http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/jul05/338308.asp

Gang plunges tribe into turmoil
Rural reservation struggles to recover from big city crime brought by Latin Kings
By GRAEME ZIELINSKI
gzielinski@journalsentinel.com
Posted: July 2, 2005
Hayward - It is an unlikely venue for a gangland killing.

There are no damp alleys topped with garbage, there is no scream of siren or chugging hum of city life.

Here, the wind sighs through the red pines and wisps of spiderwebs hang pendent from the branches, amid patches of sandy soil. Not far away, herons glide across a necklace of pristine glacial lakes.

Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation
Photo/Rick Wood

Nick Barber, 18, a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin, works on his jump shot at a friend’s home in the Dry Town subdivision. With unemployment estimated at nearly 70%, the tribe is working to find ways to keep youth out of trouble.

Photo/Rick Wood

Bill Murrow, Lac Courte Oreilles tribal police chief, finds silk flowers left by family members at the site in a pine plantation. That’s where 23-year-old Cody Badbear Wade was shot and killed in an ambush by a member of the Latin Kings, a violent Hispanic street gang with a significant presence in Milwaukee.

Quotable
When they come back from the city, they bring a lot of the negative things with them.
- Brian Bisonette,
Member of tribal council
Photo/Rick Wood

The Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin are building a new administration building on their reservation in Sawyer County. They hope to provide additional services to tribal members and discourage gang involvement.

Photo/Rick Wood

The Lac Courte Oreilles operate a casino near Hayward, but the tribe estimates unemployment at 70%. The lack of jobs and programming for young people creates an environment ripe for gangs such as the Latin Kings to establish themselves.

Photo/Rick Wood

Michael Hammong (from left), 9, Brett Dennis, 5, and Bobbi Brown, 3, clean up dead branches at their homes in Dry Town, a community on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in Sawyer County.

Photo/Rick Wood
Robert Smith was sentenced to 13 years in prison for a gang killing in 2002.

This pine plantation is where 23-year-old Cody Badbear Wade was shot five times, once in the head. Police searched a nearby cranberry marsh for the murder weapon.

A police report said Wade had proclaimed himself a "King killer," but it turned out differently the night of May 30, 2002.

After trading harsh words with Wade at the Snowshoe Bar, Robert G. "Bobby" Smith, an avowed member of the Almighty Latin King Nation, the violent Hispanic street gang with a significant presence in Milwaukee, would ambush and kill Wade after he approached a clearing in his truck.

Smith, the son of a former Sawyer County sheriff's deputy, told investigators that one of the admitted leaders of the Latin Kings on the Lac Courte Oreilles Indian reservation, Charles Gokey, ordered members to "light up" on Wade. Smith later was sentenced to 13 years in prison for Wade's murder.

Earlier this year, Gokey, in turn, was sentenced in a federal court in Madison to almost 20 years for crack cocaine distribution. U.S. District Judge John C. Shabaz said the harsh punishment was meant "to assist the government's mission to substantially reduce the impact of drug and drug-related crime on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation."

The two were part of more than 50 prosecutions and a continuing multi-headed investigation that were set in motion by the events in the pine plantation in an attempt to rid the reservation of the Latin Kings.

The Lac Courte Oreilles (pronounced "la COO de ray") Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin lives on a 78,000-acre reservation crisscrossed with more than 260 miles of roads. About 3,000 residents live there out of a total tribal enrollment of 6,000, arrayed in 20 distinct communities, some of which amount to four or five prefabricated homes.

These developments have names like Dry Town, New Post and Bacon Strip and bear the mark of economic depression, made especially vivid against the breathtaking natural beauty of the surrounding landscape, featuring the Chippewa River Flowage. Tribal figures estimate unemployment at more than 70%, despite a casino that has provided one stream of economic relief.

At the tribal headquarters, there are signs of progress. Construction crews are finishing a new administrative office. Just up Old School Road is a brand-new Head Start office, and in front of the tree farm where Wade was killed is another new building, housing a branch of the Boys & Girls Club where on a recent day, dozens of young tribal kids played basketball.

Whereas gang slayings in Milwaukee often barely makes the news, on the Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) Indian reservation, it has been treated as epochal. And the presence of the Latin Kings, hundreds of miles from their traditional base, has been treated as more than a cross-cultural anomaly, but as a full-on peril to peace.

The prosecutions over the past three years on and near the reservation, including a sweeping round of federal charges that brought long prison terms for dozens of people and the evictions of several tribal members from reservation property, have left children without parents and a tribe with a wounded sense of pride - and a sense of relief.

Court documents and interviews reveal how a relationship developed over the years between Milwaukee and Sawyer County as tribal members spending time in the city imported criminality back to the reservation. Interviews there indicate that the Latin Kings may have been in Sawyer County as early as the 1980s.

"The influences come from cities like Milwaukee. We have a lot of tribal members all over. When they come back from the city, they bring a lot of the negative things with them," said Brian Bisonette, a member of the council that governs the tribe.

Gang members would drive to Milwaukee or the Twin Cities to acquire drugs, and sometimes guns, to be resold at big profits on the reservation, court records show.

The LCO version of the gang was called the "Lion Tribe Set" and was proved, in close to 30 federal guilty pleas, to have kicked profits from crack and powder cocaine sales back to Milwaukee, with the gang going so far as to rent a home on the reservation to process the narcotics, according to court records.

People around the reservation prominently wore the "black and gold," gang colors. Graffiti featuring the crown associated with the Latin Kings began appearing on tribal-owned properties, on traffic signs and literally in the streets.

In some cases, the relationships grew as thick as blood, as Milwaukee gang members started families with LCO members and Latin Kings used the reservation as sort of a hideout, much as Al Capone did at a nearby retreat in the 1920s.

Names such as Acosta and Barragon and Zamora from Milwaukee began being linked with old names locally, such as Martinson, Lasieur and Rademacher.

"We live in a fish bowl," said Bisonette, the tribal council member. "Everyone knows everybody. So when something like this happens . . . "

Consider that Smith's girlfriend was Wade's first cousin. Or that William Morrow, the chief of the tribal police force, which was created in part as a response to the killing, was related to both Smith and Wade. Or that with the Wade killing and the vicious murder later in 2002 of an elderly Hayward couple, allegedly by another Latin King, Sawyer County (current population about 17,000) had the highest per capita murder rate in the state.

When Smith finally admitted in court in February 2005 to pulling the trigger, he said he spoke up partly at the insistence of an uncle familiar with tribal traditions. Smith said that it was the "Indian way" to accept responsibility so healing could begin.

A few weeks ago Smith again echoed that theme in a jail letter to a federal magistrate in Madison, seeking, as his lawyer put it in an accompanying letter, the "various accoutrements" needed to practice his native religion. Medicine bundles. Drums. An eagle feather.

One ritual "involves the ceremonial placing of a plate of food in the outdoors for the spirit of the victim," the lawyer wrote.

But the Wade killing was in many ways only the beginning of the troubles that came to the reservation with the Latin Kings.

In the tense days afterward, and following other gang-related violence on the reservation that included drive-by shootings, brutal beatings and a home arson, the tribal council in September 2002 declared a "state of emergency" and asked for outside help.

It came in the form of a task force made up of Sawyer County, federal and state agencies. It peaked last July, when a small army descended in the early morning hours to serve warrants in one of the largest law-enforcement actions in North Woods history.

"There's never been anything like that here," said Dan Ross, a Sawyer County Sheriff's Department investigator involved in the case. The closest may have been in the early 1900s, when posses were sent to subdue John F. Deitz, who became a national folk hero for defying logger barons at the Cameron Dam.

Beyond a small group, the Latin Kings are not seen in such a heroic light in LCO country.

One mother to a victim of Latin Kings violence, who feared reprisal if her name was used, put it this way: "We just want them gone."

The federal probe continues, with more arrests on the way, according to investigators. In the meantime, several residents on LCO land say that while the investigation may have shown a heavy hand, it caused a serious downtick in the presence of drugs, illegal guns and gang graffiti.

Tension lingers, but eases
"You can just feel it. The tension has gone down quite a bit," said Paul DeMain, managing editor and CEO publisher of News from Indian Country, a national publication he runs from a building on the reservation that includes an Internet café and a gift shop.

His son was a member of the Latin Kings and later dropped out, DeMain said.

Certain members of the tribe are reluctant to talk about the problems with drugs and gangs out of a sense of embarrassment, while others are reluctant to talk, or identify themselves, because they still fear the gang.

"He's getting out soon, so we're still afraid of what he may do," said a victim of Latin Kings violence, a middle-aged woman standing in her front lawn in the Dry Town community.

In any case, the LCO tribe has seen relative peace in the days since the first indictments came down, but in some quarters the silence is seen as ominous.

"You still have the ingredients here," said Bill Cadotte, a tribal program specialist. "There is a lack of jobs, there is a lack of programming here for young people. It's a total problem here."

Morrow, the police chief, pointed to a disturbing sign when driving on a recent day near the site of the Wade killing.

"See those colors?" he said, pointing to teens wearing powder blue basketball jerseys. "Those are supposed to be 'The Players,' " another gang rumored to growing to fill the void created with the recent convictions. "There still are gangs here, but what they will do, we don't know."