[LUAU] url: cyber warfare

[Taylor Cody L. Contr 502 AOS/PETS]

May 12, 2004, 1:51PM
Street fight in Dallas suburb started in chat room
Associated Press 
GARLAND - In a modern-day version of West Side Story, rival gang members
exchanged harsh words and set a time for a rumble. 
Nearly three dozen people, including 27 high school students, were arrested
this week after a grand jury issued indictments in a March 3 street fight.
What makes this case unusual, experts say, is how the clash was arranged:
via a profanity-laced Internet chat room. 
"It's the first time that we have seen it," said Officer Joe Harn, police
spokesman in the Dallas suburb of Garland. "They didn't have to come
together to down each other (with profanity). They simply could do it by
typing on a computer. Finally, it escalated enough where they decided to get
together and fight." 
While the cyber warfare was fought with keyboards, gang members relied on
more old-fashioned weapons -- fists, baseball bats, shovels -- in the
physical skirmish, Harn said. 
Several people were injured, including one person who suffered a broken arm.

"Most gangs, when they do the disrespect thing, it's either face to face or
through graffiti," said Steve Nawojczyk, an Arkansas gang researcher who
tracks trends on his Web site, www.gangwar.com <http://www.gangwar.com>. 
But it's not a surprise that a generation raised on computers would offer a
new wrinkle, he and other experts agreed. 
"Let's face it: Gangs already have their own alphabet, their own language,
their own hand signals, so why not use the Internet?" said Tod Burke, a
criminal justice professor at Radford University in Virginia. "Is this case
unusual? Yes. But what I'm afraid is going to happen, this is probably just
the beginning of it." 
In fact, gangs threatening rivals and issuing challenges on the Internet has
become relatively common, said Jared Lewis, director of Know Gangs, a
Wisconsin-based organization that educates police and the public about
gangs. It's fueled in part, he said, by chat rooms and bulletin boards on
gangster rap artists' Web sites, he said. 
"This is the first time I've heard where you've had a fight result, where
the gangs actually met," Lewis said. "It doesn't surprise me at all that
it's happened. It's just the scale that does surprise me." 
In keeping with the rumble's high-tech origins, one participant videotaped
the Garland skirmish. The tape helped police identify students and others
involved in the off-campus fight. 
A grand jury indicted 34 people, ages 14 to 21, for riot
participation/aggravated assault/serious bodily injury, a second-degree
felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. 
All but one has been arrested, Harn said Wednesday. The other person is
believed to have fled to Mexico. Five of those indicted were female, and 18
were juveniles. 
Most of the suspects attended Garland High School and South Garland High
School, but school officials say the Internet exchanges occurred on home
computers. Harn said detectives discovered the chat room during their
investigation. 
"It's a site where anybody could go in and sign in and start talking," he
said. "For the most part, it's nothing but cursing on it. ... Some of them
actually signed in with their true names, so that helped us identify
people." 
The city's gang intelligence officers plan to pay more attention to such
sites given this case, he said. But gang experts say there's no way police
can keep track of all the communications on millions of Internet sites. 
Parents, not police, must take ultimate responsibility, said Lewis, a former
police officer in Modesto, Calif. 
"I'm just wondering why the parents aren't monitoring what's going on back
and forth on the Internet," he said. 
Found at: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/tech/news/2565447