Well, I gotta be careful here not to send the wrong message, but what exactly did these 1300 people do wrong that got them arrested?

"Being a member of a gang" is not against the law, is it?

It's been about a decade since I ran with people who ran in those circles, but at the time, the notion occured to me that despite all of their investment in proving the contrary, not all gang members are bad people that do bad things.

The article didn't say a dang thing about what the charges were. I would guess a lot of "conspiracy to commit [x]", going along with the people who actually did all the [x].

LM

Last time I checked, that only got you convicted in the court of public opinion.

I grew up in an area with a lot of gang activity and went to school with a lot of kids who were involved in gangs. I was even friends with a lot of them at school. And even grew up in a poorer section of the city where gang members lived and hung out.
From MY experience, if you were in a gang, you committed crimes. You were an accomplice to a crime, you were involved in the planning of a crime, you were involved in the carrying out of crime. Most of them were involved in gang violence, drugs and hiding other gang members who had committed very serious crimes.
I dont believe I knew any gang members who had not committed or help commit crimes.

Many towns have injunctions on known gang members from associating with eachother so even being with your homies can get you locked up. Drakonian but it seriously works at cutting down on gang crimes.