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On any given night, you can find Corporal Joe Guerra looking for bad guys, among them, gang members that he says are getting easier and easier to find.

After only a few minutes on the streets, they spotted some gang members.

"You a black rag or what? You a gang member right?" said Guerra.

KHOU-TV

Two suspected gang members were arrested Friday.

They were teenage gang members that Guerra said were smoking marijuana on a school playground.

May not seem like a big deal but overall, gang crime in Houston is up, way up.

HPD records show the number of gang-related murders in Houston skyrocketed from two murders two years ago to 14 this year so far.

That's an increase of 600 percent.

In the same period of time, the number of gang-related rapes doubled and robberies and assaults both jumped by more than 100 percent.

Why join gangs in the first place?

"I wanted to experience what they were experiencing. I wanted to feel respected. I wanted for people when they would look at me, they would feel intimidated and that's what got me to get into the gang," said former gang member Mike Gomez.

Gomez is now a preacher in Alvin and tries to help others leave the lifestyle, but gang cop Jason Tran said some simply won't.

"That's why they're growing, because everybody wants to be the hottest gang in the city of Houston," Officer Tran said.

Officers say some, like the teens arrested earlier will even carry colored bandanas to identify their gangs In this case, it helped make the officers' job a little easier.