The Bulldogs are described by authorities as the nation's largest independent street gang

7-year-old boy was forcibly tattooed with the gang's emblem, a Bulldog paw, authorities say."I felt so... angry," said Det. Jesse Ruelas, describing the case in which Enrique Gonzalez is said to have held down his son while fellow gang member Travis Gorman allegedly applied the tattoo. "Why would you permanently disfigure your child?"

After a pause, the detective added, "Then I felt sad, like the police and the system had let him down and allowed him to be hurt."These days, police and the system are forcefully asserting themselves, but it's going to take time to determine the future of Bulldog Country.Here amid the alfalfa fields and almond orchards, where Fresno State University has provided many families their first access to a higher education, the gang's co-opting of the Bulldog brand has had strange and violent effects.Students in some local schools are banned from coming to class in sportswear showing off the college's snarling red mascot. A young woman jogging in a Bulldog T-shirt 100 miles from Fresno narrowly escaped a hail of bullets fired by a rival gang. A man was shot to death last summer after innocently greeting a gang member with this perceived insult: "What's up, dog?"Ruelas, the detective, recalled back in high school two decades ago making the connection between the mascot and the gang when he saw some female classmates from a notorious gang neighborhood wearing Fresno State jerseys. "I thought to myself, 'What's up? I know those girls aren't going to college.'"In an impoverished region with high dropout rates and few job options outside of agriculture, gang affiliation becomes an easy avenue for self-esteem among the undereducated. And while other U.S. cities fight Crips and Bloods, Nortenos and Surenos, Fresno's homegrown gang has developed a vicious reputation that has kept other gangs at bay.

The Bulldogs are described by authorities as the nation's largest independent street gang. Police estimate there are about 12,000 members in this city of 500,000.

For most of their 20-year existence, the Bulldogs escaped serious law enforcement scrutiny, even as they taunted cops with barks and howls. Police looked upon them mainly as wayward youth. But the gang that grew out of fights at San Quentin prison over respect eventually showed itself to be a deadly criminal enterprise. The 2006 shooting of a cop became a tipping point.Now police are trying to bulldoze the Bulldogs, before the next generation takes over.The Fresno police are engaged in year four of tactical warfare against the gang, sweeping through neighborhoods and making more than 12,000 arrests, including many juveniles, and even going after petty offenses such as loitering by seeking injunctions.