Typically free of gang-related crime, Athens County law enforcement has stepped up the learning curve to investigate a Columbus-based gang responsible for a shooting in New Marshfield.
The Hard Times Gang, mostly comprised of Somali immigrants, came to Athens County from Columbus within the past year to sell narcotics, said Detective Jerry Hallowell of the Athens County Sheriff's Office. Columbus has the country's second highest population of Somali immigrants after Minneapolis, with about 35,000 residents. The majority of immigrants are not affiliated with violent activity, but a concentrated group has experimented with raising money through illicit drugs, he added.
The gang is responsible for burglaries, firearm theft and murder in the county, Hallowell said. Phillip D. Boler, Hamda A. Jama and Mohat M. Osman were charged with murder and aggravated robbery in the shooting of Donnie Putnam, an Athens County man, outside his home.
The Athens strand of the Hard Times Gang has a slightly different procedure from the Columbus gang. In the past, violence was limited to intra-gang scuffles, and trafficked drugs, such as heroine, cocaine and prescription pills, Hallowell said.
In Athens County, the gang's drug of choice is khat (pronounced "cot"), a stimulant derived from a shrub that is chewed to create a sense of euphoria, Hallowell said.
The Hard Times Gang is the first organized group to settle in Athens to distribute narcotics that includes an interest in violence, said Hallowell, adding the Ku Klux Klan was more active in Athens County several years ago, but their demonstrations have since died down.
Hybrid gangs, which take portions of different gangs to form new groups, are more common because the Internet allows individuals to learn about national gangs without meeting a gang member, said Linda Schmidt, a member of the Ohio chapter of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association.
"Hybrid gangs will take whatever they like and make it their own," said Steve Coffman, president of the Ohio chapter of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association.
County deputies have enlisted a sting unit from Columbus, FBI, state highway and other law enforcement agencies to help them with the investigation, Hallowell said.
"This is still an investigation for us," Hallowell said. "It is expanding; that is where the use of all these agencies comes into play."
The presence of the sheriff deputies in Athens County deters gangs from forming or migrating to the area, Hallowell said. The four arrests already have depleted the gang's involvement in the county.
"We believe we took out a large portion of the cell," he said.
Ohio gangs operate in rural areas to avoid interstate highways, populated by the highly effective state highway patrol, preferring local roads similar to U.S. Route 33, said Schmidt. Rural areas are stocked with fertilizer and chemicals necessary to create drugs like methamphetamine, she added.
Gangs also migrate to rural areas because fewer law enforcement groups patrol and those that do are less educated about gang activity, said Coffman.
"They can kind of hide in plain sight," Coffman said.
Although individual gang members might have caused incidents in the city of Athens, organized gangs have not been a problem, Athens Police Chief Richard Mayer said.
Gang activity is more common in metropolitan areas with a larger portion of disenfranchised youth, Mayer said.
Gangs moved to Ohio in the early 1990s, starting with California groups, such as the Rolling 20 Crips. Then Chicago gangs moved to the area bringing their sophisticated rules, codes and symbols, Schmidt said.
More than 5,800 gangs with about 222,400 members commit crime in the Central Region, which includes Ohio, according to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment. Between 2004 and 2008, the percent of law enforcement agencies reporting gang activity in the Central Region increased from 45 percent to 55 percent. The most prevalent gangs are the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and Vice Lords, which includes mostly African-American men, according to the assessment.
Mimicking the tougher statues of states like California, "law enforcement is trying to make Ohio ... not a place to be for gangs," Schmidt said.
Source: THE POST
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