Police say that America's most dangerous gangs are increasingly turning to Twitter as a communication tool for their criminal networks. We investigated the Twitter accounts of five notorious sets; the results may alarm you.

"You see African-Americans dealing with Hispanics on obtaining narcotics and weapons. We're seeing Hispanic gang members involved with the Eastern European criminal figures," said Robert W. Clark, acting special agent in charge of the criminal division of the Los Angeles field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "Where they see opportunities to collaborate, they do."

What about the children? A cursory examination of the "news" reveals the chilling truth which we have all dreaded for so long: There is no hope for you, kids. Just do what you want.

A committed band of coots, cranks, and wingnuts in Williamsburg are ready to do whatever it takes to ensure that their neighborhood doesn't get one more wine bar, which would make all the gangs come in.

In LA they have lots of gangs. How to determine if a child will grow up to be a vicious gangbanger? The city—with scientific help—has developed a test! Find out your future, below:

Gangs are using social networking sites to recruit new members. I wonder if gang recruiters have tried Facebook's new ad platform. It's supposed to be great for that sort of targeted advertising. [CBS 5]

We're amazed that TMZ's war-zone-quality Star Catcher cameraman has not previously come under gunfire in the course of documenting every B-lister who passes through the entrances and hidden egresses of the city's most dangerous Hollywood hotspots, as the lawless streets between Teddy's and Hyde are littered with the bodies of paparazzi who angered the wrong Glock-packing One Tree Hill star. But while staking out the Roosevelt Hotel last night, the TMZ crew found itself in the middle of a brief firefight between an unknown assailant rolling by in a car and the hotel's wall, an eruption of violence that left one civilian injured by ricocheting debris. Mercifully, exiting Teddy's VIP Kathy Griffin was left unscathed, but police are investigating "promising" leads suggesting that either the rival, Bravo-affiliated Hey Paula Locos or the Ex-Hubby Bloods might have been behind the shooting.

When it came time for Business Week assistant managing editor Bruce Nussbaum to do jury duty in New York City last week, he found himself assigned to a high-profile case. The suspects—who had been charged in some sort of gang activity—were so intimidating, so menacing, that he feared not only for his life, but also for his family's: "One of [the connotations] that crossed my mind was, you know, a nationally organized gang, very powerful, that could reach out and try to influence members of the jury." Of what horrible gang could Nussbaum have been so very afraid? Especially since the tough guy admitted he was himself in a Lower East Side gang in the 1960s. (That experience must serve him well in the corridors of Business Week!)

In wake of the early Tuesday execution of Crips founder Tookie Williams, Slate explores a question we're sure has been deeply troubling its overeducated bobo lefty readers: How exactly does one go about starting a gang?