Local cops have been shouting it from the rooftops for years,
and with a recent rash of high-profile violence, city and county
officials finally are stepping up to jointly combat our
long-standing gang problem.
Local cops have been shouting it from the rooftops for years, and with a recent rash of high-profile violence, city and county officials finally are stepping up to jointly combat our long-standing gang problem.
But the gang problem isn’t exclusive to San Benito County, and gang members don’t recognize boundaries. Therefore, we say local officials shouldn’t stop at the county line when working to form an area gang unit – let’s try to make it a regional one.
A handful of gang-related shootings, a stabbing and a drive-by that peppered a Hollister home with 15 bullets and put one man in the hospital have spurred San Benito County and City of Hollister officials to work together to develop a program to address the violence.
The idea, recently endorsed by the Board of Supervisors, is to create a plan for a multi-jurisdictional team comprised of Hollister police, San Benito County Sheriff’s deputies, a probation officer and district attorney prosecutor dedicated to combating gang violence.
It’s a great start. However, surrounding areas like Salinas, Watsonville, Gilroy and Morgan Hill have their fair share of gang-related violence, and law enforcement officials have made it clear gang members travel all over the Central Coast committing crimes.
Salinas Police Sgt. Matt Maldonado with the Violent Suppression Unit told the Free Lance last month that gang members often travel from city to city carrying out their crimes because the police presence is lower in towns like Hollister.
In order to fight the problem effectively, we need to fight it regionally.
We would like to see our top cops lead the way in that fight by producing a proposal to unite law enforcement agencies around the Central Coast to create a gang unit similar to the Unified Narcotics Enforcement Team, which concentrates on drug-related crimes.
That does not mean San Benito County should not continue to work on a local gang unit and pursue outside funding to hire new officers to fill it.
It’s a good plan that we hope will lead to bigger and better regional gang solutions, and officials should make it their No. 1 priority and see it through to the end.
