Cops To Gangs: Stop The Killing--Or Else

By Anna Deem in News on Aug 28, 2010 6:30PM

On Aug. 17, as part of the Chicago Gang Violence Reduction Initiative, Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis and other law enforcement officials held a meeting at the Garfield Park Conservatory with leaders of multiple West Side street gangs to deliver a message. "They said they would get us if we don't stop the killing," Labar "Bro Man" Spann, a Four Corner Hustlers gang leader who attended the meeting, said to the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Every law enforcement agency was there to show we're on the same team," one law enforcement source said to the Sun-Times. "It's a new approach. We're telling these guys: 'you got to cut the violence -- or else. The first gang that kills somebody, we will go full barrel after your whole gang.'" Not only will authorities make leaders' lives miserable by doing routine things like towing their cars for parking violations or increasing parole visits, but they will also try and help them by getting them information about jobs, the source revealed.

The meeting on Aug. 17 is apparently the first in a series of meetings prompted by the success of the same approach in Boston and other cities, sources said to the Sun-Times.