GANGS GO ONLINE, BUT POLICE ARE WATCHING

Some Sites Look Academic But Are Run By Criminal Groups
And Can Track Visitors.

CHICAGO - With a few clicks on his laptop, Detective Rich Wistocki is
staring at a man who appears to be smoking marijuana.

Wistocki, a police investigator in the Chicago suburb of Naperville,
Ill., clicks again: There's another picture of the 22-year-old, nearly
hidden under a large pile of what looks like bags of marijuana.

Rich Wistocki, a Naperville, Ill., detective, says information from
gang Web sites is of limited value as evidence but can help police.

"Look at this. How stupid is this?" Wistocki says as he prints out the
photo and saves a screen grab to his computer. "These guys put this
out there, thinking that nobody's watching - that it's only their
friends, but they are wrong."

Wistocki, who works in the Internet crimes unit, has seen hundreds of
photographs like these: guys pointing guns, spraying graffiti and
flashing gang signs or handfuls of money. Law enforcement says it's
all a part of a growing trend of gangs pushing thug life on the Internet.

A search for gangs will turn up links to anti-gang sites started by
law enforcement or anti-crime organizations. Other sites claim to be
academic.

The more you click, however, the more likely the site you enter
belongs to someone purporting to be a gang member.

West Chicago Police Cmdr. Bruce Malkin teaches about gangs across the
country and surfs the Internet for gang sites almost daily. He thinks
some gangs use tracking devices, called "cookies," on their sites to
track down site visitors' information. Malkin and other officers use
Internet addresses that bounce trackers to bogus names.

Although a lot of the sites' chatter is cryptic, Malkin said that with
close monitoring and gang know-how, police can learn a lot. On a
recent foray, Malkin clicked onto a site dedicated to the 18th Street
Gang, a California group that claims to have members in several
Illinois towns, including West Chicago.

Midway down the page, the site declares that its pictures and links
are copyrighted. It features a warning to law enforcement not to click
onto linked pages, complete with the picture of a pig in a large red
circle with a slash through it.

"Oh, yeah, like that's going to stop me from looking," he says as he
continues clicking.

Many of the sites, like this one, have pictures of alleged gang
members, some covering their faces with bandanas or sunglasses and
flashing gang signs or guns. Some sites detail a gang's history and
boundaries and feature pictures of graffiti.

"It's advertising, basically," said Aurora, Ill., Police Cmdr. Mike
Langston, who has been investigating gangs with the department for the
past 20 years. He first noticed the gang sites a few years ago. "The
more they can make that life exciting and enticing to somebody, the
more likely they are to get people to want to be a part of it."

Police admit that, by itself, material gleaned from the sites is of
limited value. Although many departments said they monitor the sites
for information, they can't rely on them for evidence, Malkin said.

Chicago police say the gang members they're after aren't posting
photographs of themselves on the Web.

"The leaders, the movers and shakers, they're certainly not sitting at
home behind a computer," said Cmdr. David Sobczyk of the Chicago
Police Department Deployment Center. "These are people who are in it
for the money. They're beyond some sort of virtual spray-painting."