The recent arrests of nearly two dozen Trinitarios gang members in Massachusetts should be a wake-up call to every law-abiding citizen. These arrests, part of a sweeping federal RICO conspiracy case, reveal a chilling reality: ruthless criminal gangs like the Trinitarios are operating in our communities, engaging in violence, and spreading terror.
In Massachusetts, federal and state authorities just charged 22 members and leaders of the Trinitarios—a Dominican gang notorious for extreme violence—with a range of crimes including murder, attempted murder, drug trafficking, and illegal weapons possession. These are not street-level offenders engaging in petty crime. These are organized criminals enforcing their rule through ruthless violence, using intimidation and murder to consolidate power. The indictment details a six-year campaign of brutal dominance, with members operating under a structured leadership that directed assassinations and violent reprisals.
Yet the news about the high-profile arrests had barely broken when the New York City Council became the latest extremist enclave to seek to protect gang members by wiping the NYPD gang database clean and closing it forever.
It is this woke extremism that caused the National Police Association (NPA) to step in to support law enforcement’s ability to use confidential gang databases. The NPA filed an amicus brief in defense of the Boston Police Department’s gang database, which had come under attack from the ACLU. It is the NPA’s position that gang databases are a critical intelligence tool, allowing law enforcement agencies to track affiliations, map networks, and identify crime patterns before more blood is shed. They enable police to learn who the key players are in these violent organizations.
The ACLU, woke city governments and woke state Attorneys General, however, see it differently. Their position, framed as a defense of civil liberties, contends that gang databases are overly broad, racially biased, and lead to profiling. Their lawsuit against the Boston Police Department argued that such classification results in unwarranted surveillance and scrutiny. In their worldview, building cases against criminals is prohibited by the constitution.
That argument is detached from reality. It ignores the fundamental truth that gang databases are not designed to harass innocent individuals but to identify networks of dangerous criminals who threaten public safety. The arrests of the Trinitarios in Massachusetts prove precisely why these databases are necessary. Police did not stumble upon this gang overnight; it took intelligence-gathering, coordination, and monitoring of known associates to build the case that led to these federal indictments. Without these tools law enforcement would be blind to the expanding influence of these organizations, forced to play catch-up only after violence erupts.
Furthermore, the critics’ position utterly fails to address the lived reality of the communities most affected by gang violence. In the neighborhoods plagued by gangs like the Trinitarios, residents are not demanding fewer police resources; they are pleading for protection. They are the ones terrorized by drive-by shootings, extortion, and drug-related violence. The crusade against police intelligence efforts effectively leaves these communities defenseless, prioritizing abstract ideologies over real-world safety.
The NPA’s legal filing argued that dismantling these databases is a catastrophic mistake. Law enforcement must be allowed to use every legal tool available to identify organized crime before more innocent lives are lost. The gang database is not an indiscriminate list—it is a strategic resource.
What the anti-police extremists propose—abolishing gang databases—would make life easier for criminals and harder for victims. The evidence is clear: gangs like the Trinitarios are expanding their reach, embedding themselves in communities, and engaging in ruthless acts of violence. Their recent arrests should be seen as a victory for law enforcement, but it is a victory that would be impossible without intelligence-gathering tools.
The battle for our communities is ongoing, and the choice before us is clear: Support law enforcement’s ability to fight crime or surrender to the violence that unchecked gangs inevitably bring.