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Rival gangs use man's home to mark their territory

06:16 PM CDT on Thursday, May 18, 2006
By Karla Barguiarena / 11 News



A Houston homeowner said he was caught in the middle of gang turf war and an aging neighborhood succumbing to crime.


KHOU-TV

Larry Stroman scrubs graffiti off his garage door.

Rival gangs are using the man’s home as their canvass to mark their territory.

Graffiti on Carvel has officers of the Houston Police Department’s nearby mobile crime unit working to target the taggers and other criminals.

Larry Stroman knew little about Houston gangs until he had to scrub graffiti off his entire two-door garage.

“They’re not really afraid of police if they are out doing that,” he said.

Last Friday night Stroman discovered the SUR-13 gang is out and about his southwest Houston neighborhood. They marked their turf on his white garage.

But then began the war.

“One of the neighbors rang the doorbell and said, ‘Hey, do you know you have graffiti on the wall?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it’s been there several days,’ but he said, ‘No this is new’.”

Yes, he was tagged again; only this time by the La Primera gang who crossed out the first name with black spray paint and then wrote theirs over it.

It happened Wednesday during broad daylight.

“They are awfully brazen. It also tells me that there is not much police enforcement around here,” Stroman said.

“This stuff is brazen,” said Captain Bruce Williams, HPD.

But Captain Williams hopes change is on the way. Last month he launched a mobile command unit to combat this and other crimes plaguing southwest Houston.

“We want to break the back of gang problems and gang activity in this area,” Captain Williams said.

He hopes their presence will be a deterrent so he moves the unit from location to location. Larry Stroman hopes the next location will be near him because neither the scrubbing or the gangs seem to be going away.

“It’s helping, but its not going to go away,” he said.