GANGS OR NO GANGS, A WELCOME DRUG BUST

12 alleged crack dealers are off the streets, but NRV - as everywhere
- - must remain watchful.

Is the arrest of alleged members of the notorious Bloods street gang
bad news (significant gang activity in the New River Valley) disguised
as good news (the breakup of a major crack-dealing operation)?

For now, Western Virginia residents probably should welcome it as good
news - but keep their eyes open wide for the bad. Any success against
drug traffickers in the region is a positive step, and this appears to
be a big one.

Officials say the suspects brought powder cocaine and crack from the
Northeast into the Radford and Pulaski County areas. Their operation
is described as large and violent, doing as much as $10 million in
business, controlling the local market, pistol-whipping one member
suspected of disloyalty and trying to have rivals killed.

So it is undoubtedly good news that federal and local law enforcement
officers on Monday took into custody 12 of the 14 people indicted by a
federal grand jury. The question remains, however, of what those
arrests say about gang activity in the region.

Four suspects are identified as members of the Bloods, whose murderous
battles with rivals for turf and drug sales conjure up images of
drive-by shootings and unlivable inner-city war zones. Like other
gangs, the Bloods are expanding into suburbs, small towns and rural
areas in search of members and lucrative new markets.

Some law enforcement officials have warned of a gang threat in Western
Virginia. Yet evidence has been limited. And on Monday reports of
other gangs were still short on certainty.

That suggests, perhaps, a profit-seeking expansion by the Bloods
rather than community-destroying gang inroads. So, too, does the
relative scarcity here of the self-destructive community pathologies
found in inner-city Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

But vigilance should remain high. Gangs can be undeniably attractive
to the poor or disaffected young anywhere, offering easy money and
group identity. Combined with their violence and drug trafficking, any
gang presence is too much.