Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith has vowed his officers are taking the Island's gang problem seriously ? but he wishes others would follow suit.

He said any gang-related crime led to the early involvement of the Serious Crime Unit (SCU) and that prosecutors were providing additional grounds to object to bail if a suspect had gang connections.

He told : "We are aggressively doing what we have to do to counter and target individual gang members. There's no doubt we have seen a connection between the remanding of certain individuals and a reduction in violent crime."

He said the SCU investigated gangs and two or three officers had been trained in the US and were now passing on the knowledge to colleagues. "More officers will go away this year to New Jersey. We are very clear about our responsibilities but we are very clear there is a responsibility on others to ensure a culture and environment is created which doesn't make joining a gang an OK thing to do.

"What I am concerned about is the seemingly growing acceptance among families that it is OK for their relatives to be associated with gangs and criminal activity.

"Relatives have some very serious decisions to make ? they are watching their own brothers and sons slide into a life of crime. It's happening right before their eyes. They have to grab them and pull them back. There is an unhealthy belief by some that it is OK to be in a gang."

The biggest impact of gangs was in violent clashes between rivals, said Mr. Smith, but gangs were also linked to drugs and property crime including breaking and entering and street robberies.