A Hispanic prosecutor who has worked in the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office since 2004 was named the new head of the county’s Gang Prosecution Unit on Monday.
Victor DelPino, 33, will be the first Hispanic to head a unit in the office’s history, officials said.
He is a lifelong Montgomery County resident who graduated from the University of Baltimore law school in 2002. DelPino grew up in Silver Spring and went to Our Lady of Good Counsel High School.
State’s Attorney John McCarthy praised DelPino as a “tremendous guy” who pulled himself up by his “bootstraps” and will be an alternative role model for “young kids who might see the gang life as an attractive way of life.”
McCarthy said DelPino’s ethnicity was important because the “Hispanic community deserves a role and a voice in the leadership in the criminal justice community in Montgomery County.”
“In promotion and hiring practices, I think that it’s vital that this community sees that this office reflects them as a community,” McCarthy said.
DelPino, who will take over the job from Deputy State’s Attorney John Maloney, will head a unit that has five prosecutors and three investigators. He said he did not want his appointment to suggest that the county’s gang problems were solely because of Hispanic gangs.
He said there was no question that the county has an active Hispanic gang population that includes MS-13, one of the most notoriously violent gangs in the area.
But he added that the county, which has about 40 active gangs and 1,150 gang members, has gangs composed of all different races.
“Montgomery County is a very diverse community; unfortunately our gangs are culturally diverse,” he said.
