“These folks are local terrorists, and that’s what they do, they run around in groups, they shoot at each other and innocent victims are being killed,” San Bernadino County District Attorney Mike Ramos said.
Law enforcement agencies in San Bernadino are decoding graffiti in effort to crack down on gang violence.
Central Gang Unit Senior Investigator Kevin Ford is on the front lines of the war on gangs in San Bernadino County, which has the third highest gang population in the nation.
He spoke with CBS2?s Adrianna Weingold about how gangs communicate with one another by tagging territory.
“One gang set crosses out another on the wall – now you know they’re having trouble with each other,” he explained.
“It appears that we have more gangs from outside the area now, but the shootings and stuff in the areas we used to have them in aren’t as many.”
Ford knows how to read between the lines, helping to identify witnesses before they become targets.
He knows multiple graffiti alphabets and reads graffiti patterns to find the taggers behind the spray cans.
“They’re pretty much battling each other on the wall,” Ford said.
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