I suppose you can file this under “Another Sign of Technology’s March Forward” -- police are now using the Internet to battle gangs and their illegal activities:

Some of the gang sites are just simple, free MySpace or GeoCities blogs where people talk tough and live out their fantasies behind the safety of a screen name. Gang Web sites receive e-mails from would-be gangsters overseas who are looking to open chapters abroad. . . . “You’re seeing the Internet turned into an electronic alley,” says George W. Knox, who runs the National Gang Crime Research Center in Peotone, Ill.

But it’s not just kids searching for vicarious thrills. Active gang members use the Web sites to communicate with each other and sometimes to pick online fights with rival gangs. What starts on the Internet can quickly spill onto the streets. Cops in Boston and Texas who broke up gang brawls in the past few years found that the altercations had been scheduled on gang Web sites.

The sites help the police in other ways. Some of them depict gang life down to the smallest details -- the members’ preferred tattoos, say, or how they tie their ban-dannas. . . . But the Web has also given rival gangs a new, less violent way to settle scores -- flooding each other’s sites with junk e-mail. Not even a gangster is safe from spam.

As sociologists and observers have said before, like it or not, technology and the Internet have fundamentally changed the basic foundations of how we communicate, socialize, and live our lives. In that sense, I suppose it was inevitable that street gang activities have migrated to the Internet, and as always, right behind them are the police.