Law enforcement officials have observed gang activity in all 77 Oklahoma counties.
Authorities have observed gang activity in all 77 counties in Oklahoma, dispelling the myth of gangs as a purely an urban problem.
The gangs law enforcement officials fight in the state are about as varied as you can imagine, said Curtis Underwood, a Lawton police officer and board member of the Oklahoma Gang Investigators Association.
Police in Duncan have dismissed gang activity as motivation in the shooting death of East Central University student Christopher Lane on Aug. 16. But that doesn’t mean residents who have claimed gangs are active in the community are wrong.
“Our last report back in 2010 showed all 77 counties had some form or another of gang activity,” Underwood said. “So you really can’t say it’s just the big cities or the small towns. There is no one norm to it.”
Capt. Dexter Nelson, a spokesman for Oklahoma City police who used to work in the department’s gang unit, said gangs as most people understand them first started forming in the city in the 1980s. Some of that early activity came from the West Coast, where the gang lifestyle first took hold. Others were formed by locals who emulated what they saw.
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