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Street Gangs are located throughout the United States, and their memberships vary in number, racial and ethnic composition, and structure. Large national street gangs pose the greatest threat because they smuggle, produce, transport, and distribute large quantities of illicit drugs and rely on extreme violence. Local street gangs often imitate the larger, more powerful national gangs in order to gain respect from their rivals.
In the long term, lossely organized street gangs threaten increase their role in trafficking drugs, particularly involving the smuggling of drugs into the United States and develop relationships with international criminal organizations and drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs).