Murders, rapes, drugs and extortion are the calling cards of Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13.

Murders, rapes, drugs and extortion are the calling cards of Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13.According to the FBI, MS-13 operates in at least 42 states, with the largest concentrations in California, the District of Columbia, New York and Virginia.The gang originated in Los Angeles, but now they're putting down roots in Northern California."Two years ago, we have never heard of MS-13," Yuba City police Sgt. Brian Bernardas said. "Now we have 26 or 27 of them."Bernardas, on the gang task force, called MS-13 one of the most brutal gangs. Body and facial tattoos come with the territory."I am talking shootings. I am talking stabbings. I am talking murders," he said.But members are holding down regular 9-to-5 jobs, mostly in construction or farming.An undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who spent several years infiltrating MS-13 said now that the economy has dwindled, gang members are moving into rural communities.Police said gang members are getting younger by the day -- some as young as 9 or 10 years old. So in Lincoln, residents have decided to take it upon themselves to rid their streets of gangs one child at a time.Karen Hernandez is president of the nonprofit group called REDIRECT. Its mission to help kids stay off the street by offering alternatives to the gang lifestyle, such as spending time at the Lincoln Community Center."It takes a community to raise a child. That is what we are going after," she said.Former gang member Alejantro Tomas, 14, said he can only image where he'd be without REDIRECT."I wouldn't be here in Lincoln. I would be on the run," he said.
And while organizations such as REDIRECT work to change lives, police and other authorities work to change gang culture one arrest at a time.

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Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the

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