Gangs In NJ, Is Your Kid In One?

Check out David Matthau's story on how gangs continue to infiltrate New Jersey towns. The most entertaining part is the link that will take you to an organization's attempt to help parents identify the warning signs of whether your own child is running with a gang. The gang awareness guide. Scrolling to the bottom and reading the General Warning Signs, you have to ask yourself just how utterly unaware of their surroundings are some parents?

The very first warning sign that your child is in a gang? That they've admitted they're in one. GENIUS!

Then we have things like 'flashing gang signs'. Okay, if you're young enough to have kids in this age group you're young enough to have seen enough movies, tv shows, news pieces, and reality around you everyday that you should KNOW what a gang sign generally looks like.

Same with 'obsession with certain colors' and committing 'graffiti on books and walls'.  Even if you don't recognize exactly WHAT the signs being flashed mean, or exactly WHAT the graffiti is really saying, you should know enough as an adult who hasn't been sleeping under a rock to know something is wrong and to start asking the questions. Especially if it's combined with their other helpful warning signs like evidence of drug abuse, defiant behavior and unexplained money. I mean come on. Who is this guide really for? Seems to me if you NEED this guide, you pay so little attention to your child to begin with that YOU are mostly to blame for your child running with a gang.  It's like the movie Idiocracy.  The dumbing down of America is frightening.