The collected musings of Ryan Elder

To me it makes sense because they don't want to hand the guy a loaded gun, and a real victim wouldn't pretend to be shot if they weren't actually shot. So to me that makes sense. However, I'm no gang expert. Also though for a good story people are willing to suspend their disbelief so as long as it's written well, and explained well, then I don't think it would be a problem. Of course there are people who are sticklers for realism but you can't please everyone, so maybe they just aren't your target audience.

 

That's true, the people who told me they did not by it were a couple of cops, when I asked them how plausible it was, so maybe cops are less likely to believe it?

As long as it makes sense.

As for the cops always using CI's, in my story, the police do not know who any of the gang members are. They know that there is a gang out there committing crimes, but they do not actually have any suspects yet. Of course the gang does not know for sure that the police do not know who any of them are. So when it comes to recruiting a cop to be a gang mole, they want to take precautions, just in case the cop would have told his superiors, that a gang was trying to recruit him.

This cop is not actually undercover though. He is a crooked cop that does not tell his superiors, but the gang still wants to take precautions, just in case.

When it comes to real blood in murders though, if a street gang would never plant evidence on a dead body, and they do not think like that, then what is the point of a blood in where there is a real dead body, if the shooter, cannot be tied to it for insurance?

 

There is no real loyalty in street gangs, only the money that the gang members generate. If one of the "higher ups" in a gang notices some guy making a lot of money on the street, whether, dealer, car thief, burglar, etc., they will begin to watch the guy, get to know him and what he is about. If he is in their "hood", then they will test his will, maybe even try to extort money from him. If they feel that the guy can make the gang money, he will not have to kill anyone. He is a money maker, so as long as he makes money, he will be protected.
As far as the police officer, if the gang is smart, then they would never allow the guy to join as a cop. He would have to go in as a regular guy from the street. However, if the guy grew up in the same area as the gang, he would have a shot in doing so.

 

There is no book on realistic criminals, they and all different ways. If you can see a story in it, go for it. Anything is possible in the criminal world.

 

Okay thanks. What if my gang was the type not live in a particular hood or a particular part out town? Say one had an apartment in one area of town, and one owned a house in another? With the rise of the internet, they can be all around a large city for example, and would have their homes where they were able to get them. I mean they are not the type to say, you have to buy your home in this particular area of the city. They are not the type to care where each other lives, as long as they are mobile and can meet up when on call.

 

As far as street gangs, they are all about territory. When you get to motorcycle gangs, they usually live within the city or even state that they claim. You can tell by their bottom rocker what city or state they claim.

 

Okay thanks. Well someone told me that during blood ins, some gangs will video record the blood in, as insurance. That is, they will record the new recruit killing someone in case the new recruit turns against them later.

However, would a gang keep these recordings? I mean it seems kind of risky to keep recordings of murder around, in case the police find them during a search in of the property in the future, so would they logically keep them?

 

For my story, it's a thriller, and in the first act, the villain gets away with a crime, because of lack of evidence so support going to trial.

What happens is, is that a cop on patrol, gets a glimpse of some suspicious activity, he decides to watch, such as two guys search another guy for weapons or a wire, or doing that type of search. The cop decides to follow them very discretely in his unmarked car, not to far, to a secluded location near by. He cannot identify faces from his distance, but he sees they meet up with more men wearing masks and gloves.

It's a 'blood in', which is a term for when a gang gets a new member they are recruiting to spill the blood of another person in order to see if that person can be relied upon to be a fellow member. In this case, they give the new member, a pistol with one bullet in it to do the job.

As the cop observes, he sees that an innocent kidnapped hostage is about to be likely harmed, so he intervenes, saves the kidnap victim, and manages to arrest one of the suspects, while the others get away in the process.

Unbeknownst to the cop though, the hostage, was actually a fellow gang member posing a hostage, as part of the blood in. The new member did not have to actually shoot the hostage. The pistol with one bullet in, was loaded with a dummy round (a round that is real on the outside, but will not fire). The reason the gang did this, was in case the new recruit may not have been an undercover cop or something, they did not want to be caught with a real kidnapped hostage, and can create deniability of a crime, should the blood in be a set up.

So when the cop, arrests one of them, and saves the hostage, the hostage then makes up the story, that she and the arrested suspect are actually friends, and they were playing a role playing game with a prop gun.

They say that they went out drinking the night before, met the others, and then brought them back to her property for the game with the gun prop. The police ask her who the other's are and why they ran, and she says that since she met them and brought them back after a night of drinking, she didn't get their names, and just brought them back to play. Why they ran, she doesn't know and assumes they must be wanted for something else, she says.

She also reports a complaint towards the cop who rescued her, saying that he threatened her into testifying against her arrested friend, or he will make things bad for her in the future. Even though it's her word against the cops, she still wanted to complain anyway, just to save face to help her look innocent.

So there is not enough evidence to charge her or the other suspect, with any crimes, since it was just role playing with a prop gun, on her property, and there is no crime, and no victim of a crime.

So the police let them go.

However, I was told in my research by some legal experts that this case would still go to trial, and that the defendant and the witness on his side, would have to beat the charges there, instead of prior to.

Is it possible to write this type of criminal case, and have the defendant get off without going to trial? Trials can take 1-2 years before they actually start, and I have other subplots that want to take plac,e that would not take that long logically, to work their way into the main plot. So subplots would have be drawn out for illogically and unexplained amounts of time, if I put the main plot on hold for a year of time or more.

Is their a way I can either, have the defendant be dismissed of charges long before trial, or somehow legally get the trial to start a lot sooner? I read that the defendant can legally waive his right to a deposition or preliminary hearing, and go straight to trial. But if this is true, does that mean he could go to trial in a few weeks after arrest, realistically? Plus does this defendant character even have motive for skipping over a preliminary hearing?

What do you think? Is their a way I can write it and make it work within a much shorter time frame?

 

Just have the prosecutor decide not to pursue it. They have a heavy case load and this isn't a great case for them.

 

Look, nearly every question you post lacks and right or wrong answer. Yay reading what you put, I thought, "Yeah, that sounds believable. No crime was committed so no trial."

You're literally always going to have one person who disagrees with how you do things. But if you keep worrying so much about that, you'll never get anything done. You'll never write the story/screenplay. And if you do, it won't be what YOU wanted, but what someone else told you to do.

What you laid out seems fine to me. Stop asking people for help with every decision you need to make or you'll never get anywhere.

 

To answer your question, it would never be a street gang, because their rules are very strict about living in that particular area in order to run with them. They are all about "protecting" their hood, which means you must dwell in the area that they lay their heads. Otherwise, they will not and cannot trust you.
When it comes to motor cycle clubs, they don't have rules about being confined to a certain area of the city. Usually they claim the whole city, or state. The motorcycle club hoses are broken down to certain cities, which means they can live anywhere they want in that city.

 

Street gangs will do as such, but that are the ones that come in the gang as a soldier, a person with nothing to offer but their services, but I guarantee that if you are a person that generates money, which can help further the gang in purchasing weapons, drugs, etc., they will not being having that person do such an act. The best way to hurt a person that generates money is to hit them in their pocket, that's the real pain.

 

If you ask ten different gang members the same question, they will give you ten different answers.

 

I think what @Gerald Bunch is saying sounds accurate, but remember, this is fiction, so if you want, you can invent a totally new kind of gang. Just write with the idea that there is this new type of gang and how it formed, and make it clear to the readers that it's not a "normal" gang. The problem would be if you try to make it out to be realistic and the readers are thinking isn't normal. If it's not going to be normal, make it clear that it's not and explain why and how it came to be. Does that make sense? Maybe others will disagree with me on this point.

 

It doesn't really matter if it's realistic or not. Probably, in our money concerned world this might sound childish. In truth, gangs do not act this way because they don't benefit out of it. But while writing, it depends on what you are trying to point out. A good comparison I can think of is the movie "Dear Wendy". A bad I can think of is "21 Jump street". In the first movie, the kids of an isolated town made their own rules for their gang which could be easily understood. It was a small gang, we had the psychological portraits of the characters and understood why they wanted to form this gang in this way. They were not thugs non the less. They were bored out of their minds children that felt they did not fit anywhere. Their gang was mostly a means to gain psychological strength and a life mission. In the contrary to a street wise, big city gang that their mission is to be part with the "winners" and gain a comfortable and respectable living out of it. The series "21 Jump street" was clearly a cheesy mess of an interpretation of a gang. It was a gang perceived by the reasoning of an old man in combination with the romanticism of a clueless teen. It was a mess and quite boring.

So, either make it exceptional due to your characters and their ideology (but you'll have to convince us) or make it typical and make your research upon superficial gang scenarios and characters.

 

Yes, there are many directions that you can go in concerning gangs. Just as the world changes with the times, so must the gangs change and evolve. I know and have associated with some of the motorcycle clubs in San Francisco. They would frequent the gentleman's clubs that I ran.

 

It's a suspense thriller type story, and in it, a woman is avoiding be subpoenaed to testify in a felony court case, but she does not want to get involved. So the prosecutor has her arrested with a material witness warrant to secure her testimony. After spending a few hours in custody, the prosecutor orders her to be released, since he thinks he made his point, and wants to be able go home to her own bed for the night, since her testimony date is next the day.

The investigating cop on the case offers, to give her a ride back home. Other villains who are accomplices of the defendant, but unbeknownst to the police, are waiting her, for when she comes home. I wrote it so that the cop gives her a ride, cause I wanted the cop to get caught in the crossfire between her and the villains in the process.

However, my plot dilemma, is that I have no explanation as to how the villains new she was subpoenaed to testify, no more than one day later. How could they have found out that she was not only arrested on a material witness warrant and subpoenaed, but released the same day as well, so they could wait for her at her place, only hours later?

There are several fiction books and movies though, where villains will show up by surprise, to make attempts on other characters lives. Should I just keep it a mystery to the reader like those, or is this something that has to be explained do you think?

 

If the villains don't know that she was arrested on the material witness warrant, it doesn't matter that they don't know that she has been released.

As long as they know (or have reason to believe) that she will one day - perhaps tomorrow, perhaps later - testify against them, they can be presumed to have planned her "elimination" so they just happen to be at her place when she turns up in the police car. Although I would have thought it likely that they would have waited for her to enter her property (so you need the cop to walk her into her house - "Let's just check you're safe") before trying to kill her, rather than deliberately start a fire-fight in the street.

My only quibble might be would be whether the police would actually send her home if they thought her elimination was a likelihood. So maybe include something where the cop in charge hand-waves this risk as being scare-mongering, or he tells them they don't have the budget to run protection, or...

 

Hi @Ryan Elder, the best thrillers are like jigsaw puzzles where all the pieces fit to make an unexpected picture. So yes, I would say that anything that happens in a thriller should have a plausible explanation.

Having said that, keep in mind that reading for pleasure is primarily an emotional experience, not a logical one. There should be something that causes the reader to suspend disbelief and not ask sticky questions of your plot, but the explanations don't necessarily need to stand up to forensic scrutiny. It's the emotional roller-coaster that drives a thriller (and provides the enjoyment), not the logical connections.

 

Okay thanks.

Well the thing is is that the woman is actually a member of the gang, but the cops do not know this and believe she is a witness to one of their crimes. What they don't know is, is that she was actually a participant in the crime, but she has passed herself off as a witness to avoid being theorized by the police as a participant.

So the gang would not kill off one of their own members, unless they has reason to believe that that member might have talked, or might be a threat. They wouldn't think she was a threat before being arrested and subpoenaed would they? I would think they would not be willing to go after one of their own, until after being subpoenaed. She was avoiding being subpoenaed since she is loyal to them, but it's not until she is arrested, that they subpoena her.

But let's say they go after her, not knowing she has been subpoenaed. The fact that they would show up on the night before she is suppose to testify, and they do not know she is suppose to testify the next day, makes it a big coincidence, doesn't it? If they know she is, it's not a coincidence, since they have motive to do it on that night particularly, but if they do not know, than isn't it too much of a coincidence?

I already have something else happening in the plot for that night, so if they show up not even knowing she is testifying the next day, if feels like a double coincidence therefore.

As for the police sending her home without protection, I was told by some others that the police would not give a witness protection, if the witness refused to cooperate and give any statments, which is what she did. Even though she is subpoenaed, I was told that the police would not give protection to an uncooperative witness, unless it was am immediate 911 emergency. What do you think?

 

OK, she's a gang member, and not going to be eliminated.

But it's going to be quite credible for another gang member to check up on her. There's another job planned; she got hurt on the last job and needs some discreet medical care; she's the moll for another gang member, who just drops in on his girl-friend.

 

They can check up on her, but since she the court wants her for a witness, she will be on the police's radar. And they wouldn't use her for a job, knowing this and have her law low, wouldn't they? But even if the check up on her without the police knowing, she will tell them that she didn't tell the police anything, even though she was subpoenaed. But she would ease their minds probably. Is there a way I can write it, where they feel they have to get rid of her, or at least find out what she told the police, by force, so the cop gets caught in the crossfire?

If another gang member just came that night to check up on her, the cop will not be alarmed. He will just think the person is some friend, checking up. Is it possible to get the cop alarmed with a crossfire situation?

 

1/ How does the gang know anything about the sub-poena?

Because she's girl-friend to a gang-member.

So, he's gone around to see her, lets himself in, finds her out...and then the cop walks her into her place "just to see you safely home" and the boy-friend goes ape. "What you doing bringing guys around when I'm not here to keep an eye on you?" Then your only problem is how the cop gets out with his life - you can have the girl-friend beaten up afterwards if that helps the plot.

 

If you stop thinking in terms of: everyone who works for the police, the courts and the D.A.'s office are good people who believe in justice above all... the answer becomes obvious.