It was a full house at the meeting hosted by the Bronx Gang Squad and the 48th Precinct’s Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCOs) to educate parents on gang awareness. The timing of this event, planned in April, comes more than a week after two teens were viciously stabbed in apparent gang attacks.

After a workshop led by Sgt. Leo Nugent and Detective Belinda Delgado, which detailed the reasons why children join gangs, Nugent said that parents should know who their children’s friends are so that they can check out their social media accounts. If they are throwing up gang signs or wearing gang-affiliated colors, they may be part of a gang.

He also showed guests at Mt. Carmel Senior Center, how gang members can use social media to provoke other gangs, such as using Facebook Live to record themselves and others crossing territorial boundaries.

Delgado and Nugent stressed that parents should intervene when they see their children hanging with a certain group and monitor their children’s phones. “They may have secret apps that look like calculators that are locked with codes and they may speak with emojis. It’s not straightforward. The important thing is to communicate and educate yourself,” said Delgado.

“If you find out about something your child did, don’t blow up in their faces and harass them about it, because they’re going to put a wall up and you won’t be able to communicate,” said Nugent. He suggested diverting their children’s attention to an after school activity such as sports. “By the time they get home, they’ll be too tired to do anything else.”

“Parents need to make themselves aware because it starts at home and it starts at school,”  Nugent said. He suggested that parents familiarize themselves with school safety officers who have knowledge of what gangs are present in their kids’ schools and could provide information on colors and beaded necklaces associated with the gangs.

Nugent said that to catch criminals, the Squad goes undercover and puts GPS tracking devices under cars. “Locking gang members up? That’s easy. We want you, the parents, to get to them before we do.”