BROKEN ALLEGIANCE (A Tom Kagan Novel) has been unleashed

By Mark Young

Stop the presses! I completely forget to share my latest bit of news. I have a new novel out!

Can you believe I forget to tell you about this? I have been so busy working on my next novel, posting other authors’ new releases and other blog-related interviews—I completely forget to let you know about my own novel.

I apologize.

Release of Broken Allegiance (A Tom Kagan Novel) may be known to those of you who pal around with me on other social media sites. However, I just realized that some of my reading friends might only cross paths here on Hook'em & Book'em. They may not know that another of my mystery, suspense, police procedural novels has been let loose on the world.

Here is the down-and-dirty:

Police gang detective Tom Kagan sought justice for more than ten years, leaving him a broken man. His only reason for living—the woman he loves and the badge he swore to uphold. When a man is brutally killed in a vineyard on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, California, it sparks a series of events that test what’s left of Kagan’s resolve to protect and serve. 

Secrets from the past thwart Kagan’s efforts to unravel a series of killings sanctioned from within the walls of California’s highest security prison. From the lush vineyards of Sonoma County to the shores of beautiful Lake Tahoe, the detective must outsmart a killer who is moving in for one epic killing spree. 

Leaders of the notorious Nuestra Family prison gang are fighting for power, a struggle that spills out onto the streets of California. Kagan joins forces with Special Agent Hector Garcia, a feisty supervisor of the Special Services Unit for the California Department of Corrections; Diane Phillips, a beautiful and hard-charging prosecutor; and Mikio Sanchez, a former gang member marked for death. Through the eyes of cops and gangsters, readers are able to glimpse the seldom seen workings of the gangster underworld. 

Broken Allegiance is about treacherous lies, broken promises, and shattered lives—about life, death and a man’s honor.

Does this pique your interest? If so, you can find a copy of Broken Allegiance through Amazon’s Kindle Store here or in print through Createspace here.

Grab a copy. A sequel will be coming out right on its heels. Next time, I will be a little quicker letting you know when another novel is released.

Promise! Cross my heart and hope to… Huh, I think I’ll stop right there. After all, I do write crime novels.

Making Of A Gangster

A Smile, A War, 
A Boy Named Bobby

By Mark Young

Caution: This is not an uplifting article. It is a story about a war I witnessed on the streets of California, a gang war in one small part of the Golden State that still rages today. A story of regret and sadness. A story of lost opportunities. I can’t possibly give readers a full perspective of that struggle—just a few sketches of one face and one battle. The cost—more than dollars and cents— is staggering.

Splotches of darkening blood marked a grisly trail into the hospital. A car—windows shattered, doors pox-marked with bullet holes—blocked the driveway leading into Kaiser Hospital’s emergency room in Santa Rosa, California. I followed the trail of blood inside the hospital and saw several young boys writhing in pain. Doctors labored over one teenager’s leg, a tibia bone shattered by a through-and-through AK47 round. Later, physicians wondered if the boy might ever use that leg again.

It was 1997. Thousands of gang members continued to wage a war that began years ago in California, a war handed down from father to son, from one generation to the next. Battlegrounds scarred this state, from streets of Los Angeles to the Central Valley of Northern California. The war broadened in scope to seep into every pour of our nation, from one ocean to the other.  Beginning in the early nineties, gangsters deemed illegal aliens were deported to their mother country only to return with international connections, bringing with them drugs, weapons, and human slaves.

I supervised Santa Rosa Police Department’s gang intelligence unit at the time, working with other officers to find a way to mange this chaos. We had to find a way to turn this tide. Our gang officers could not keep up with the violence, quickly reaching burn out. We took to the street, targeting gang problem areas and eliminating the influence of gang leaders by returning them to prison. We thought if we cut the head off this monster, the tentacles would dry up and die.

The shooting on this particular night led us to the doorstep of a young boy living in the midst of all this violence. I’ll call him  “Bobby”  in order to protect his true identity. Bobby’s smile made angels sit up and take notice, a smile that worked its way into the hearts of more than one gang officer. Bobby—on his tip-toes—may have been slightly higher than my gun belt. He seemed to admire police officers, although given his family history I could never figure out why.

Bobby’s natural father was history, and the current ‘man of the house’was a gang leader from Southern California, who migrated north to extend Surenos gang influence in our city among other goals. Nortenos—Northerners—felt they ruled everything north of the Tehachapi mountains. Bobby and his family—because his stepdad claimed Sureno allegiance—became natural targets for all Nortenos in Sonoma County. In retaliation, Bobby’s stepdad and other Surenos plotted to attack these Nortenos and the war escalated.

We began to untangle this shooting case, uncovering layer upon layer of lies, until we learned that a young girl smuggled the murder weapon right under the noses of a couple of officers patrolling a project earlier that night. She looked young and innocent, which is why Sureno gangsters had her smuggle the weapons to where they needed it. They ambushed a car coming out of a housing project, catching all four Norteno victims trapped inside at a stop sign. Miraculously, no one died.

This attack led to retribution and retaliation, over and over again. This war continued throughout  the summer, barely abating until I left law enforcement.

It continues today.

Each battle spilled out onto the street over the slightest provocation.  One youngster “mad dogging” another was sufficient reason to attack—even kill—another gang member. Damaged pride—“because he dissed me"—gave the injured party a legitimate excuse to fan more flames of violence. It became like the ocean driven by a major storm, each wave crashing on the shore with more force than the last.

We never had enough resources or manpower to handle this turmoil, let alone a little boy named “Bobby” caught up in the generational conflict between gangs. The department tried to muster up what we needed, but it never was enough. Changing priorities, changing budgets, and political infighting always seemed to stand in the way.

Looking back, I wished we could have made a difference in just that one boy’s life. It might have made everything else easier to stomach. Bobby seemed to lose the day I met him. We tried alerting school contacts, youth workers, and other groups to no avail. Everyone found themselves  in the same position we were in—trying to bail out a sinking ship.

Years slipped away. I ran into Bobby from time to time as he grew up. Frustrated, I watched as this boy was chased from school to school, neighborhood to neighborhood, because of family gang ties. The only protection he seemed to find was aligning himself with other gang members.

Meanwhile, the gang war took all our attention. The county in which we worked looked peaceful. Nestled amidst wine vineyards, pastureland, and the beautiful Pacific Ocean, Sonoma County looked the ideal place to live to tourists and visitors traveling through. And, for many people, it was a great place to live.

But if one looked closer, they’d see the footprints of trouble. Gang graffiti going up faster than workers could cover it up. Sirens howling thorough the night as patrol units knifed through the darkness to another gang call. Emergency rooms routinely filled with wounded as doctors and nurses tried to patch up  the wounded and dying.

In all this, I lost track of Bobby. The community tried to rally together, creating coalitions targeting the gang violence, trying to work at the root causes of the problem—dysfunctional families, unsafe neighborhoods, poor housing, rising living costs, and rising unemployment.

Meanwhile, the gang unit launched a successful operation, dubbed Operation Black Widow, to attack at least one side of the gang problem—Norteno gang leadership developing throughout Northern California. In a county like Sonoma—with a little less than a half million population—police indentified and targeted more than 1,500 certified gang members in our county alone. The problem became much worse in other areas of Northern California. And, of course, Southern California suffered under an even larger gang problem.

Operation Black Widow and other successful gang efforts brought a short reprieve to the violence, but I saw political interest wane towards gang enforcement as violence lessened. Resources began to trickle in more politically-correct directions.

I was reassigned to work patrol as a supervisor, following calls, helping officers when possible, and watching the gang problem worsen. It seemed unrelenting.

Gang violence returned with a vengeance.

Bobby’s picture floated across my desk just before I left the department, his face scarred from violence. I saw the hardened eyes of a gang leader looking back, a young man bound for prison, the next stop in a gangster’s higher education. The streets finally won. Another young man destined for a life in prison—or worse.

I look back on those years working gangs with a certain sense of loss. Early on we had the potential to make things right, to effectively target gang leadership, to bring a community together, to save some of these young people from the gangs. However, politics and the economy got in the way.The cost of that war sickens me. More than the money, we wasted opportunities to offer a future to these youth.

Most of all, I remember Bobby’s smile, lost somewhere along the road to adulthood.

Today, the best I can do is to weave Bobby’s story into a novel that tries to make sense of of this mess. To somehow make the characters come alive with the reality of Bobby’s world. To help others understand why something must to be done. Before more smiles are lost. Before more kids like Bobby are lost to the streets.

Gangs

Part I—Gang Investigations

Interview: Brian Parry
Consultant, FBI's National Gang Intelligence Center

My friend Brian Parry is currently a consultant  with the FBI’s National Gang Intelligence Center in Washington D.C.; and serves on the Executive Leadership Counsel—National Major Gang Task Force, providing direction and assistance to informational gang task forces representing fifty states, Canada and Puerto Rico.  Brian retired as Assistant Director of the California Department of Corrections in 2002, after thirty years of service. During his tenure at CDC, he supervised over one hundred staff members in eight field office and gang investigators in thirty-three prisons. These special agents handled investigations of parole violators, gang members, narcotics trafficking and apprehended fugitives. In addition, these agents conducted threat assessments, investigated officer-involved shootings, provided executive protection, and staffed the department’s criminal intelligence unit. Brian worked his way up the ranks of CDC, starting as a parole agent on the streets of Southern California. He brings a lifetime of experience to bear upon criminal prison gang investigations.

Gang violence has been the staple of many television shows, movies and novels over the years. One has only to pick up today’s newspaper or click on today’s news show to see some form of gang activity surfacing in our cities. Killings, robberies, drug rips. As a nation, we’ve almost grown to accept this gang epidemic as the cost of living here—unless you happen to live in one of the neighborhoods plagued by these thugs, become a victim of their violence, or become one of those on the thin blue line trying to protect us from them.

This will be the first of a two-part interview. Today we will focus on the challenges faced by law enforcement on the national and international level pertaining to prison gangs and criminal street gangs, and the transmigration of these organizations across our national borders. Since the early 1990s, when law enforcement began ejecting known gang members — illegally in the U.S.— back to their native countries, a crisis began developing which has spread across national borders. These gang members — who acquired their criminal skills on the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York— learned to cross national borders with their expertise and language skill. They are returning in growing numbers, bringing their drugs, human trafficking victims, and violence back to our cities.

Part II of this interview will focus on state and regional issues pertaining to prison gangs, and their affect on our communities.

Brian, it is a pleasure to have you visit us here today and provide us with insight into a growing national and international problem—transmigration of criminal gangs between nations. 

Q:  Many of our readers are writers and readers of mystery crime fiction. This fiction, however, is often based upon real life situations within our society, events we read or listen to on the news. With that in mind, what do you see as one of the most pressing issues regarding prison and street gangs on the national level?

PARRY: There are a couple of very pressing issues on the national level. The first one being the increased level of violence by gangs. The violence is fueled by the transportation and selling of drugs. The profits from drug sales is contributing to the increased competition and control of drugs in this country. Gangs and drugs go hand in hand. The second issue is gang migration. A number of prison systems are dominated by gangs from Los Angeles and Chicago. They in turn control street gangs. The third is the street gang imitation of Los Angeles based gangs. The Sureno gangs have proliferated across the country. Most of them are not from Los Angeles but are imitating the LA gangs.

Q: Tell us a about the FBI’s National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC). What is its purpose? Who is involved? What do they hope to achieve?

PARRY: The NGIC is a multi-agency organization designed to support on- going investigative and prosecution efforts of gangs across the country. The NGIC is run by the FBI but consists of nine federal law enforcement agencies including ATF, DEA, US Marshalls, Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Prison, US Army and others. The NGIC has three components: Intelligence, investigative and prosecution. The basic idea behind the forming of the NGIC was to coordinate and support a national effort to reduce violent gang crime by sharing gang intelligence and by providing investigative and prosecutorial support to agencies.

Q:  What are NGIC’s day-to-day operations like? If I was writing a novel and trying to capture my protagonist in this organization, what might I want to put down on paper?

PARRY: The NGIC is collecting intelligence on the most violent gangs in the country on a daily basis. This information is shared on a need to know basis. There are intelligence analysts assigned to the most violent gangs in the country. They collect intelligence from a number of sources and distribute the information. There are agents assigned to support and de-conflict active investigations. The lawyers provide additional support.

Q:  In your role as a consultant to the FBI’s NGIC, what do you see as challenges faced by this group in terms of prison and criminal street gangs? Other challenges?

PARRY: The challenges are many. There is an overwhelming amount of information about gangs. This information has to be gathered, analyzed and disseminated in a timely manner. There is no one national data base for prison and street gang information. And there are so many different and incompatible data bases in the country it is difficult to share the information electronically. And of course the fear that some intelligence will not be shared or the dots connected in a timely manner in order to prevent a violent act.

Q:  Can you share some of the successes of NGIC? Specific cases?

PARRY: In general terms the NGIC has supported a number of large, complex investigations of gangs that are considered transnational, meaning they operate in several states and in some foreign countries.

Q:  How did this transmigration-of-gangs problem come to be? Is it a global threat?

PARRY: Gang members started migrating to locate new areas for drug markets. Gangs are a global threat. There are outlaw motorcycle gangs operating across the world. There are several gangs operating in Central and South America. There are Asian gangs involved in drug trafficking and in human trafficking throughout the world with connections in the US.