Little-known gang growing in Austin

By Tony Plohetski
tplohetski@statesman.com
http://www.statesman.com
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, October 21, 2007

A little-known but quickly growing Texas gang whose members often group together in prison based on their hometowns is exploding in number on Austin streets, carrying out crimes that include robbery and assault, according to interviews and Austin police records.

Called the Tango Blast, the gang is the city's fastest-growing, rising from less than a dozen members about two years ago to as many as 100 today, said Austin police crime analyst Jeff Allen, who gathers intelligence on the city's gangs.


Police have linked the Tango Blast to about 25 criminal cases, which range from music that was too loud to the May 2006 robbery of a woman with a mental illness who was walking along West William Cannon Drive in South Austin.

"It is a big concern," said Lt. Max Westbrook, who works in the Police Department's organized crime division. "I know that they are here, and I know that they present a challenge."

Tango Blast members are among the nearly 1,000 total members of gangs in Austin, which also include people from the more notorious Mexican Mafia and Texas Syndicate prison groups.

Investigators track known gangsters based on their own admissions or other indicators, including gang tattoos or affiliations with other members.

Austin police said they have in recent months begun more aggressively monitoring the Tango Blast — they call members "Blasters" — and are working with officials from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to monitor when known members are released from prison and whether they are headed to the city.

They also said they are keeping up with where and when members may have carried out crimes to see whether members are grouped in certain neighborhoods or areas.

The membership of the gang, which has local groups in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Austin, is largely made up of former state prison inmates who banded together behind bars based on where they're from.

Others who have never been to prison are joining on the street, often by participating in a pre-arranged fight in which they show their prowess with existing members, said people who have studied the group.

Tango Blast, whose members are mostly Hispanic men of all ages, generally differs from more notorious prison or street gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, because members are not governed by a "blood in, blood out" philosophy, meaning they can leave the group at any time without the threat of violence.

Experts said Tango Blast is also much more loosely organized, with no set hierarchy or structure.

But officials said they are similar in a major way: their link to crime.

Police declined to release a complete list of crimes carried about by known Tango Blast members, saying that could prevent them from gathering further intelligence about the organization.

However, they cited a couple of cases to highlight why they are concerned.

Austin police arrested and charged Michael Anthony Martinez, 22, in May 2006. They said he approached a woman who is mentally ill and asked for money to take the bus.

The woman, according to court records, refused and told him that he could ride the bus for free that day.

Martinez then grabbed the woman's purse, police said, knocking her to the ground and injuring her ankle. She later gave officers a description of Martinez, who police arrested a short time later as he hid at his mother's nearby apartment.

Martinez was sentenced to 10 years in prison three months after the incident.

In March, police arrested and charged a Tango Blast member who investigators said had pointed a gun at two women after a party.

Hometown connections

The gang began to emerge in the 1990s as state inmates who shared geographic roots sought safety in numbers inside prisons, said Sigifredo Sanchez, who leads the gang department for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The term "tango" is similar to "homey."

Over time, Tango Blasters began displaying their membership with tattoos from their hometowns, such as the Houston Astros star or "ATX" for Austin. Some also sport tattoos of their cities' skyline or other landmarks, Sanchez said.

Prison officials do not yet count Tango Blast as an official gang because they said the organization doesn't meet its criteria, such as having strict rules and policies about how it governs itself.

Unlike members of more prominent prison gangs, Blasters aren't separated behind bars and operate as a group to recruit new members, allowing the organization to add to its ranks.

'A real problem'

Across the state, Tango Blast members also are making their presence known on the street to police in cities such as Houston and Dallas.

Houston police gang Sgt. Glenn Smart said the group "is becoming a real problem" and has been responsible for crimes that include automobile thefts, burglaries and assaults.

Police have responded in recent months by talking with neighborhood groups about how they can protect themselves and their property.

Smart declined to say how many confirmed Tango Blast members Houston has and how many crimes they have carried out.

Federal agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced in July that they had swept 121 gang members from Dallas streets and that some belonged to Tango Blast.

A federal judge in Dallas sentenced a Tango Blast member in August to more than 17 years in prison for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. Two other people who were part of the ring and members of the gang pleaded guilty earlier this year.

In Austin, Allen said he first learned about Tango Blast about three years ago through intelligence and information-sharing meetings with state prison officials.

He said those authorities cautioned that the group was becoming larger and that local police would probably start seeing the population growing on the street as Tango Blast members finished their sentences or received parole.

"If you had to single out one group that you are getting more confirmations on, it would be with this group," he said.

Allen, Westbrook and other gang division officials said the offenses have been citywide and do not appear to be limited to a particular neighborhood.

Allen said Austin police are going to keep working with state officials on monitoring Tango Blast.

"The best time to deal with the problem is when it is small and developing," Allen said.