EXAMPLES ON WHY YOUNG ADULTS JOIN STREET GANGS: • Street Gangs promise to provide a sense of camaraderie, friendship and family, as members establish a strong loyalty to its alliances. • Members experience false sense of success and confidence within the gang, as street gangs promote power and wealth. • Security and protection becomes a factor, as respect, fear and recognition are gained by joining. • Members are sometimes born into families and neighborhoods that identify with the gangster lifestyle. • Members are influenced through false role models, as they look up to gang leaders and elders to provide missing life values. • Threat of bodily injury or death to individuals and/or their immediate friends or family for refusing to join a gang. UNIVERSAL STREET GANGS IDENTIFIERS & WARNING SIGNS: • Self-admission • Gang specific body markings: tattoos, burns and brandings. • Possession of gang specific paraphernalia that is solely identified within gang specific groups through display of colors, reading materials, graffiti, clothing and/or symbiology. • Association with identified and active street gangs and/or associated members. • Observation of unexpected new friends, money and expensive clothing and/or electronics. • Signs of physical altercations and/or possession of weapons. • Unexpected trouble with law enforcement, school attendance and activities, distancing from family and friends and/or disregard of family rules & curfews.

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