Wired.com has a must read about how social media is fueling gang warfare in Chicago.
The article points out how gang members openly flaunt the law online – posting videos and using social media to highlight illegal activity. In fact, the Chicago police department says 80% of all school disturbances result from something that happened online.
The majority of the violence isn’t strategic but results instead from petty personal exchanges. Young people in embattled Chicago neighborhoods are scared and heavily armed—police seize more guns than the NYPD and LAPD combined, an average of 130 illegal firearms each week. “A couple of young guys, plus a disagreement, plus guns equals dead body,” Pollack says bluntly. “These are stupid 17-year-old homicides. That’s the extent of it today.”
