The police set their sights on social networks to stop violent youth gangs

First from the left Alejandro Pérez, the member of a gang killed in broad daylight in the Villaverde district on April 28, 2022

Behind the deaths and violent attacks with minors and young people as protagonists there is almost always a social network.

A virtual reality in which they see, follow, mark, signify, point out, stay, and plan attacks, and which is now being specially watched by the police, with "a greater number of troops specifically dedicated to patrolling those networks”, according to police officers, apart from the massive identification raids carried out in recent months on the street.

Tik-Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter... are behind a good part of the street brawls in which violent youth groups or gangs participate, which the Ministry of the Interior has just redefined with a new ministerial order, which updates the last one, of 2014. In general, violent youth groups are understood to be “those made up of minors and young people between 14 and 30 years of age as reference ages, who may present structures of cohesion and internal discipline and whose actions sometimes lead to behaviors of violent character that generate concern and social alarm.

These are the six typologies that Interior renames and classifies:

Violent groups of the extreme right:

"Those of neo-Nazi, fascist, anti-Semitic inspiration, etc...".

Like for example Front Bastion or Social Home.

Violent groups of the extreme left and anarchists:

"Including radical squatters or anti-fascist movements, such as Yesca, Anti-Fascist Brigades, Distrito14, Izquierda Castellana, Madrid Anti-Repression Movement (MAR)...

Violent groups of Latin group reference:

"Gangs created in the likeness or inspiration of those that operate in Ibero-American countries, imported from those countries and that are currently made up of members regardless of their ethnic or national origin."

Mainly now the Trinitarios, the Dominican Don't Play and the Blood predominate, although before they were the Ñetas and the Latin King.

Violent groups in sports:

"In which violence is part of the lifestyle of the most fanatical supporters of sports teams, especially that which takes place on the occasion of football matches."

There are the Bukaneros (Rayo Vallecano), Biris (Sevilla), Ultrasur (Real Madrid), Atlético de Madrid Front, Boixos Nois (Barcelona), Riazor Blues (Deportivo de La Coruña)

Violent groups motivated by hate:

"That exercise violence against other people for discriminatory reasons, because they perceive them as different or vulnerable, for which reason their actions include elements compatible with hate crimes or the aggravating discrimination", such as homophobic or racist, for example.

Others:

"Those cases of eventual, sporadic or spontaneous concertation of young people to exercise violence for any of the motivations contemplated in the previous sections or that seek to exercise physical, mental or sexual violence or cause damage to collective property."

In addition, the plan redefines a second classification according to the degree of independence or autonomy of these groups.

It thus refers to "Reference Groups" as "those organizations, regional, national or international, endowed with ideological elements,

and distinctive signs of their own, with the capacity to bring together a series of" subordinate groups "such as the so-called “chapters”, in the case of Latin bands”.

It calls "Subordinate Groups" to "organized units with their own operational capacity, even acting in their territorial scope, maintain a dependency with some reference organization".

And it recognizes “independent groups”, those that act with sufficient autonomy”.

machetes and hate

The instruction does not refer, however, to one of the aspects that most concerned the agents specialized in this type of crime, which are weapons, specifically bolomachetes, which characterize the actions of Latin-inspired gangs and cause very serious injuries. serious, such as amputations of limbs, when not death.

Greater regulation of these huge knives is a historic police demand that is still up in the air, as is the inclusion as "hate crimes" of this kind of confrontation, "since it is the hatred between each other that moves these gangs, although they are not considered "vulnerable groups", police experts warn, which "would allow them to be charged with this type of crime, apart from injuries."