Videos of gangs, fights and drag races are posted on the Web
site YouTube.com and those involved use victory as a bragging right
at school. But with that notoriety comes a price: Detectives are
using the Web site as a tool for identifying suspects and making
arrests.
Check out the videos of criminal behavior posted on YouTube and
other video-sharing Web sites.
Videos of gangs, fights and drag races are posted on the Web site YouTube.com and those involved use victory as a bragging right at school. But with that notoriety comes a price: Detectives are using the Web site as a tool for identifying suspects and making arrests.
The videos vary in length and content. Among them is a series of three minute videos of high school students fighting. Two boys fight while a group watches and another of the youths makes sure they follow rules.
Other videos are shorter and show two cars racing down what appears to be Bloomfield Road, and another series of five minute montages show people displaying gang signs, wearing colors and making threats.
While Gilroy police refused to comment on such videos specifically, press information officer for the Gilroy police department Jim Gillio did say it uses the site to search for incriminating taped activity.
For students at Gilroy High School it is popularity that is behind the taped actions, as those featured become talked about as the images are publicized through text and instant messages and e-mails with links to the posted footage.
“They like showing everyone else,” said Michael Aguilar, a senior at Gilroy High School. “When you put it on the Internet everyone talks.”
“And if you win, that’s your bragging right for like a month,” added Brandy Stapleton, another senior student.
One of the videos that became a topic of conversation among students was “Gilroy High Fight,” a three minute filming of a fight between high school students. Posted June 4 by mjtl2591, the video shows two students fighting as a group cheers, never intervening.
According to youth and family violence expert and CEO of Eastern Shore Psychological Services in Salisbury, Md., Dr. Kathryn Seifert, being part of violent taped activity is becoming more and more common among teenagers who want to show the world actions they’re proud of.
“It’s a growing trend,” Seifert said. “Teenagers see things happening and there’s a copycat effect because it’s getting a lot of publicity and they want to be famous too.”
In the earliest posted video, named “Racing part 2”, two cars can be seen racing down a road while the person recording talks about how there are no police cars around.
Another video named “Racing Part 3” posted a day later shows what seems to be the same cars, a blue BMW and a black Honda racing. Shortly after they start, however, a truck can be seen coming at one of them and the video ends before the vehicles crash.
While the high school fights and races are filmed and show relatively mild images, the gang videos have more graphic footage as montages of pictures have drawings, threats and obscenities superimposed.
“Gilroy Busters,” posted by the user gilassureno, shows pictures of young men with blue writing over them. The numbers 187 are also drawn over their heads, a reference to the penal code, implying murder.
“Gilroy Scraps,” posted May 6 by gilasboy1, follows the same pattern. A series of 15 videos, it includes writings in red over pictures of people mostly making accusations and insults. One of them has a bullet hole drawn in the middle of a man’s forehead.
“Some of the people are students, some are dropouts,” GHS senior Aracelli Toro said.
According to Seifert, this violent behavior is common among teenagers who have had exposure to violence at an early age and have had trouble fitting in socially.
“Research is showing because children come from debilitating homes, they fall back on what they grew up with which is violence,” said Seifert. “Gangs will praise them for being anti social and they want the world to know about it.”
But there’s a downside that comes with the publicity offered by the web: the authorities are also watching.
As Dolores Nahm, press information officer for the Santa Clara County probation office, explained, police officers have increasingly used the Web as a tool for identifying criminal acts.
“Our staff is being trained and are starting to use it more and more,” Nahm said. “They use it to advertise the fact they’re in a gang, we use it to monitor it.”
Michael Clark, probation manager for Santa Clara County, says that since the Internet started being used to monitor criminal activity, videos have been used as evidence for violations by teenagers on probation.
“It’s public access,” Clark said. “Police officers have resolved crimes based on information downloaded off the Internet.”
Also monitoring wrongdoings online are administrators of Gilroy High School, whose students are involved in the fighting and gang videos.
“We are checking more often,” Vice Principal Stefani Garino said. “Sometimes kids give us tips and we investigate.”
To curb efforts by the school’s administration, students post the videos with titles that make no reference to its location and advertise it through personal messages.
If they are found and the footage is proven to have taken place in school, on the way in or out from school or the planning for it occurred while students were in school, the students are punished on a case by case basis. If the action portrayed proves to not be within school boundaries, administrators take the information to police officers.
“Unless it takes place in school there’s nothing we can do,” Garino said. “If it’s outside of our own jurisdiction we share it with PD.”
While Seifert explained that teenagers likely to be involved with taped criminal activity are those with violent backgrounds and debilitating social skills, she did mention that an increasing number of people have grown accustomed to seeing such acts of violence which may explain the popularity of the videos.
“We’ve all gotten more used to violence,” she said. “These (violent) kids are actually engaging in it but the rest of us are watching like movies or video games. It’s a disturbing trend.”
