After downplaying the threat from gang violence in Montgomery County, police are reconsidering their view in the wake of a weeklong surge in possible gang-related violence.
Starting with a Halloween shooting in Rockville and continuing through a pair of stabbings Monday and Tuesday, the gang-related incidents have authorities on alert for a growing gang problem.
Police say the number of known, active gang members in Montgomery County rose 20 percent between June 2006 and July 2007. That would mean that the county saw the number of active gang members go from 931 to 1,117 in a year. Last month, Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said there had not been a corresponding rise in serious crimes. But Manger had changed his stance in light of the recent high-profile crimes, according to police spokeswoman Lucille Baur.
“He said … had you asked me on Friday about gang-related crime in the county, I would have said it was mostly less egregious crimes,” Baur said. “But he continued that there is a change in what we have observed in Montgomery County, and it is of great concern. This is a sea change, as to what we have previously experienced in the county.”
Last month, Manger told The Examiner that police had been successful in reducing membership in larger, more serious gangs, and most of the increase in gang membership had come from association with smaller groups.
“All involved [in the recent stabbings] are members of local gangs, the local gangs are affiliated with the more widely known Bloods and Crips,” Baur said.
Sgt. J.P. Cowell with the Rockville City Police Department said four suspectsin a Halloween shooting at Rockville’s Safeway were wearing red, the color associated with the Bloods, but that thus far police had not established any gang connection.
According to Baur, stabbings that occurred in the early evening on Monday and Tuesday in Gaithersburg were related, and the victims and suspects in the attacks were gang members. Police believe the second stabbing was in retaliation for the first, but are not sure whether the first attack was necessarily gang-related or stemming from a separate dispute.
Robert Troy Jackson, 21, died after being stabbed at a transit bus stop Monday night in Gaithersburg. Tuesday’s victim is expected to survive, and police have five people in custody for the attack.
