Gang investigations, particularly those involving community-rooted street gangs, are a significant priority for many LEAs, even in relatively small population centers. Street gangs contribute significantly to actual crime as well as the perception of crime in areas where they’re well-established. This can erode public confidence in both policing and municipal leadership, which in turn increases pressure on LEAs to produce results.
The rise of social media platforms was a boon for organized gangs, making it easier for them to recruit and socialize new members, project strength and menace to the community at large, and actively coordinate their criminal activities. However, it also represented a point of vulnerability, as LEAs no longer needed to rely on confidential informants or risky undercover work to penetrate gangs. Advanced social media intelligence (SOCIMINT) tools can now make a criminal investigation of gangs into a relatively methodical, informed, and routine matter when employed judiciously.
Defining a “Gang” for Prosecution Purposes
While specific anti-gang legislation varies by jurisdiction, typically, three elements must be established for a gang prosecution to succeed. These are:
- Association: Investigators and prosecutors must show that at least three or more of the accused have an ongoing association, with criminal acts being among their primary activities.
- A common identity: The members of the gang must share a common name, sign, or visible identity. This can be expressed by the wearing of specific colors or insignia (well-known in the case of motorcycle gangs), or specific hand signs or gestures that are unique to that specific gang.
- Ongoing criminal activity: Investigators and prosecutors must demonstrate that the group engages in ongoing criminal activity. A group of teens on a window-smashing spree does not rise to this standard; that same group of teens conspiring to traffic in drugs or engaging in auto theft might.
While criminal activity gives gangs a focus and purpose, at the core they exist as a social group. Gang members find community, camaraderie, status, and a sense of shared identity from their affiliation. In short, gang membership in its perverse way offers the same sense of fraternity that can be similarly found in more legitimate institutions like team sports, military service, and even policing itself.
Like other social groups, many gangs make extensive use of social media and messaging platforms for both informal communications — the kind shared by any participants active on the platform — as well as messages related directly to criminal acts. Investigators armed with modern SOCMINT tools can make use of both types of communications to drive a gang investigation.
Establishing Association in a Gang Investigation
Social media posts can play a strong role in establishing an association between suspected members of a gang. In one pioneering example of social media investigation from 2008, police in Cincinnati, Ohio, partnered with the University of Cincinnati to map associations between suspected members of a gang calling itself the Northside Taliband (sic).
Researchers from the University’s Institute of Crime Science created a database that was then used to centrally catalog and analyze every interaction between police and gang members. This revealed patterns of connection between the gang members, enabling investigators to differentiate between active members and those whose connection to the group was social or peripheral. Cincinnati police then focused on social media posts by the active members, uncovering evidence that ultimately resulted in 71 arrests, multiple convictions, and the functional dissolution of the gang.
This investigation predated the full rise of social media; Facebook itself had only been open to the public at large for two years at the time. The use of SOCMINT was correspondingly primitive, with investigators manually harvesting the data and their university partners creating a custom database from scratch, but as a proof of concept, it was persuasive. Modern tools such as Spokeo for Law Enforcement can now provide broader access to public social media information off the shelf, streamlining this type of intelligence-gathering and placing it within the grasp of resource-limited LEAs.
Establishing Group Identity In a Gang Investigation
One core aspect of a gang’s identity is its name and its means of projecting membership and representation (in marketing circles, this might be characterized as “branding”). Scrutinizing social media posts by known or suspected gang members works in two ways. First, it enables investigators to screen for known signifiers of gang membership. Second, it serves an intelligence role in helping identify evolving vocabulary, hand signals, or physical trappings that are associated with specific gangs.
Establishing Criminality in a Gang Investigation
Establishing that a given group of individuals is in fact a gang for legal purposes also requires proof of active, ongoing criminality. Openly posting about criminal acts on a publicly viewable platform appears (and is) foolish, and does simplify the investigative process when it occurs. Still, this course of action is not entirely pointless from the gangs’ perspective.
Gang members’ posts on social media are often intended to intimidate rivals or potential witnesses, to project strength and menace, or to organize either attackers or defenders in the case of conflict with another group. Deliberately posting about criminal activity, or making overt threats, satisfies the former requirements, while open calls to action at a specific time and place fulfill the latter.
A post by an individual bragging about a crime can yield a prosecution for that specific crime. But aggregating such posts over a period of time, and linking them to corresponding posts from other gang members, can establish the pattern of ongoing collective criminality necessary for a gang prosecution to succeed.
Putting the Pieces Together Using SOCMINT
As a state-of-the-art SOCMINT tool, Spokeo for Law Enforcement provides the advanced search tools necessary to pull together the pieces of the puzzle. An investigation can be jump-started, if necessary, with as little as a single piece of data: a name, a phone number, an email address, or even a pseudonymous social media username.
Typing that information into Spokeo’s easy, intuitive search interface returns available data connected to the subject of that first search, potentially including potential aliases and known associates, family members, current and former physical addresses, criminal records where they exist, and – most important for the purposes of our current discussion – social media profiles. Social media is a specific strength of Spokeo’s product, searching 120+ separate platforms at the time of writing.
As one detective at a sheriff’s department in the Southeast explained:
“I’ve been using Spokeo for years. It truly has been a success for both narcotics and gang cases that resulted in arrests and or convictions. Spokeo’s key benefits stem from their ability to tell me the connections between individuals with names, telephone numbers, addresses, and social media accounts. Because individuals brag about what they have done on social media, we use social media to gather evidence and to identify other associates that are involved, as well.”
Oversight and Accountability are Required
Few aspects of law enforcement are straightforward, and gang investigations are no exception. The social aspect of gang life provides a useful example. While many of the youths interacting with known gang members are themselves active participants in criminal activity, others may simply be longtime acquaintances, neighbors, or family members. The National Gang Center points out that many dabble in the gang lifestyle only briefly, or join purely for the perceived security of belonging to a gang. Researchers have also demonstrated that some youths make a show of gang support or membership as “protective coloration.”
In short, data from SOCMINT sources, however compelling to investigators, may best be treated as a tool for triggering more conventional investigative techniques – a tips-to-leads approach. A social media post that apparently contradicts a suspect’s alibi, for example, might justify the use of a subpoena to retrieve location data for the suspect’s phone from the carrier.
Various organizations have proposed codes of conduct or best practices for the use of social media by LEAs, though no consensus has been reached on standards for such investigative activity. That lack of consensus does not mean that individual investigations or prosecutions can not, or will not, be challenged by defense attorneys or civil liberties groups. Cases adjudged to have infringed on constitutional rights to freedom of speech or assembly, for example, may result in dismissals or overturned convictions.
Overseeing and documenting investigators’ use of social media can help mitigate against such challenges. Law Enforcement professionals have their departments’ processes and procedures around evidence gathering and maintaining chain of custody that help to preserve social media intel and its integrity in the case. For Spokeo for Law Enforcement, its easy-to-use dashboard provides LEA leadership team with the ability to monitor its investigators’ activity and searches, providing both transparency and accountability.
Incorporating SOCMINT Into the Investigative Workflow
Technology upgrades are problematic in many professions, given the frequent necessity for additional hardware or IT resources, the need for ongoing training, and innate resistance to change from front-line personnel. Incorporating SOCMINT into the investigative workflow, however, does not necessarily require LEAs to face those obstacles.
Spokeo provides a simple, intuitive interface that enables even technology-averse investigators to learn the product’s functionality and successfully carry out searches with minimal assistance. The training and support offered by Spokeo during the onboarding process bring most investigators up to speed quickly.
To speak to our team, arrange a demonstration, or set up a no-cost trial of the product on your own premises, reach out to us using the contact information on our Law Enforcement page.
Sources
Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions; Jeffrey Lane, et al.; Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 23, Issue 6, November 2018, Pages 354–369
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Gazette: Gangs Have a Lot to Share: Cincinnati Police Found Out how Much, using Social Media
Encyclopedia Britannica: Facebook
National Gang Center: Frequently Asked Questions
Georgia Law Review: #Guilty: The Exploitation of Social Media in Georgia Gang Cases and a Call for Change
Brennan Center for Justice: Principles for Social Media Use by Law Enforcement