Thread: Gang Watch In Schools: Who's In, Who's Not?

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Gang watch in schools: Who's in, who's not?

Whoever thought our schools would ever get to this point?

By Christina Jewett -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, June 6, 2005

Ed Nonog has seen teenagers carve gang insignias in their forearms. He's seen one girl show off photographs of herself throwing gang signs against a backdrop of gang colors. He saw a group of teens adopt an unusual weapon: a large padlock strapped to a backpack used to beat an enemy.
The Sacramento police officer observes and interacts with middle and high school students to determine who is in a gang and who is not.

Take Rosa Miranda, 15. She hangs out with about 15 teens, most of whom are in a gang at Luther Burbank High School. She shares their corner of turf in front of the school, calls them her homies, but does not consider herself a gang member.

"He knows I'm not gang-related," Miranda interjected in a chat with Officer Erik Farahmand about a recent stabbing at the school.
Later, Farahmand and Nonog agreed. They say the girl is young and impressionable but despite her group of friends does not meet their threshold for the gang member label - a checklist of 10 criteria that covers a variety of gang-related actions and accessories.

"We look at the totality of everything," Nonog said. "With Rosa ... she's not into throwing gang signs. She's not involved in gangland fights."

In the past two years, Sacramento police school resource officers have identified 740 area youths as gang members, including one 10-year-old.

Sacramento Police Sgt. Ron Soohoo said officers began labeling students in response to an upswing in gang activity.

A 15-year-old McClatchy High School student was stabbed and shot to death during a gang fight in September 2003. This year, police confiscated seven guns at schools - including one that went off in a Sacramento High School classroom and another seized at Natomas Middle School.

"Most of them are gang-related, and it's increasing," said Soohoo, who oversees school resource officers in the Sacramento City Unified district.

Recently, a 17-year-old Luther Burbank High student was shot and killed in a south Sacramento apartment complex. Last month, on the school's front steps, another Burbank student was stabbed. Police have identified both attacks as gang-motivated.

In the wider community, police and sheriff's officials point to gangs as a factor in the 15 percent rise in homicides in the city and county from 2003 to 2004.

Nonog sees the gang influence in school hallways, in older teens who say little to him and young "wannabes" who enthusiastically claim a gang. Those youths, many in middle school, can be the most dangerous, he said. They want to make their name known.

Nonog has discretion on whether to label students as gang members and said he is careful to do so only if they identify themselves, in conversation or by action, as soldiers for the group.

Under the system used by local police, students can - at an officer's discretion - be categorized as gang members if they meet two of 10 criteria, such as admitting gang membership, having a gang tattoo or wearing clothing associated with gangs.

Being labeled a gang member is not in itself a crime. Soohoo said police use the information to track crime trends and gather intelligence. And if they believe a crime was committed to glorify a gang, the offender faces gang enhancement charges and stiffer punishment if convicted.

Soohoo said 350 students were labeled gang members during the last school year and 290 this year. Another 100 youths were identified through encounters with officers off school grounds.

Jim Hernandez, a criminal justice professor at California State University, Sacramento, contends the police approach to determining gang membership often casts too wide a net. In a gang of 30 members, he said, usually about 10 are hard-core and creating problems. The others, teens grappling with identity and family troubles, may not be a threat, he said.

"You could fit the 12 apostles in that (criteria)," Hernandez said. "You wear the red, (your skin) gets a little dark, and you're in trouble."

Still, Hernandez said, Sacramento police have a reputation for being careful. And any method of combating gangs is going to be contentious, he said.

Categorizing students as gang members troubles Sabrina Griffin of Meadowview, whose 16-year-old daughter was expelled from Kennedy High School for fighting and now attends Community Day School.

Griffin said schools and police seem more eager to punish wayward youths than to nudge them onto a better path.

"You can't put everyone in a category," she said. "It's senseless, a lot of people are dying in senseless ways behind (gang) colors. We need to help them ... instead of locking them up."

After a student is labeled, Soohoo said, he sends a letter inviting parents to talk with officers about what they've observed.

But connecting with parents can be difficult, said Tracey Lopez, Sacramento City Unified's gang coordinator. When Lopez talks with parents, some deny their children are involved, she said. Others were in gangs themselves and dismiss news that their child scrawled gang graffiti on a notebook.

"They don't look at little disruptive things on campus as gang activity," she said. "They're talking about drug deals and drive-by (shootings)."

But, Lopez said, "We don't want it to get to that level."

She has referred 72 students identified as gang members to drug or alcohol counseling or intervention sessions offered by nonprofit groups. She sent another 24 students to Project SAFE, an anger management class.

Next school year, Soohoo said, four additional resource officers will work in Sacramento City Unified middle schools. He said additional officers will serve as mentors in a gang-resistance education program targeting sixth-graders.

Sacramento Police Capt. Rich Shiraishi said he hopes to expand a program that gathers "natural" student leaders, including those with gang ties, to address safety issues on high school campuses.

At Hiram Johnson High, the program - called SPIRIT - led to an on-campus truce among Latino gangs. Shiraishi said he hopes to expand the program to Luther Burbank, Grant and Natomas high schools.

Priscilla Sanabria, a 15-year-old who attends an after-school program led by a McClatchy High gang educator, said she doesn't think school programs and police efforts make much difference to gangs.

Sanabria said members of her family have joined gangs looking for acceptance or respect. The only thing that can pull teens out are mentors or family members who extend understanding and love, she said.

"(The gang) is always going to be around," she said. "It's not going to stop or end. Can't anybody change it, and you can't escape it."

Soohoo isn't so certain. He said the department has forged partnerships meant to effect immediate change and to make a long-term difference.

"There is a lot that schools, police and the community can do," he said.

Farahmand sees the small changes he's making. Recently, he spotted a teen he had talked to about the perils of gangs. She used to hang out with a gang after school, but that day, after the final bell rang, she shouted his name, waved hello and walked away from the campus.

HOW POLICE IDENTIFY GANG MEMBERS
Sacramento Police Department uses 10 criteria to identify gang members. A minimum of two must be met for a youth to be labeled a gang member, but the officer has discretion in applying the criteria.

Admits membership in a gang.
Is tattooed with a gang logo.
Is in the company of an identified and/or admitted gang member.
Is involved in gang-related crimes.
Is named by two or more gang members as a member of their gang.
Is in a photo that indicates affiliation.
Identifies himself or herself as a gang member through correspon-dence while in jail or prison.
Has been contacted by police about participating in gang-related activities as part of an investigation.
Has gang graffiti on body or belongings.
Wears gang clothing.
Source: Sacramento Police Department

About the writer:
The Bee's Christina Jewett can be reached at (916) 321-1201 or cjewett@sacbee.com.

My two centavos concerning Latino gangs.

We focus much attention as to whether given inividuals are or are not gang members. This is indicated in the forensic criteria used by police and the criminal justice system (CJS). This is fine as far as it goes, but is very much NOT capturing the gang phenomenon as a "sociological" construct with real damaging consequences for communities.

We should be thinking more holistically and see gangs as "collectives" of individuals who all work together for gang purposes. At the core of a given gang are leaders with their immediate retinue of confirmed members (via criminal acts... including homicides). Next to this are the "in" but upcoming members... then we have wanabee (pee wee) children who would not meet CJS or police criteria as gangsters. Yet, these relative outsiders may be likened to the ROTC members. One day, when older, they hope to get "jumped in." BYW: These "children" do play important functional roles within gang dynamics. "Kids" can be watcher, curriers, smugglers, thieves, informers, etc. for the gang they wish to someday be included in.

What I want to emphasize is the fact that gangs are sociolgical entities that terrorize and in various ways destroy communities. Think of them as evil organisms or as social organisms like a "hive" of predator killer bees. When gangs are extant in communities crime, drugs, antisocial behaviiors, visual blight, and other depressing signs are sure to be evident. As a Chicano who lived in such communities, I clearly saw that indivduals were NOT the real important factors. The gang is a corporation that lives on through trial and tribulations... It has its codes of conduct, symbolic dress codes, special language (Calo or argot), logos, and even an antisocial history of events of which members are proud. Thus, a gang connot be elliminated by the bleeding heart approach of taking individual cases of "poor" Jose or "Maria" . For there is a Jose or Maria eagerly waiting in the wings to join the corporation.

The gang even pervades jails and prisons and from these places come greater gang evils for a community.

I came to the conclusion that I could not fight the barrio gang phenomena in conventional case by case basis. What did I do?

I worked hard to attain the American dream and moved as far away from the barrio as possible.

It is an American Tragedy.

These kids have too much time on their hands. They need to be working.

Send the aliens home who stole alot of jobs that teen-agers and young people used to do. WORK goes a long ways toward keeping you straight. I know it did when I was in high school. All the boys worked from the time they were 14. I started working Saturdays when I turned 14. I started working on Saturdays and a couple evenings a week when I turned 15. I didn't have time for a gang. There was no gang to join. There was no time for gang activity. There was nothing a gang would have provided us. We had everything we needed.

Now, the kids are "looking" for something, things they don't have and bad influences find them and rake them in. Once in, there is no out, as I understand it. They'll seriously harm or kill you if you try to drop out.

It's a socio-economic highly predictable consequence of letting bad influences into the United States through illegal and excess legal immigration.

This problem "STANDS SQUARE ON THE SHOULDERS" of pro-immigration lobbies, advocates, officials, and businesses underwriting it.