California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Vega, B214726, Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. BA314454 (Cal. App. 2010):
Addressing the "the relationship that must exist before a smaller group can be considered part of a larger group for purposes of determining whether the smaller group constitutes a criminal street gang" the court in People v. Williams, supra, 167 Cal.App.4th at page 985, stated that "something more than a shared ideology or philosophy, or a name that contains the same word, must be shown before multiple units can be treated as a whole when determining whether a group constitutes a criminal street gang. Instead, some sort of collaborative activities or collective organizational structure must be inferable from the evidence, so that the various groups reasonably can be viewed as parts of the same overall organization." (Id. at p. 988.) The court held that the prosecution failed to make such a showing. (Ibid.)
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