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Career criminals who have mastered the art of surviving in highly dangerous incarceration environments are posing a greater threat to correctional officers and LEOs than ever before, in the opinion of a nationally known gang intelligence expert.
“Today’s career criminals have changed and authorities need to change, too, in order to handle them,” says Frank “Paco” Marcell, jail intelligence supervisor for the Maricopa County (AZ) SO, advisor to the International Latino Gang Investigators Assn. and an executive board member of the National Major Gang Task Force, a law enforcement training and information-sharing group.
Officers on the street and on the cellblock who fail to understand the unique mind-set of our hardest-core offenders, their increasing influence in the criminal world, and their hair-trigger propensity for violence are most at risk, Marcell warns. “It’s a huge mistake to underestimate these people. They study you both physiologically and psychologically, looking for evidence of weakness. For your own safety you need to know how to recognize them, and to approach them always with maximum alertness, appropriate tactics and a high degree of caution.”
A former sergeant with Arizona DPS and a prison gang specialist for more than two decades, Marcell recently granted an exclusive interview to PoliceOne about what his years of close daily exposure to career criminals have taught him and what insights into these potentially deadly individuals law officers need to understand for their own protection. Here are highlights of our conversation:

What constitutes a career criminal?

Actually, they’re a minority of the offender population but disproportionately dangerous. Depending on the institution, they may comprise up to 25% of those incarcerated.
They tend to share certain traits, but what separates them from most of the others is that crime is their lifestyle, no equivocation. They have the highest recidivism rate. Prison is no deterrent for them. Many are just as comfortable there as they are in the free world.
All career criminals are in prison gangs, also known as Security Threat Groups (STGs). Every state has them. You don’t get into that environment without being a career criminal. They run the cellblocks and they’re responsible for most assaults on staff and other inmates.
They have an extensive knowledge of the criminal justice system. They know the ropes as well if not better than the law enforcement community. They love cop reality shows. Interviewing them, I know they’re fully informed about how we do things, in prisons and jails and out on the street.
Outside, they tend to belong to street gangs. They actively continue their outside criminal activities when they’re incarcerated, through phone calls, messengers and so on, in addition to controlling drug traffic into the institution. Behind bars, they’re extremely influential among other inmates. Outside, they’re influential wherever they land.
Prison is a very dangerous environment where the weak fall out. A lot of people in law enforcement don’t realize how dangerous it is. These guys have conquered that environment, so when they get back to the street—man! You see the advantage they have? They’re not pooh-butts.

What characteristics help give them the edge?

Many are charismatic and they can be manipulative. Those two traits tend to go hand in hand. They study people and they’re adroit at sizing people up very quickly, physically and psychologically. They understand human traits and behavior. They’re opportunists, very calculating. They study environments watching for opportunities to do whatever it is they want to do.
Often cops and correctional officers don’t understand that they’re being sized up by these guys; they’re not even aware of it. But to career criminals, this is second nature, looking for weaknesses. That’s what’s helped them survive.
Many have learned how to conquer fear. Certainly they’ve learned not to show fear, because in a prison environment that betrays weakness. But they use their power and other people’s fear as weapons, very effectively.
They’re extremely narcissistic. With their inflated ego, they genuinely believe they’re smarter than we are. They have a high disdain for authority, and have had since they were young and going through the juvenile system. They’re not intimidated by badges. Their false sense of invincibility can make them all the more dangerous.
When necessary, they have a high propensity for violence. They can flip-flop from calm to violent in an eye blink. And most have sociopathic personalities. They can stab a guy to death and then just walk away, no big deal. They can react violently over the slightest perceived provocation, especially when under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Because of their disdain for law enforcement and their lack of concern about consequences, they get involved in a lot of shootings and they seem to hit what they shoot at. In shootings I’ve looked into, it’s not uncommon for an officer to fire many rounds and miss, but the bad guy fires one or two and hits. He has no range training, no qualification requirements, but he’s operating with a different mentality. He uses his motor skills with no hindrance in mind, no worry about consequences.
You look at the top leaders in terrorist groups and you see pretty much the same psychological profile. Terrorist organizations, STGs and street gangs share much the same structure, too. Think of three concentric rings:

•  In the core ring are the career criminal types, the “shot callers”.

•  The next ring out are the “committed followers”, not yet shot callers but gravitating toward that status. They think of themselves as soldiers, with a warrior-like mentality. They listen to commands and do as they’re told. Those with the most “heart” rise to the top.

•  The outer ring are “close associates”. They’re being groomed and trained. They’re in the game, learning the ropes, developing the mind-set, but not yet fully committed. They may hesitate about taking a killing assignment—for now.

It’s a progressive evolution. The closer you are to that center ring, the more certain you are to exhibit career-criminal characteristics.

How are today’s career criminals different from those of the past?

Well, there are more of them than in the past. Prisons are being flooded with them. And they’re younger, more impulsive, more violent. They’re willing to kill indiscriminately. I’ve never seen the tendency to violence we’re seeing now. Certainly the competition among criminal groups vying for control of drug markets has increased it.
Twenty or 30 years ago a guy who was in and out of prison repeatedly tended to be a specialist. He was a burglar or he was an armed robber and he stayed pretty much with one line of offense.
Today’s career criminal is into multiple criminal activities. He may run a dope operation but he also has a crew doing residential or commercial burglaries, another crew pulling fraud schemes, another one stealing cars, and if he gets bored he may knock over a bank. The attitude is, “Wherever I land I’m gonna get a crew together and go to work. If cops get in the way, we’ll take them down.”

They know how to take care of business, including tying up courts with writs, subpoenas, lawsuits.

Often today’s career criminal is more knowledgeable about areas we’re still breaking into. The Internet, sophisticated intelligence gathering, operational networks. He may not personally sit down at a computer to do research and keep up on things, but he has people who do it for him.
We had one of the leading members of the Aryan Brotherhood in our jail and I asked him, “Would it be hard for you to locate one of us, find out where we live?” He said, “No problem. We have females who are very good on the Internet. They can find out anything…anything.” Essentially, these people are using the same sources terrorists use to gather information.
 
And how does today’s cop stack up against all this?

Unfortunately, many people in law enforcement today are very vulnerable.
When I came into law enforcement 34 years ago, the people who patrolled the streets had largely a blue collar background. They worked in the mines or construction or had been in the military. They’d been around and seen things.
Today, many departments seem to be looking for the perfect candidate. The selection process is very strict. A college degree is becoming standard in many places. Certainly a well-educated police officer who can pass background checks and polygraph tests is desirable. But this does not always equate with common sense and a street-smart background. Many recruits today have never been in a fistfight before. Career criminals have been fighting since they were very young.
When officers run up against a career criminal, who comes from and lives in a totally different environment, the dichotomy can produce tragic results. That’s why more training to compensate for this gap is important.