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Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy didn't go to the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County meeting Tuesday in Wheaton to talk about students skipping school, but truancy ended up dominating his conversation about gangs in the county.

While McCarthy said it's almost impossible to know the rate of crime committed by gang members, the peak time for gang members to commit crime is during the school day and just after school, between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. The peak recruiting age for gangs is middle school, he said.

There are about 40 known gangs and 1,600 gang members in the county, McCarthy said. While members are of a variety of ages, many potential gang members could be diverted from joining gangs by staying in school and taking part in after-school activities and mentor programs.

"I'm a prosecutor and I'm sitting here talking about truancy," he said in front of league members at Wheaton Library.

Keeping children in school should be a priority for everyone in the county, McCarthy said. But he said that is difficult to achieve without county truancy officers or truancy laws.

He said there is a state statute that says parents are responsible for making sure their children age 16 and younger go to and stay in school. But, he added, that statute is used to persuade and pressure parents rather than put them in jail for their child's habitual truancy. Under state law, teens age 17 and older can't be prosecuted for leaving school, he said.

Gangs aren't necessarily ubiquitous throughout the county, McCarthy said. He said there are large swaths of the county without them. But gang activity is a part of life in pockets of the county such as Bel Pre Road in Wheaton, east Silver Spring and parts of Germantown and Gaithersburg.

He said there are some nationally known gangs in Montgomery County such as MS-13 or the L.A.-based Bloods and their rivals the Crips. But, he added, most are local "cliques."

McCarthy said many people assume if a person is in a gang, the person is also an illegal immigrant. It's a common mistake that can make prosecuting criminals difficult, he said.

An executive order issued by County Executive Isiah Leggett in February requires police to turn over the names of people suspected of most violent crimes to federal immigration authorities who then check on their immigration status.

But McCarthy said police have to strike a balance between aggressively prosecuting immigration offenders and protecting victims. Often, illegal immigrants are victims of crime because the perpetrator assumes they won't report it, McCarthy said. Or a witness to a crime can be afraid to testify because of his immigration status.

"We breed lawlessness if we make [immigration status] a threshold issue," McCarthy said.

Another mistake he said county residents make is assuming gangs are the only reason the county has crime or that gangs feed the county's drug problem. McCarthy called that assumption "absolute nonsense."

"We had crime before gangs, we're going to have crimes after gangs," he said.

Nonetheless, the issue of gangs is complex, McCarthy said.

League member Jean Clarren of the Bel Pre neighborhood in Silver Spring agreed. She said the league hosted McCarthy as a precursor to the league's two-year exploratory study on the effects of gang activity on the county.

"He seems to really understand the complexity of the issue," she said.

In fact, McCarthy's office was one of the first in the state to start a gang prosecution unit, full of trained specialists who only prosecute gang crimes, said League member Elaine Apter.

The first report in the league's study, a fact sheet on gang activity in Montgomery County, is already compiled and can be accessed at www.lwvmd.org/mont.