop a more relevant definition of a gang and gang member. The bill outlines how the state should go about identifying gang members. It sensibly calls for prison and jail officials to report to local law enforcement the release of gang members from custody.

A fear among opponents in the General Assembly of such labeling is that a too-broad definition would burden youthful and first-time offenders with an undeserved stigma. Another fear is that ordering law enforcement to identify gang members would open the door to controversial racial profiling. Address those concerns, and this could become a strong bill.

Recent incidents of shocking violence tied to gangs provide the most compelling evidence that South Carolina cannot afford to let this problem fester without taking action to head it off. In Columbia, a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old were killed by a purported gang member as they stood outside an apartment complex in August. The groups and individuals who trade in this sort of senseless violence must be identified.

It's encouraging to see McMaster recognize the gang problem. But the state as a whole, especially the General Assembly, has much more work to do.