Thread: Prince William police analyst deciphers gang symbols

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Graffitibuster
Prince William police analyst deciphers gang symbols


By ELISA A. GLUSHEFSKI
eglushefski@potomacnews.com
Sunday, June 11, 2006



Gang Unit Analyst Thomas E. Sullivan, a civilian with the Prince William County Police Department, stands before a wall of graffiti behind a strip mall on Country Club Drive in Montclair Thursday, June 8, 2006. (JOE BRIER / Staff Photographer)


Audio slideshow
Tom Sullivan sits comfortably behind a desk at the Prince William police Garfield Substation - a faceless foe of gang-bangers.

Sullivan's work as a civilian graffiti analyst for the department helps local police close cases and stay safe while doing it.

Sullivan maintains a database of county gang members and with more than a decade on the job has compiled boxes of paperwork containing the symbols of about every known street gang in the United States.

In suburban areas like Prince William, residents' exposure to gangs is of the pop culture variety, or in seeing gang graffiti on store walls and public property.

Gang activity here is mostly confined to robbery, car thefts and some drug dealing, he said.

It is Sullivan's job to look at the graffiti, as well as photographs of gang tattoos collected by police, and put them together to give officers a clearer picture of local gang activity.

"Officers only see little tidbits," the 55-year-old said. "It's my job to put those tidbits together."

SQUARE ONE
Prince William police hired Sullivan in 1993 to fill one of the two crime analyst positions. A year later the department transferred all gang-related analysis to him.

"At the time it was rare for a [police] department to have two crime analyst positions," he said. "It goes to show how much insight [Chief Charles T. Deane] has."

The respect is mutual now, but wasn't initially.

"Tom has done a great job. He has a good reputation in the region," Deane said. "But I wasn't sure he was the real deal when we brought him on board."

It didn't take long for Sullivan to prove himself, but it didn't go without a little testing from Deane.

Deane recalled pulling individual case files Sullivan had worked on and squarely asking him to "prove to me this is gang related."

He did and has thrived at the department.

However, the heavyset Boston native knew nothing about gangs when he started - not a problem, though, considering he had been an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army for 20 years.

To that extent, he was a shoe in. But like anyone starting in a field outside his specialty, Sullivan started at square one.

With gang intelligence units in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York at his disposal, Sullivan quickly went to work, gathering information on gang structures and identifiers that include tattoos and hand signals.

"They aren't shy about showing they're a member," he said. "Some of those guys have it literally tattooed to their forehead."

Even with body parts used as billboards, Sullivan has to determine whether the person is legitimately a gang member or if he's a "wannabe," which could be a recruit with little pull in the actual gang or someone who formed a "gang" that poses no threat to the community.

In any given week, there are about six reports of actual gang graffiti in the county, he said.

Sullivan's first task after receiving a report or a picture of graffiti is to determine whether the person who did it is local or an outsider.

There's not always a surefire answer, but there are telltale signs in gang graffiti, he said, such as a three-pronged pitchfork. But in other circumstances the case is not so clear-cut.

For instance, when he sees a backward swastika spray-painted on a brick wall, Sullivan is forced to ask himself: "Is this guy an idiot or is he a gang member?"

The purpose, he said, is to know whether the county is dealing with a new gang - either imported or homegrown.

Sullivan also has a loose rule of thumb that "if you can't read it, it's probably gang-related."

GANG PRESENCE
The business of being in a gang - especially in a suburban area - is as transient as a military job.

Gang members relocate with their families or are sent to jail. Other times they are rehabilitated - they get a job, join the military and sometimes get married.

By Sullivan's most recent analysis, there are about 10 gangs operating in the county.

The presence of gangs peaked around the mid-1990s, he said, and then leveled off in 2000 and has remained stagnant.

Even as the number of gangs is level, gang activity persists.

Just a little over a year ago, a 14-year-old boy, who police identified as being associated with the South Side Locos, or SSL, was beaten with a baseball bat and stabbed outside Manassas Mall by two men linked to Sureno-13 - a clique of SSL's rival Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

Months before, 15-year-old Anthony Campos of Fairfax County was shot and killed outside an Alexandria-area apartment complex. This was an area reportedly known as SSL territory.

Two of Campos' friends standing with him were also shot, but only injured.

Fairfax County police Lt. Richard Perez was quoted at the time as saying there was "nothing in our investigation that suggests our victim was a member of a gang."

Sullivan said the general public should not feel threatened by gangs, because typical gang violence is against rival gangs.

MS-13 and SSL have become two of the most active gangs in the county. But gangs here come and go just as often as their members do.

Unlike gangs in suburbs, urban gangs are largely generational because the population is largely unchanging. In cities like Los Angeles, these generational gang members usually live and sometimes die on the street they grew up on.

The presence of suburban gangs is sometimes not noticed as much for a couple of reasons.

"You can't survive in the suburbs without a car," Sullivan said. "Most of these kids meet at houses and playgrounds; you won't see them meeting on street corners."

WRITINGS ON THE WALL
Identifying gang graffiti is but a fraction of the department's efforts to contain gang activity.

A large part of Sullivan's role in the department is helping train officers on gang activities, gang philosophy and such things as gang attire.

Simply put, Sullivan's job requires that he eat, drink and breathe gangs.

Sullivan has helped rework the thought process of the men and women on the force when in the field and when booking suspects.

What takes place during bookings plays a tremendous role in creating leads to other gang members and continuing to learn gang-specific tattooing and marking, said Sullivan and Officer John Bogert, public information officer with the county police. All it takes is feigning interest and a little sly detective work.

Bogert has frequently struck up casual conversations with suspects during the booking process.

He sees one tattoo, asks if there's more, then - most importantly - asks: "Can I take a picture of that?"

Usually the person has no problem, and it's another documented gang member in the database.

For Sullivan, though, being a one-man act was taxing.

The job has gotten less frustrating, since the county police department developed a gang unit of six officers and Sullivan.

"When you're the only one, who are you going to give the information to?" he asked. "With our gang unit and the [Northern Virginia] Gang Task Force, that's not a problem any more."

REGIONAL EFFORTS
The Northern Virginia Gang Task Force, spearheaded by Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-10th, formed in July 2003.

"Rep. Wolf started to see signs in the community of trouble brewing and wanted to get local law enforcement the necessary resources to address the issue," Wolf's spokesman, Dan Scandling, said.

Since its inception, the task force has received $4.5 million in federal funding, Scandling said, and is expected to receive additional money this year.

The original constituents included Fairfax County, Herndon, Leesburg, Loudoun County, Manassas City, Manassas Park and Prince William County.

The coverage area has doubled to include 14 counties that share a database of gang intelligence and offer supplemental assistance to a department if needed, said Arlene Garcia, program coordinator.

The force specifically tracks the trends and operating gangs on a regional basis.

"Local law enforcement has done an outstanding job in dealing with gang suppression," Scandling said. "Now they're moving to the second phase, which is education."

DETERRENTS
Swift removal is generally the best deterrent, Bogert said.

If a graffiti-laden wall is left intact for one or two months, it sends the message to gangs that it is a prime location for advertising, he said.

But swift removal is less likely when a constantly targeted business has to bear the cost of cleanup.

Before removal, Bogert recommends people report any graffiti, whether nuisance tagging or surefire gang graffiti, to the police.

"If it's not reported, it makes it more difficult for us to stay responsive to the problems in the area," he said.

Fences on private property are often targeted, Bogert said, because they are highly visible and carry territorial weight.

Less visible areas like bridges and underpasses are just as likely to be hit, though, because if it's a known hangout spot of a certain gang, it doesn't matter if the rest of the population sees what's written.

BEHIND THE SCENES
More than a decade later, Sullivan admits that he's still learning, but has a better grasp on what to look for and, when in doubt, whom to call.

The job requires some finesse that is hard to obtain without higher education. But equally, if not more, the job requires pragmatic thinking.

Just like any two-bit thug can take a 99-cent can of spray paint and tag a wall, Sullivan said, almost anyone with a college degree could tackle the job of a gang graffiti analyst.

"You really don't even need a degree in criminal justice," he said.

With television dramas like Numb3rs, which uses often-outlandish methods to calculate a crime's probability at a certain place, crime analyst positions are as popular as ever.

Still, the job isn't just for anyone.

It requires stringent organization, resourcefulness and working behind the scenes without the glory of a catch.

It never ceases to amaze me that violent gangs as MS-13 whose members are illegal aliens are allowed to terrorize and control our neighborhoods while our inept fortune 500, drug cartel, Mexican Mafia and Vincente Fox run congress and administration just stands idly by and watches the carnage unfold without a care in the world as the lives of American citizens have absolutely no meaning or value to this jackass defacto Mexican government.

Send a few of them to Gitmo.
We will see how tough they are.