18th Street gang, also known as M18, Calle 18, Barrio 18, La18 or Mara-18 in Central America, is a multi-ethnic transnational criminal organization that started as a street gang in the Rampart area of Los Angeles, California. They are considered to be the largest transnational criminal gang in Los Angeles and it is estimated that there are tens of thousands of members in Los Angeles County alone. Their wide-ranging activities and elevated status has even caught the eye of the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who recently initiated wide-scale raids against known and suspected gang members netting hundreds of arrests across the country. The FBI has documented close to 65,000 active gang members and they are active in 120 cities in 37 U.S. states.
Read more about 18th Street Gang: History, Location, Culture, Criminal Activity
Famous quotes containing the words street and/or gang:
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men Gang aft agley;
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)