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Is Internet gang banging replacing the corners?
Today,teenagers are consumed with social media. According to the Washington Post, teens spend approximately 71/2 hours on just media,whether watching television, listening to the radio, talking on the phone, or surfing social media sites.
Though most teenagers use social media for socializing and having fun, there is a dark side. Gang members today are using social media sites, Twitter, facebook, Instagram, and FaceTime to glorify and carry out crimes that they have committed and to taunt other gang members.
Officer Denise Gathings at the 2nd district CAPS meeting in April said “They don’t fight in the streets no more.” They are bringing the violence to the internet. Earlier this year a young man was killed on the South Side and, according to Gathings,pictures of his dead body were posted on the facebook before his parents were notified.
Joseph Coleman,also known as Lil Jojo, was shot last year in Englewood neighborhood over tweets he sent out earlier that day. According to police, there was a war of words going on the social media site twitter just months before. When the shooting happened, Chicago rapper, Keith Cozart, also known as Chief Keef, went to Twitter to glorify the shooting of Lil Jojo. Later on that day Chief Keef claimed that his Twitter account was hacked.
“Internet banging is just a term we coin to refer to the way gang members use twitter to kind of initiate violence, also to organize certain acts of violence,” said Robert Eschmann
Eschmann, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, was one of the co-authors on the paper, “Internet banging: New trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity, and hip hop”. He seems to have a different view on what really causes gang members to use the internet and why they use it.
It is unclear if internet banging involves only males or any ethnic group, but Robert Eschmann firmly believes that African Americans have been stereotyped and there are kids in the suburbs who aspire to become rappers like Chief Keef and no one seems to make the same remarks towards them.
“Sometimes internet banging comes as a result of someone being punked online, feeling like it could result to real world violence,” said Eschmann.
According to Eschmann,many times people who are on the internet,internet banging, are not actually gang members, but they want to seem tough to other gang members. Also, with social media sometimes being anonymous, it’s easier for real gang members to sell drugs and it’s harder for police officers to track them.
The laws are harder to enforce on younger gang members. The older gang members are the ones who stay clear of social media because they know the dangers of getting caught by the police.
Jesse Garnica owns a liquor store in the 2nd district. He is very involved in the community and CAPS meetings. “ The laws don’t work on the young ones.” says Jesse Garnica.
Tony Newman, a cadet for the Chicago Police Department, attends beat meetings and helps track gang activity on the internet. Newman is also part of the drug and narcotics and gang unit. Newman believes that gang banging has not really changed since the beginning, just the way people go about it.
“ As far a twitter and instagram, they continue to upload pictures of guns and continue to post pictures of them holding guns so nothing has really changed.” says Newman.