Keeping heat on suburban drugs, gangs

Long gone are the days when people thought the suburbs did not need to worry about problems of gangs and drugs. Instead, the denial tends now to have grown more specific. It can't happen in my town. It can't happen in my family. It can't happen to me.

It can.

That reality is evident in two high-profile efforts targeting crime in the suburbs. On Saturday, Daily Herald staff writer Sheila Ahern described the Mount Prospect Police Department's new anti-gang unit, formed after a local survey showed gang activity as the community's top concern. And on Sunday, our Ted Cox showed how federal agents are turning their attention to the suburbs in the fight against international drug cartels.

International drug cartels in the Northwest suburbs?

We'd better believe it, Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's Chicago office told Cox. Riley said the Chicago area is a regional hub for major cartels' drug distribution channels and they often pick locations in quiet suburbs to operate from precisely because that's where no one expects them to operate from.

In its battle against gangs, Mount Prospect formed a four-person police unit that will build a database of gang members, including their activities, their friends, their addresses and their cars, and it will work with similar units in neighboring towns to track activities that cross community borders.

"This (gang activity) is a problem that isn't going away," Mount Prospect Police Chief John Dahlberg said flatly.

The two-pronged attack on crime - from the local as well as federal perspective - emphasizes the comprehensive nature of the ultimate solution. It's clear that police agencies from all communities and at all levels need to work cooperatively to control gangs and drug crime, and they need additional help from everyday citizens.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told Cox that drug arrests often lead authorities to "these very nice houses in suburban Cook County that are owned by people with really no discernible source of income."

And that, Riley said, is why people need "to pay attention" to what's happening in their own neighborhoods.

"If it doesn't look like it's supposed to be there, it probably needs to be looked at," he said.

That doesn't mean that we all have to turn into neighborhood informants for the police. But it does mean that we have to realize that police work alone won't eliminate the threats of gangs and drug activity.

We all must remain aware of the reality of the problems in our own towns, our own neighborhoods and our own lives.