While the Media Talks “Varsity Blues,” Eerily Quiet on Gangs

“It is high time for media sources and critics to alike engage in serious introspection on their seemingly universal reticence—some might say outright resistance—to responsibly report and comment on gangs.”

In the wake of Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp’s call to “stop and dismantle” criminal street gangs in the Peach State, James “Jimmy” Callaway, the hard-hitting president of the Georgia Gang Investigators Association, editorially decried the paucity of serious media attention to Metro Atlanta gang crime. Published in Georgia’s Insider Advantage, Callaway’s April 3, 2019, column reviewed news stories on the rate of repeat offender release in Georgia’s most populated county. Ultimately, Callaway concluded, “Neither [media exposé] mentions gangs. This gaping hole in the [area media’s] reporting is alarming.”

What Callaway discerned locally is symptomatic of a greater phenomenon. The criminal occupation represented by America’s Gang Crisis remains seemingly invulnerable from proportional media consideration nationwide. Examining the incongruent treatment of two pending federal prosecutions, one designated as “Operation Gunsmoke” and the other labelled “Operation Varsity Blues,” both publicized by officials on March 12, 2019, provides potent proof.

Bobby Christine, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, announced Operation Gunsmoke, a 26 defendant, two-state (Georgia and South Carolina) federal prosecution, described as “including associates of a violent criminal street gang…indicted on drugs and firearms charges.” The Department of Justice further imparted that Operation Gunsmoke “began…as an investigation of a member of the Bloods criminal street gang who is alleged to have coordinated continued criminal activity while being held [in custody] awaiting retrial for murder.”

Government statistics highlight the hazards associated with the Bloods gang. A decade ago, a federal study recognized Bloods’ crimes as including “street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana…transporting and distributing methamphetamine, heroin, and PCP…assault, auto theft, burglary, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identity fraud, and robbery.”