Cartels & Gangs Books

By Title A, B, C Blood Sacrifices: Violent Non-State Actors and Dark Magico (2016) By Robert J. Bunker Excerpt from Amazon:  The acknowledgment that blood sacrifice, particularly human sacrifice, actively occurs in the 21st century is a pivotal triumph in scholarly research. Twenty years ago, this book could not have been published. In most universities, think tanks, and government research facilities, characterizing any type of murder as sacrificial was viewed at best as a secondary motive and at worst as junk science. - Dr. Dawn Perlmutter" Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars (2011) By Sylvia Longmire  Excerpt from Amazon: Having followed Mexico's cartels for years, border security expert Sylvia Longmire takes us deep into the heart of their world to witness a dangerous underground that will do whatever it takes to deliver drugs to a willing audience of American consumers. The cartels have grown increasingly bold in recent years, building submarines to move up the coast of Central America and digging elaborate tunnels that both move drugs north and carry cash and U.S. high- powered assault weapons back to fuel the drug war. Channeling her long experience working on border issues, Longmire brings to life the very real threat of Mexican cartels operating not just along the southwest border, but deep inside every corner of the United States. She also offers real solutions to the critical problems facing Mexico and the United States, including programs to deter youth in Mexico from joining the cartels and changing drug laws on both sides of the border. D, E, F El Narco: The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels (2017) By Ioan Grillo Excerpt from Amazon:  'War' is no exaggeration in discussing the bloodshed that has terrorized Mexico in the past decades. As rival cartels battle for control of a billion-dollar drug trade, the body count- 23,000 dead in five years - and sheer horror beggar the imagination of journalistic witnesses. Cartel gunmen have shot up schools and rehabilitation centers, and murdered the entire families of those who defy them. Reformers and law enforcement officials have been gunned down within hours of taking office. Headless corpses are dumped on streets to intimidate rivals, and severed heads are rolled onto dancefloors as messages to would-be opponents. And the war is creeping northward. El Narco is the story of the ultraviolent criminal organizations that have turned huge areas of Mexico into a combat zone. It is a piercing portrait of a drug trade that turns ordinary men into mass murderers, as well as a diagnosis of what drives the cartels and what gives them such power. Veteran Mexico correspondent Ioan Grillo traces the gangs from their origins as smugglers to their present status as criminal empires. The narco cartels are a threat to the Mexican government, and their violence has now reached as far as North Carolina. El Narco is required reading for anyone concerned about one of the most important news stories of the decade. G The Gangs of Los Angeles By William Dunn According to the book description, The Gangs of Los Angeles describes that “there is no gang turf more desperately unique than that hidden among the 464 square miles which make up the City of Los Angeles. It is a fragile place; both tantalizing and repulsive, where wild fires can scorch hill-top celebrity homes as easily as gang members decimate a housing project with automatic rifle fire.  The Gangs of Los Angeles is a classic, real life account of American crime. From the early Tomato Gangs of 1890's Boyle Heights to the modern Crips and Mara Salvatrucha, with side trips through an Irish Dogtown, the gang wars of "Happy Valley", Sleepy Lagoon and the yellow journalism of the Hearst Press, and a tragic murder at Sunset and Vine, Dunn recounts the events and notorious denizens that spawned LA's gang subculture.”  William Dunn said of The Gangs of Los Angeles, “This book is the culmination of five years I spent researching the history of LA's gang culture. I've been a gang cop (both in a CRASH unit and as a gang detective) in this city almost two decades, and I'd heard all the urban legends about the origins of the Crips, the Bloods, White Fence, MS-13, etc. Little of it made sense, and it seemed you could ask any two OG or Veteranos the same question about their gangs past and get two separate answers. So I wanted to know what the truth was, especially after other gang investigators in other states, now being hit with our gang members who were migrating from our town to their areas, were calling me and asking me not only what we'd done to fight the gang culture, but how did it all begin. They didn't want to make the same mistakes. So I went back, into the 50', the 40's, the 30's, even back to 1892 when it all begins, to see how it started, and what the city did to suppress the gang culture, both the stuff that worked, and the stuff that didn't.  For more information about gangs you can read my other book Boot: An L.A.P.D. Officer's Rookie Year which details my first year as a street cop in South Central during the Crip and Blood wars of 1990. I will also soon be publishing a book called "The Tequila Triangle" which is a history of Mexican Border drug cartels like The Gulf, Juarez, Tijuana, Sonora, etc. Cartels; as well as the "Sicario" (assassination) groups like the Sinaloan Cowboys, Zetas and Kaibiles; and how all these organizations have corrupted and influenced Los Angeles' gang and drug culture; and where these ties could be taking our country!” Gangs and Youth Subcultures: International Explorations.  By Kayleen M. Hazlehurst, Cameron Hazlehurst Gang Life: 10 of the toughest tell their stories (2014) by Mark Totten Gringo Justice: Catholicism in American Culture By Alfredo Mirandé H, I, J Jumped In By jorja Leap K, L, M The Los Zetas Drug Cartel - Sadism as an Instrument of Cartel Warfare in Mexico and Central America (2015)   By George W. Grayson Excerpt from Amazon:The United States has diplomatic relations with 194 independent nations. Of these, none is more important to America than Mexico in terms of trade, investment, tourism, natural resources, migration, energy, and security. In recent years, narco-violence has afflicted our neighbor to the south—with more than 50,000 drugrelated murders since 2007 and some 26,000 men, women, and children missing. President Enrique Peña Nieto has tried to divert national attention from the bloodshed through reforms in energy, education, antihunger, health care, and other areas. Even though the death rate has declined since the chief executive took office on December 1, 2012, other crimes continue to plague his nation. Members of the business community report continual extortion demands; national oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) suffers widespread theft of oil, gas, explosives, and solvents (with which to prepare methamphetamines); hundreds of Central American migrants have shown up in mass graves; and the public identifies the police with corruption and villainy. A common fear of the elite and growing middle class is kidnapping. In 2012, Mexico recorded 105,000 cases; in 2013, the country led the world in abductions, surpassing such volatile nations as Afghanistan, Colombia, and Iraq.  Los Zetas, who deserted from the army’s special forces in the late-1990s, not only traffic in drugs, murder, kidnap, and raid PEMEX installations, but also involve themselves in extortion, human smuggling, torture, money laundering, prostitution, arson, prison breakouts, murder for hire, and other felonies. While consisting of only a few hundred hard core members, these paramilitaries have gained a reputation for the sadistic treatment of foes and friends—a legacy of their two top leaders, Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano Lazcano and Miguel Ángel “El 40” Treviño Morales, who thrived on beheadings, castrations, “stewing” their prey in gasoline-filled vats, and other heinous acts. They make sophisticated use of social media and public hangings to display their savagery and cow adversaries.  The reputation for the unspeakable infliction of pain has enabled these desperados to commit atrocities in a score of Mexican states, even as they expend their presence, often in league with local gangs and crime families, in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and other nations of the Americas. From their bastion in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the border from Laredo, Texas, they also acquire weapons, entrée to legal businesses, and teenage recruits. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the fiends have contracted with such outfits as the Texas Mexican Mafia prison gang, the Houston’s Tango Blast, and the McAllen, Texas-based Los Piojos to collect debts, acquire vehicles, carry out hits, and sign up thugs to fight their foes in the Matamoros-centered Gulf Cartel for which Los Zetas originally served as a Praetorian Guard.  Washington policymakers, who overwhelmingly concentrate on Asia and the Mideast, would be well advised to focus on the acute dangers that lie principally south of the Rio Grande, but whose deadly avatars are spilling into our nation. Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America (2009) P. David Gaubatz   Paul Sperry  N, O, P Nasty, Brutish and Short: The Lives of Gang Members in Canada by Mark Totten Q, R, S, T Reducing Youth Gang Violence (2007) By Irving Spergel Racketville, Slumtown, Haulburg: An Exploratory Study of Delinquent Subcultures (1964), a groundbreaking book based on his Ph.D. dissertation. By Irving Spergel U, V, W, Z Youth Gangs and Community Intervention: Research, Practice and Evidence (2010) Edited by Robert Chaskin, associate professor at SSA.  Note:  Spergel recently contributed a chapter to Youth Gangs and Community Intervention: Research, Practice and Evidence, edited by Robert Chaskin, associate professor at SSA. The book, published this year, was created from a series of papers by leading colleagues and gang researchers that were presented at a 2006 conference honoring Spergel’s retirement. (2010, from https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2010/12/08/irving- spergel-leading-scholar-gangs-1924-2010) The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach (1995) By Irving Spergel Excerpt from https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2010/12/08/irving-spergel-leading-scholar-gangs-1924-2010:    A seminal work that described a model — now commonly referred to as the Spergel model — for intervention that has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat gang violence around the country.  Spergel said of the model: “This project goes beyond traditional programs, because it facilitates communication and coordinates efforts by all the groups who want to reach out to youth who are seriously at risk of joining gangs or who are violent gang members. It provides opportunities for both adolescents and young adults in gangs to change their lives. All gang kids are not the same, and this model recognizes that and provides different solutions for different problems.”  The model calls for a coordinated effort against gangs characterized by community organization and neighborhood mobilization; social intervention, including jobs, job training and education; suppression, including arrest, incarceration and supervision; and organizational development and change.  The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention demonstrated and evaluated the model in Bloomington, Ill.; Mesa and Tucson, Ariz.; Riverside, Calif.; and San Antonio, Texas from 1992 to 1999, proving through quasi-experimental evaluations that the model was successful when correctly implemented.  In the years since, the model has been successfully implemented at five additional test sites and has been adopted by more than 20 cities around the country. The model is the central component of the National Gang Center, an OJJDP program that disseminates research on gangs and offers training and assistance to law enforcement, social workers and communities. It was later renamed the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model.