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It appears to me that the RMN has done a disservice to its’ readers by using alarmist journalism to sell newspapers ("SPECIAL REPORT: GANGS IN COLORADO,” RMN, Jan.20, 2007). By just listing the number of gang members without qualifying that number your headline could read, “Gang members outnumber police 8 to 1 in Denver!” I’m sure RMN reporter Sara Burnett must have asked how many of these gang members are active and someone higher up decided it was not relevant to the story and didn’t want to confuse the reading public with the facts.
As you know, because we discussed this problem in the late 1980’s when these violent gangs first appeared in Denver, only a small percentage of this number are active, hard-core gang members. The remainder are peripheral or that part of gang number statistics that does not reflect the inconsistencies of collecting the data; purging delays. duplicity, degree of involvement, transient population, erroneous data collection, incarcerated, for instance.
I do not intend to minimize the danger and costs gangs impose on society, but to combat their aggressiveness communities and the police must have accurate numbers. They must understand degrees of involvement so that they may direct the appropriate levels of resources to the appropriate levels of involvement (isolate and incarcerate hard core, treat peripherals).
I think the police and communities know this, now let your readers have all the facts.
David O’Shea-Dawkins
Denver (Retired Denver P.D. Sgt.)

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