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Police hunt uprooted N.O. gangs

BR law enforcement says no signs of higher crime yet

By PENNY BROWN ROBERTS

Advocate staff writer

The New Orleans automobile dealer logo on the Monte Carlo. The Lafitte Gang-style attire. And the late hour in Gardere -- a neighborhood with a reputation for drugs and violence.
Enough, Lt. Shane Evans concluded, to merit a closer look.

But these were no typical East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office deputies about to politely ask for identification, registration and proof of insurance.

"Hands up! Hands up!" someone shouted, as a dozen bullet proof vest-clad special response team members toting M16s leapt from unmarked SUVs and trucks and surrounded the four men.

The officers patted them down, searched their skin for affiliation tattoos, separated them for questioning, issued summonses and logged their names, addresses and photographs before speeding off again into the night.

It's one of law enforcement's newest priorities: Looking for New Orleans gangsters and dealers on the streets of Baton Rouge.

Authorities emphasize they have no evidence the Crescent City's cruelest criminals have found new territory in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But they aren't taking any chances, either.

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression," said Col. Greg Phares, chief criminal deputy for the Sheriff's Office. "Our goal is to establish very quickly and forcefully that we will not allow the lawless conditions seen in New Orleans to spread to Baton Rouge."

Four nights in a row last week, the Sheriff's Office sent its special response team and narcotics detectives on intelligence-gathering missions in some of the parish's toughest neighborhoods.

After a Gretna man was killed in a drive-by shooting last week, the Baton Rouge Police Department "saturated" one area with patrols.

And on the federal level, the U.S. Department of Justice has dispatched a Violent Crimes Impact Team to Baton Rouge -- making it just one of a handful of target cities in the nation that includes Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Additionally, the FBI has relocated its New Orleans Anti-Gang Task Force to Baton Rouge.

New Orleans has the highest per-capita murder rate in the nation, and federal authorities have estimated as much as 80 percent of all violent crime there is drug-related.

Just last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pledged federal assistance to the Fraternal Order of Police convention, then spent the day behind closed doors with New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and FBI Special Agent in Charge Jim Bernazzani mapping out an anti-gang strategy.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, New Orleans has 16 identifiable gangs boasting some 400 members.

Its metropolitan area has just one active nationally affiliated gang: The Latin Kings, which has strong ties to Miami. Of greater concern has been the "posses" or "crews" identified by neighborhood or public housing projects: The Lafitte Gang, The Mosley Gang, Perry Francois Gang, Dillon Gang, and Got It Boys are among the more active ones.

"We want to curb it before it gets out of hand," said Capt. Bobby Font, special operations commander for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office. "We've gotten intelligence that gang members are here, and we're concerned there could be a war for territory."

The agency's anti-gang missions are "a significant step up" in patrols for the special operations division, Phares said, but it isn't clear how long they'll continue.

Reports of some suspected gang members purchasing ammunition and firearms in Baton Rouge -- as well as rumors of gang activity in the city -- prompted the initiative.

But Phares said it's too early to tell whether any drug gangs have actually relocated to Baton Rouge.

"We don't at this point know the scope of New Orleans gang activity in Baton Rouge -- if, in fact, there is any," Phares said. "That's why we're out there -- to find out. This is kind of an exploratory mission."

Since Tuesday, the Sheriff's Office at press time had made four arrests, issued 17 misdemeanor summonses for drug possession and other crimes and secured an arrest warrant alleging three counts of attempted first-degree murder of police officers. One case -- a felon in possession of a firearm -- already has been referred for federal prosecution.

Deputies also seized three weapons -- a .45, a .380 and an SKS rifle with a bayonet attached -- but it isn't yet clear how many of those, if any, might be linked to gang activity. All of them are being run through the Louisiana State Police ballistics database.

Baton Rouge U.S. Attorney David Dugas said he contacted Gonzales just days after the hurricane with concerns about the migration of "the criminal element that was present in New Orleans and had caused some of the problems there."

Said Dugas: "I asked the attorney general to provide whatever federal resources he could to Baton Rouge so we could be prepared to augment the local police departments if that became a problem."

To that end, Gonzales is sending a Violent Crimes Impact Team -- a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives initiative that works with local law enforcement to identify and arrest the most violent offenders in the city.

The FBI's New Orleans Anti-Gang Task Force also is gathering intelligence about the status and location of New Orleans' most notorious gangs.

"We've seen no indication yet that anything like that is going on here," Dugas said. "But the Sheriff's Office and Police Department are monitoring it and continuing to gather intelligence as are the federal agencies."

A week ago, the drive-by shooting of a 19-year-old Gretna man prompted the Police Department to dispatch additional patrols to the Cristy Drive area near North Flannery Road, Sgt. Don Kelly said last week.

"We saturated the area with patrols to make sure we didn't have, and we are not going to have, a New Orleans-Baton Rouge gang confrontation over territories," he said. "But there were no follow-up shootings, no talk of retaliation and no indication that this was part of a bigger problem."

Kelly said that in the coming days, the department likely will work with federal law-enforcement agencies to "get out in the neighborhoods to see if there's anything we need to be concerned about."

"With a population increase like the one we've had, you get all kinds of people -- good and bad," Kelly said. "Now that the immediate crisis has somewhat diminished, we have an obligation in law enforcement to assess who is in town and what kinds of problems might be present."

Kelly said that while calls to the department have been "way up," the crime rate hasn't climbed significantly, which he described as "remarkable, considering the number of people who are here, the fear levels and the crazy rumors."

"Certainly not all of the people who evacuated to Baton Rouge are gang members," Kelly said. "In fact, there are signs that many of them stayed down there. Let's not forget that much of that population is dispersed all over the country. We don't really know for certain yet where the criminal element went."