The number of gangs in Montgomery County is on the rise according to data from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Gang Intelligence Unit, which identified 110 gangs in November, up from 82 in February.
Newly created in October 2014, the Montgomery County GIU focuses strictly on gangs and gang-related activity.
GIU Crime Analyst Katricia Hortman said gang members are distinguished from ordinary criminals with markers, such as hand signals, tattoos and evidence that an individual recruited new street gang members. The top crimes gang members commit include possession and distribution of narcotics, burglary, theft and robberies.
“We have a database that is provided from the Department of Public Safety,” Hortman said. “We put all of our gang members in that database, and that’s how we keep up with them.”
Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said while the GIU has only been established for a short period of time, the unit has been a success. It has helped the sheriff’s office identify who is a gang member and where the gangs are committing crimes through the use of fingerprinting technology, automatic license plate readers and a specialized database. The improved tracking has caused the gang number tally to rise.
“[The GIU] are targeting groups and dealing with those crimes of opportunity that [the gangs are] normally involved in and doing a good job of tracking and apprehending those individuals that need to be caught,” McDaniel said.
The GIU has been able to track that Houston gang members travel to Montgomery County from Houston to engage in criminal gang activity, and Montgomery County gang members travel to Houston, Hortman said.
“They come up here to [commit] burglaries and theft,” she said. “Most of them don’t want to commit their crimes in their own backyard.”
McDaniel said the five-person unit—Hortman as crime analyst and four deputies—will add more personnel in the next one to two years.
“With our crime analyst, that frees [the deputies] up to do the fieldwork while [Hortman] is doing the research and analysis,” he said. “That is taking a tremendous load off the deputies. Adding more personnel will certainly add to our power potential to make an impact.”
McDaniel said the GIU has fostered an improved line of communication with other area gang units.
“They have come out great guns in meeting with and establishing communications with other agencies like the FBI and Houston [Police Department] gang unit, Harris County gang unit,” McDaniel said. “They’re a small unit, but they’re doing a great job.”
