Gangs In An Economic Collapse

I recently came across this 2022 article from Organic Prepper entitled "How Gangs Operate Post-Collapse" by J.G. Martinez D. As some of you may already know, Martinez, who is a citizen of Venezuela, has contributed a long series of articles about the economic collapse in that country and his experiences and lessons learned. 

    In this article, he turns his attention to criminal gangs. A few points:

• Lone thieves will often be targeted by the populace. An example he gives is a passerby in a car seeing a robbery in progress may well run over the robber and simply drive off.
• The high criminality may result in the formation of death squads.
• Like everywhere else in the world, gun control does not prevent criminals from getting guns. Like many inner-city areas in the United States, criminals in Venezuela would often rent guns from other criminals. 
• Car jackings were prevalent with, there, favorite targets being newer Japanese made 4x4s. The common method used by carjackers was to use their own vehicles: one blocking the target on the front and the other vehicle blocking the target from behind. The robbers were armed and both in front and behind the victim, which generally made it impossible to successfully fight back. As Martinez explains:

Returning to our carjacking scene, the thugs in the car parked behind will open fire if the owner defends himself. The best chance of getting through this (depending on if your vehicle is beefed up enough with heavy-duty-thick-gage custom bumpers) is to brake hard, destroying the front of the car behind, and floor it to push the front car out of the way. No mercy. Getting down and surrendering is the last option.

• The gangs--probably drug cartels--generally owned the roads at night making it extremely dangerous to travel on main roads.
• Kidnappings as a crime of opportunity--what Martinez calls an Express Kidnapping--were not uncommon in larger communities. This involves kidnappers seeing someone at an outdoor disco, bar, restaurant, etc., that appeared to be wealthy, kidnapping them, and forcing the victim to take them to the victim's house so that they could loot the house of its valuables.
• He also discusses how gangs will gather information and target wealth landowners in rural areas.