Ex soviet block street gangs dont have easy access to firearms. Yes real organized crime have all the cool toys but general street hustling punks not as much. Not so in the us
Which is nice because then you get a super easy way to arrest them. It's much easier to arrest a gang member for having a weapon than catching them on the act. It is very common in Europe.
Reminds me of scenes from a Russian TV series about life in Moscow under Stalin. At any moment a bunch of guys dressed in black could burst in, arrest people, cart away papers etc. and there was no recourse. This was the NKVD, later called the KGB.
Unfortunately, eventually the criminal gangs discovered that they could do the same thing, and since their victims thought they were cops, the criminals got away with murder, intimidation, etc. After the fall of the Soviet Union, these criminals became known as the Russian Mafia and exported their criminal operations to more lucrative countries like the USA where they still operate today.
How hard is it for modern criminals to get a hold of uniforms and vehicles to impersonate a police SWAT team?
Didn't the gangs in for instance L.A. start using guns and selling drugs after they got Vietnam veterans in their ranks who had experience with all of that?
(Makes one wonder what chickens will come home to roost in Russia eventually.)
If their organization was legal like NRA which is millions of people that would be something else. A gang is a criminal org so while many carry weapons their main goal is to expand the empire and make money.
Poland here - we also had issues with gangs and organised crime after collapse of communist government. It took few years for situation to stabilise, but then we got rid of gangs with legal system and police. So it looks a little bit weird that USA with older systems and democracy (not to mention better armed police) can't won with organised crime.
>we don't have violent criminal gangs, almost at all.
On the contrary, we have plenty of violent crime clans (mostly gypsy), they just don't use firearms but have no issue threatening you and your family or beating you into submission with melee weapons or bare hands/feet if you stand in the way of their (mostly) illegal activities while the local police, even when they're not on their payroll, are toothless thanks to the poorly defined laws and they can't, or simply can't be bothered to take much action against them unless they commit some extremely violent acts that get lots of media coverage for which higher levels of government are called for accountability.
There's also a difference in the way organized crime manifests itself. Kidnapping schemes can't really exist for organized crime in the developed countries. The state security forces would stomp them out too quickly.
"Anyway, I also can't understand how any gangs are still alive in the USA in our time. Even my shittiest country eliminated all of them in the 90s, so are Russia and other CIS countries. You can find many documentation films about that on youtube. There is almost nothing left except massive graveyards of dead criminals with funny grave tomb pictures like "sitting in my first Mercedes Benz with a gun, cool guy.""
The U.S. has the rule of law, due process, innocent until proven guilty, etc.
In rx soviet block saying "it's like Chicago" here when there was some sort of crime spree going on was very common and still is. Maybe because of old gangsters, not sure.
But it sure was exotic seeing American music coming and videos talking about murder and shooting like it's a cool thing.
At least in Russia law enforcement and organized crime are fully integrated. People join police instead of gangs if the want to get into extortion and racket. When clans clash, you can see rooms full of money in a colonel’s house that would put a drug lord to shame. And prison culture might be getting less popular, but it still has a strong presence.
The head capos might have some smarts, in a cunning sort of way. But the footsoldiers and unaffiliated who get into gunfights on public streets? Not so smart. Disorganized American urban criminals aren't at the level of Al-Qaeda or the Mafia.
It's a lot easier to not shoot someone or get into violent crime in general when you have the option of just taking government assistance and trying to better yourself.
In the US, because of obscene paperwork and often actively hostile to poverty policies, it might be easier to just join a gang to survive.
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