Professor says shootings not tied to gangs

Published 12:00 am Friday, June 21, 2002

Police sources are mixed in opinion about drive-by shootings in Selma on Tuesday. Some say gangs are involved; others say they are not.

According to information obtained by sources close to the investigation, the shootings occurred because two opposing groups, comprised of several individuals, are currently having an ongoing dispute with one another.

The dispute, they say, has led to several incidents, including shootings and various other types of criminal activity.

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According to Dr. Jimmy Williams, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, there is no clear consensus in the literature on the definition of a gang.

Williams noted, however, that there are many different types of gangs.

According to literature written by the Gang Crime Prevention Center, an organization based in Illinois, “street gangs exhibit varying degrees of structure, organization, and cohesion.”

The literature states that “some gangs have the characteristics of formal organizations, such as charters, by-laws, constitutions, and rituals for initiation and graduation.”

However, it further states that “most gangs have few of these organizational attributes; they are instead collections of weakly bonded young people, who operate according to casual, informal and largely unspoken/unwritten rules.”

The literature adds that “because the street gang varies so much across place and time, it is hard to define – and therefore identify – precisely and accurately.”

Williams, when told by the Times-Journal about some of the suspects police have arrested in the shooting incidents, said he thought the incidents were not gang related. The reason, he said, was because some of the suspects were relatives.

“When there are members of a family who are involved together, I would really not say that this is a gang,” Williams said. “A gang,” he added, “usually forms in a particular neighborhood and consists of a whole bunch of different individuals coming together in that particular neighborhood. This to me doesn’t really sound like a gang.”