Police Emphasize Anti-Gang Stance
Though the city has relatively few gang-related crimes, the goal is to have none, Police Chief Daryl Wicker told the City Council this week.
Wicker presented statistics indicating that Cypress has no resident gangs and that in 1994 and 1995, the city had a total of only 18 gang-related felonies. Still, he said, “18 gang crimes over a two-year period is 18 too many.”
Wicker said after Monday’s council session that the city had several thousand non-gang crimes during the two-year period, so gang-related crimes were only a tiny fraction of the total.
The 18 gang-related crimes included two homicides, Wicker said. The other crimes included three burglaries and two robberies. A majority of the offenses--11 of the 18 crimes--involved fights between rival gang members.
Wicker said there has been some speculation that Cypress is experiencing gang incursions from the bordering Los Angeles County city of Hawaiian Gardens. But he said only two of the 18 crimes in the past two years involved Hawaiian Gardens gangs.
The other crimes were committed by gangs from several cities, he said.
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