Thread: Spike in gang violence may foreshadow a long, hot summer

Published: June 18, 2010
Updated: 8:04 p.m.

Spike in gang violence may foreshadow a long, hot summer

By KIMBERLY EDDS, DENISSE SALAZAR and DOUG IRVING
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTERNext

SANTA ANA – Police could sense the tension building on the streets. It exploded in gunfire on a single bloody afternoon last month: three shootings, three teenage boys fighting for their lives.

That spasm of violence and a recent surge in gang attacks have police bracing for the start of the summer, the peak season for trouble. They will be outnumbered: Santa Ana has 362 sworn officers trying to contain 5,000 documented gang members.

They also will be working against budget cuts that have curtailed their overtime pay and reduced the number of jail beds available. They don't expect to solve the gang problem – not this summer, not for a long time. But they do hope to keep a lid on the bloodshed through the long months to come.

"You sense that thin line of respect between the gangs is very fragile right now," said Sgt. Lorenzo Carrillo, who heads the city's gang investigative unit. He added: "We are trying to control the number of incidents, especially the violent ones."

Santa Ana, as the biggest city in Orange County, also has the most crime and the most gangs – with nearly 100 identified. But it's a far safer place than it was in the mid-1990s, when warring gangs sent dozens of bodies to the morgue every year. The city has had three gang-related homicides this year, the lowest since 2003.

But gang-related assaults have risen sharply in recent months, police statistics show. Most involved guns or knives, but attackers have also wielded bottles, a baseball bat and, in one case, a large tree branch.

The drop in homicides – not just in Santa Ana, but across Orange County – "is not for lack of trying," said John Anderson, the assistant district attorney in charge of the gang unit. "That's just bullets not being lethal," he said. "The attempted homicides have remained pretty steady."

The reality of that hit hard on a sunny afternoon in early May. It began shortly after school let out, when a 17-year-old boy was shot through the heart near Santa Ana High School. Police said he was a known gang member.

A few hours later, another 17-year-old boy was shot through the neck as he drove through south Santa Ana. Minutes after that, a teenager was hit when a gunman opened fire at Logan Park.

All three boys survived. Police have classified all three shootings as gang-related.

The flash of violence that day underscored the problems facing police in a city where gangs recruit grade-schoolers and teenagers carry guns. Those problems get worse in the summer, when the days are long and those kids are out of school, hanging out on the streets.

"There are more chances for bad contact between people," said Cpl. Rudy Reynoso of the city's gang-suppression unit.

Even before school let out for the summer, school officials had to briefly lock down Century High School after word got around that an Asian gang was going to war with a rival Hispanic gang. The Asian gang was rumored to be bringing in reinforcements from Long Beach.

Police head into this summer with thinner ranks than in previous years. The department is down from an authorized 403 sworn officers to just 362, with more departures expected through retirements. Another 20 officers are destined to disappear shortly after the grant that pays for them expires. Overtime has been cut for more than a year.

Officers are further handcuffed by county and state budget problems, which have slashed the number of jail and prison beds available. That has made it nearly impossible to put gang members back behind bars for small violations of their probation or parole.

A partnership with the California Highway Patrol has added extra officers to Santa Ana streets, but grant money for that program runs out at the end of the month.

What Santa Ana police are up against was on full display on a recent afternoon on Daisy Street, where officers watched car after car pull up to a small group of gang members. It wasn't drugs, the drivers said when police pulled them over; they were stopping to pay their respects to a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head after he shouted his gang affiliation.

Police and prosecutors say they are seeing a troubling trend: a growing subculture of younger "tagging crews" that feed recruits into the adult gangs. Carrillo compared the tagging crews to a minor-league system that trains and develops gangsters.

"We cry great tears of pain if we have to funeralize them at the age of 13 or 14 years old," said the Rev. Mark Whitlock of Christ Our Redeemer AME Church. "If we can love him more than a gang can love him, then we can save a life."

Whitlock's church and others have joined with police to try to win over people struggling to survive on some of Santa Ana's meanest streets. A few weekends ago, church members went door to door in one of the city's most notorious housing complexes, urging residents to report crimes and take back their neighborhood.

The Mexican consulate, a powerful force in a city where more than 76 percent of the residents claim a Latino background, has partnered with police to teach parents about gangs. The consulate runs a parent academy that includes lessons on how to identify the early signs that a child might be involved in gangs, such as flagging grades or tagged-up notebooks.

The fight against gangs "goes beyond our police department and enforcement and arrests," Councilwoman Michele Martinez said. "That's not going to solve our gang problem. It starts at home and in the community."

Police Chief Paul Walters said he hopes to secure a new gang injunction in the coming months, which would make it easier for his officers to control and arrest gang members. The city has one such injunction in place against more than 130 members of the Santa Nita gang.

Police have not decided which gangs or areas to target with a second injunction.

For now, police are trying to disrupt the gangs by focusing on their leaders and the members with the guns – "the ones who are going to pull the trigger," as Sgt. Carrillo said. Their summer plan calls for flooding the streets with officers so that gang members can't turn a corner without seeing a black-and-white patrol car.

"It's like we're in a soap opera," Carrillo said. "There is always drama between gangs, and our victories are very small. If you look at the whole gang problem, it would be too much. We look at the small victories, at the guns recovered. That keeps us coming back the next day."

Maria Montes has had a front-door view of the gang fight in Santa Ana all her life. She grew up in the middle of it, raised in the bloody mid-1990s.

She talks matter-of-factly about watching her two best friends die at the hands of gang members; one took his last breath in her arms after he was stabbed.

She's 31 now, a mother trying to keep her own children safe. She makes sure they go to school. She keeps them in sports. She calls them inside early, because she knows what can happen when the sun goes down.

"You just can't let them outside to play," she said as she watched police question three neighborhood boys whose hands were cuffed behind them.

"It's sad," Montes said of her own children. "They aren't really getting a life of their own to go out and have fun."

http://www.ocregister.com/news/gang-254 ... gangs.html

and I get the joy of living down the road from all that