Well you're both right and wrong. It's all about timing and geography. My days in the unit were early 90's. You have to remember the culture at the time was all about gangster movies: Colors, Boyz In Da Hood, Blood In Blood Out, American Me, you get the idea. There was a wave of kids joining gangs just out of a sense that it was cool and rebellious. Gangster Rap was THE music to listen to for them.
Now as to geography, Reno is like an island, it's the only mid-major city for hundreds of miles to the East, South or North. To the West you've got Sacramento and the Bay Area only 1.5 and 3 hours away respectively. Given the tens of thousands of tourists coming into town each weekend, made it very attractive for as you said, dealing "booger sugar" except at that time it was all about rock cocaine, which came into town by the carload, especially from Oakland and Sacramento. Lots of Black and Asian gangsters hitting the casinos and ruffling fistfuls of C-notes that I'm sure was just prize money from their car club championship. They did not play nicely with our homegrown crews since a lot of them claimed Norteno or Blood and the hometown heroes were more aligned with Surenos and Crips. When I got out we had documented over 1500 street gang members in town and we also had responsibility for keeping tabs on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Reno was the first town in Nevada, not Vegas, to get a chapter of the Hell's Angels, mostly because of connections they brought to the brothels outside of town.
Add to all of that a couple of high-profile gang-related killings, including a young girl at a soccer game in a wealthy neighborhood and you had a lot of public outcry which resulted in a gang unit, and lots of support for it. So we got nice toys, lots of admin support and a gung-ho tactically minded Sergeant who arranged for the LA training. Was it justified? Probably not looking back. I remember we debriefed our training and even then decided that much of what we learned tactically, could not be put to use back home. At that time, LAPD CRASH made every stop at gunpoint, something we didn't do and which probably wouldn't have been supported by our very vocal minority public. They also administered some street justice while they were at it. (This was before Rodney King and the later Rampart Scandal) Some of what we learned was put to good use, especially on the intelligence end as we had cliques of MS13 and 18th St as well as MaraVilla and White Fence, all old time LA Hispanic gangs. We also had sets claiming affiliation with Grape St. Crips and East Coast Gangster Crips out of LA.
Older and wiser, we probably could have had a couple of their guys come up and put on the training at less cost but as a young cop full of piss and vinegar, that training was just freaking cool. On that we all agreed. Besides, it paled in comparison to what the department did later when we had a serious manpower shortage and there was just two of us routinely patrolling a district that usually had 10 officers assigned....but that's another gripe.
....and if I had a dollar for every f*cking Reno 911 joke I've had directed my way......the show bore no resemblance to reality.....
