Sunday, October 6, 1996

Abilene gang situation different from big cities

By TANYA EISERER
Staff Writer

Police Officer Leland Mitchell describes Abilene's gang problem like this. One night four or five years ago, Mitchell called for backup after smelling marijuana when he knocked on the front door of a northside residence.

What surprised Mitchell was that when he entered the house he found four Bloods and four Crips playing a game of poker.

Now that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but in a big city the Crips and Bloods - both violent rivals - would never be caught in the same room unless they were trying to kill or maim each other.
In Abilene, however, membership in gangs "is too small" and they all "know everyone," Mitchell said.

"To tell you the truth, I've seen problems. We don't have problems. We don't have the drive-by shootings like they have in other cities," said Officer Chris Nafe, a certified gang investigator. "A lot of times it is hard to take (Abilene's gangs) seriously.

"They don't have the real knowledge that they need, and we would really like to keep it that way. They don't have the rules or codes of conduct like the more organized gangs in the big cities have."
Police officials said Abilene has about 75 members with about 30 of them actually being hardcore gangsters.

"Comparative to other (similiar-sized) cities, it is almost nonexistent," said Abilene Police Chief Melvin Martin said.

Abilene's so-called "hardcore gang members" would not make it in Los Angeles or Dallas, said Lt. Ken Merchant, who heads the youth division.

Most of city's gangs are centered around neighborhoods, meaning that they are generally informal and have no area-wide or regional ties.

"It does help to be a couple of hundred miles from real major cities," Merchant said. "I would term (Abilene's) problem to be more of a violence problem than a gang problem."
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Graffiti is typically a good indictor of gang activity. It is a method of communication between gang members.

"By its presense, it declares turf ownership," according to a Texas Apartment Association Bluebook. "It warns, threatens and challenges. It can eulogize dead gang members. Graffiti attacts and challenges rival gangs and other criminal elements. It can cause drive-by shootings and other violence which causes endless destructive reprisals."

For the most part, police officials said Abilene has very little graffiti.

"The stuff we have here is so old, it's starting to fade," said Det. Lee Reed who has worked in the youth division for two decades and has been Abilene's resident gang expert.

Some business owners, however, would probably disagree. Recently, about six businesses in the 100 block of Ruidosa were hit with blue spray paint.

Vandals painted "Crips" and other statements up and down the street on various buildings in mid-September. It's not known whether the vandals were gang members or if it was just an isolated incident, but there was a similar incident in the same general vicinity several weeks prior.

"The policeman that did our report didn't seem too concerned," said James Dotson, who owns the Bug Stop. "He didn't even go talk to (other owners). He just got in his car and left."

Dotson is convinced that the northside gangs came to the southside to antagonize rival gangs. Some business owners like Dotson have cleared off the graffiti. But Ronnie Harrell, owner of West Texas Snacks, says he won't even bother to clean it off.

"They'd just spray it again," Harrell said.
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So what is a gang?

"It all depends on what a person's definition of a gang is," said Nafe, who once worked for the U.S. Coast Guard on a special drug interdiction team in South Florida. "The police department could be considered a gang."

A gang is a group of people who form an allegiance, to the exclusion of others, for common purposes and engage in violent, unlawful, anti-social or criminal behavior, according to the TAA Bluebook.

"You'd have to show that they continuously or routinely participated in criminal activity," Nafe said. "The legislature has given us a whole lot of authority" to deal with criminal street gangs.

Nafe said people shouldn't get the wrong idea and think that gangs and juvenile violence are strictly a Hispanic problem.

"Most gang activity is revolved around low-income areas," he said. "Criminal street gangs will have roots in poverty areas. The reason for their activity ... is because they don't like their family life."
If a hardcore gang member moved to Abilene, he would think that Abilene's "gang members" were recruits.

Nafe noted that in many big cities, citizens ignored the problem until it exploded, and then it was basically too late.

"If we close our eyes and don't do anything, it's going to come back to haunt us," he said.
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Nafe also described how easy it can be for a young person to fall in with a gang by telling the story of "Mark."

"He's in fifth grade, and he's headed to a new school," Nafe said. "He was the big man on campus, but now Mark is the low man on the totem pole. He's being picked on. He can barely find his locker. He doesn't have any friends."

Mark's grades start to slip, and he starts mouthing off in class. One day, some older kids notice him. They go up to him and make friends with him.

"Now all of the sudden, he's got someone paying attention to him," Nafe said. "They're not going to beat him up, they put their arms around him."

After school, they go to the park. They beat up some kid and steal his jacket and they give it to Mark.

Mark knows
what they did was wrong, so "he finds the kid in school" to give him back the jacket, Nafe said.
"But the kid is scared to death and runs away," he said. "Now, Mark is labeled as a gangster."

Several months later after Mark has done other petty crimes with the older youths, they "tell him, Mark you're going to join the gang. You've seen too much."

Afraid of the consequences of not joining, Mark agrees, Nafe said.

"Gangs provide three things that those children are not getting - security, a feeling of belonging and a sense of sucess," he said. "There is discipline in gangs. Children need boundaries."

But these same three things are also three big lies. For example, a person who joined the gang with two enemies now has enemies he doesn't even know.

Gang members think that membership has brought them respect, but "there's a big difference between respect and fear," Nafe said.

And gang members are always talking about how much they love each other and that they are a family, Nafe said.

"Families don't encourage each other to participate in criminal behavior," he said. "Families don't do that to one another."
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Abilene, in fact, had more of a gang problem in the late 1980s and early '90s when the gangster lifestyle was being glorified in Hollywood movies.

"Cities who had never experienced a gang problem started experiencing trouble," said Reed of the youth division.

The city had four well-identified gangs with graffiti markings and territorial areas, Martin, the police chief, said.

"We had several deaths that were gang-related shootings," Martin said. "We did have lots of gang graffiti. We had lots of drivebys. There was quite a number (of gang members) and they were well-known."

Abilene fought back through a multi-faceted effort between the schools, the police and the community, the police chief said.

"We were already working together," Martin said. "We got together immediately and started sharing information."

"We made a huge dent in (the gang problem)."

Merchant of the youth division added, "This town refused to wait until it was a major problem."
The efforts were so successful that Edwin DeLattre, a Boston University expert on law enforcement, had glowing praise for Abilene in his 1994 book entitled Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing.

"Abilene, Texas, has a well-conceived and coordinated plan, which reduced known gang members from 650 to 75 from 1988-1993. Boys and Girls Clubs gymnasiums and youth centers, built adjacent to lower-level schools in high-crime areas, led in each area to at least a 46 percent reduction in reported crimes," he wrote. "They serve as gyms for schools during the day and facilities for youth recreation and entertainment at night.

DeLattre also praises Abilene for fighting graffiti and for eliminating buildings that served as a haven for drug trafficking and other gang activity.

"The police have concentrated patrols in areas beset by drive-by shootings," he said. "They have made the drug-criminal business sufficiently difficult that gangs have looked for more promising markets elsewhere."

The department also started Supporting Neighborhoods and Parents, or SNAP, a special effort in which police officers assist communities and parents.

Each summer, the department picks out an area of town and one afternoon a week police officers work with children from that neighborhood, said Officer Danny Blankenship, who works in crime prevention.

When the gang problem was at its peak, a program called Operation Taxi Cab was used in the early '90s to keep children off the streets. The Taxi Cab program has been discontinued since the problems have abated.

"We have always had a strong youth program," Martin said. "Other police departments haven't had a strong youth program."

To make sure the department keeps a firm hand on the problem, five officers exclusively work in the schools, the chief said.
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Leaders in the community also realize that juvenile violence and gangs are not just a law enforcement issue.

Councilwoman Carol Martinez said the Hispanic Leadership Council has tried to take the lead in encouraging juveniles to choose education and not violence by mentoring children every Wednesday at lunch in several schools.

"We want to be role models for them," Martinez said.

The Boys and Girls Club provides a "safe haven" for about 350 children each day ranging from 6-years-old to 18, said Melinda Cunningham, executive director.

"It's safe. It's a haven and we give them an identity," Cunningham said. "A lot of the kids are looking for something to identify with."

"We become that structure in their lives that they desperately need."

Cunningham also cautions Abilenians not to become complacent and believe that gang problems could never happen in Abilene.

"It would be foolhardy for us to look at our physical location and think that is going to protect us from gang activity," she said.
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Abilene may not have a big gang problem, but that doesn't mean parents shouldn't arm themselves with information and know what to watch for.

"Know your child," Reed said. "Be involved with your child. If you know your child, you'll recognize it."

Clothes might be a sign, but be careful about automatically associating baggy pants and gang-type clothes with membership in a gang, Nafe said.

"We've got these kids who have not the slightest thing to do with a gang, but they like the look," he said.

"If you look like a duck, walk like a duck and talk like a duck, you're not a woodpecker," he said. "Buying the kids clothing that makes them look like a gangster is going to make them a target for recruitment."

Or it could put that child in danger if a gang member sees him and thinks he's in a rival gang because he's wearing the wrong colors, he said.

Grades also might indicate a problem.

"They go straight down," said Rey Olvera, the disc jockey who is leading a movement for a juvenile curfew. "When I mean down, I mean way down."


Nafe explained that most gangsters have the "mind of a child."
"If you see adults in street gangs, they probably got in them as a child," he said. "These people are not rational adults. They don't think the same way. Good is bad. Bad is good.
"The worst things that they can do is the best."
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Statistically, violent crimes committed by teen-agers declined last year, but public perception that there is a problem has put gangs and juvenile violence back on center stage as some people demand a curfew.

There is no proof that the recent shooting deaths of Andrew Mesta and Abel Reyes were gang related or that a curfew would have prevented them, but they have given an impetus for the curfew drive and a renewed interest in gangs.

"I think it's an overreaction to the problem," Reed said. "We as a society always want a scapegoat to blame our problems on.

"It is an area we are concerned with. We do not see it as an overwhelming area of concern that other cities have seen. Both of those murders - a curfew wouldn't have helped. I'm a real believer that the government can't legislate morality. You can't make a parent make their kids behave."

Martin, who has been asked by the City Council to study the juvenile curfew issue, doesn't necessarily think that a curfew is the answer.

"The courts have ruled that you have to be able to show that there's an increase in gang violence, youth violence to uphold a curfew. Our numbers are exactly the opposite," the chief said. "We've had an increase in overall juvenile arrests, but most of that came from minor property crimes and runaways that would not apply to the violence issue."

But Olvera fears that "if we continue to say that we have no problem then we'll have one. It's not a Hispanic problem. It's not a black problem. It's not a white problem. It's a community problem."

Olvera said he recently heard about an incident where a young boy brought a knife to school "because this other little boy had been messing with him. He was going to stab the boy. He said he got it from his dad, that his dad told him not to take any crap from anybody.

"I really believe that if we're not careful that Abilene will become a city where we're not going to be able control problems with juveniles. We know for a fact that the curfew's not going to solve all those problems, but those kids are going to know that we are on top of them."