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Utah gang-related homicides and violent crimes increased in 2017 — and gang members are getting younger

Related Topics: Gang

While more deaths in Utah in 2017 are attributable to gang violence than last year, the director of the Salt Lake Area Gang Project said that’s not his biggest end-of-the-year takeaway.

Instead, Lt. Mike Shoenfeld said he’s more worried because recently it seems gang members are younger than they used to be and are notably more violent — even if the violence isn’t always fatal.

“We’ve had some pretty horrific and heinous, egregious crimes committed by gang members over the last year that I think have really shaken our conscience a little bit as a society, because we just weren’t seeing that much violence in the past few years,” Shoenfeld said.