Posted on 09/18/2005 7:18:57 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
They seem almost as if they were randomly plucked from Madison's streets - the mother of a 9-month-old baby, the National Honor Roll graduate, the 16-year-old son of a University of Wisconsin Medical School professor.
Except for their relative youthfulness, the 12 people charged in a gang-style shooting Aug. 9 in the village of Oregon, WI defy easy generalizations. They are rich and poor, high- achievers and juvenile delinquents. They are black and white and Hispanic and Asian.
The crime they are charged with - three vehicles full of people opened fire on a home in a middle-class suburb, wounding three men - was unlike any seen here.
"It sets a watershed mark for the number of individuals involved in one event," said Stephen Blue, who has studied local gangs since 1986 and is delinquency services manager for the Dane County Department of Human Services.
Blue is among panelists scheduled to discuss gangs and school violence Wednesday at the Doyle Administration Building of the Madison School District. The event is sponsored by www.schoolinfosystem.org, a Web site devoted to school issues.
Rafael Gomez, a district parent who helped organize the forum and will be its moderator, said the topic was chosen before the Oregon shootings.
"One of the questions we will be asking the panel is how the whole issue of gangs in our schools has changed in the last 10 years," he said. "I think that's a good way to frame the situation in Oregon."
Crips and Bloods
The Oregon incident has put gangs back in the news, but the exact connection between the shooting and gang membership is unclear, as is the connection between gang membership and school attendance. Regardless, there are obvious overlaps:
Many of the defendants were members of the Crips street gang, while the victims were Bloods, according to court documents.
However, police have said the shooting may have had less to do with a gang rivalry than a personal dispute. Police say the shooters apparently feared for their lives because of $7,000 in missing money and mounted a pre-emptive strike against people they thought were out to get them.
Three of the 12 defendants attend Madison East High School and eight others are either former students or graduates of East. This could simply be a function of geography and have little to do with the formation of the Crips gang or its recruitment efforts. Indeed, given their age spread - 16 to 24 - some of the defendants would have graduated long before others entered high school.
Also, many of the defendants knew each other long before arriving at East. Four are related by blood. Three live within a few houses of each other on Madison's North Side. Several have known each other since grade school through gatherings at the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Oregon.
Still, the aftermath of the Oregon shooting has hit the East High community hard, with staff members stunned by some of the former and current students charged.
"I have to say it was a tremendous shock to see him on the front page," East High bilingual resource specialist Maynard Runkle said of Sophorn Tep, 21, who graduated from East in 2003 and was recommended for induction into both the National Honor Roll and Who's Who Among American High School Students.
"I think the problem is the group mentality of gangs," said Runkle, who helped write a parent's guide to dealing with gangs. "Individually, they know it's not right to do these things."
Tep lettered in track and football and earned a certificate of commendation from U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige in 2002 for completing a federal college readiness program.
"This doesn't sound like a gang-banger to me," said Jon Callaway, Tep's attorney.
Tep, who is accused of driving one of the cars but not shooting a weapon, is being held on $60,000 bail. He is one of 11 charged with three counts of first-degree attempted intentional homicide.
Tep's parents, who immigrated from Cambodia 20 years ago and do not speak English, are confounded by their son's involvement in the case, Callaway said. He doubts the defendants were truly members of a full-fledged gang.
"I was surprised to learn that Bloods and Crips are prowling the streets of Madison. I don't think so," he said. "I think they were playing at being tough guys. That doesn't mean the bullets weren't real or the injuries weren't real."
The gang connection casts the crime in a hyperbolic light that scares people and keeps the defendants held on exceptionally high bails, Callaway said.
'Silver platter'
A relative of one of the defendants who said he is a former member of the Crips claims the gang is real.
"You can call it gang wannabes or wannabe thugs or one-too-many-hip-hop videos, but to them, they were a gang," he said. "They were thugs. It just got too serious too quickly."
The former gang member would not allow his name to be used because he said his safety could be jeopardized.
He said the multiracial variety of the Crips membership is due in part to Madison's small minority population.
"Most people here can't tell the difference (among races)," he said. "We're all minorities to them. So by us coming together, it was a way of giving us more power."
Yet the former gang member is baffled by one of the people charged in the Oregon shooting - Andrew Pirsch, 16, an East High School junior who lives in a $500,000 house in the village of Maple Bluff. His father is a doctor and professor at UW Medical School. His mother is an outreach specialist at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
"Honestly, I can't explain him," the former gang member said. "I met him a couple of times. He had everything in the world handed to him on a silver platter."
The Pirsch family declined to be interviewed, as did family members of most of the other defendants. In a couple of instances, family members could not be reached for comment.
The former gang member said East High can't be blamed for the existence of the Crips gang. "These people would have met each other eventually anyway. If you want to be a gang-banger, you'll find each other."
'The camaraderie'
Madison Police officer Lorie Graham, the educational resource officer at East High, said gangs exist at many area high schools, including suburban ones. When it comes to gang affiliations, she said relationships develop in elementary and middle school, so parents must be aware of what their children are doing and who they are associating with early on.
"These kids come to high school already gang-affiliated," she said.
Children don't always have the ability to see very far down the road, so it's easy to see how gang membership might appear attractive, Graham said.
"When they get recruited to a gang, they're not told, 'Every Friday, we do a drive-by shooting.' It's the camaraderie, the friendship, the security. They feel very strong ties," she said.
The two gangs police say were involved in the Oregon shooting - the Crips and the Bloods - came to national prominence in the 1980s with a significant amount of street violence in Los Angeles, where they are both based, said Blue, the county human services worker. The Crips have spread more quickly across the country, partly because they have a looser leadership structure than the Bloods but also because rap star Snoop Dogg wears Crips colors on television, giving the gang mass-media cachet, Blue said.
The first group of Crips in Madison were Asian and appeared about 10 years ago, Blue said. The Crips now have a much more multicultural makeup nationally, partly because they've entered markets where established street gangs already thrived, so they've had to recruit across races just to have numbers, Blue said.
The Bloods are one of the smallest gangs in Madison, he said.
Even the best children in a community go through a time when they pull away from their parents and rely more on the opinions of their peers, Blue said. Children who don't have strong attachments to adults or their school or don't have a strong family structure are most vulnerable to gangs, he said.
Accepted at MATC
For Tha Ill, 60, the gang issue has come to his Madison doorstep.
The Cambodian immigrant speaks no English and has little understanding of the U.S. legal system. When police arrived at his townhouse last month to arrest his daughter, Kari Tha, he could only look on in bewilderment.
Tha, 21, is charged with three counts of first-degree attempted intentional homicide in the Oregon shooting for allegedly buying the ammunition and other objects used in the shooting.
She is not accused of having been with the shooters at the scene. However, she is charged with the same offenses under a law that allows abettors and conspirators to be treated the same as perpetrators of a crime.
An East High graduate, Tha had just been accepted to a liberal studies program at Madison Area Technical College and wanted to become a nurse, said her brother, Kosal Tha, 30. She wanted to get her life back on track after feeling that she had disappointed her family by giving birth to a son out of wedlock nine months ago, he said.
Her family does not think she was in a gang or that she knowingly would have contributed to a shooting.
Her father insisted on attending her preliminary hearing Sept. 1 even though he could not follow the proceedings. He cried when she entered the courtroom.
"Just seeing his daughter in chains was very difficult," Kosal Tha said. "It kind of felt like a whole new world to him."
Of course, our Police Chief is completely against letting his citizens have weapons, so we're pretty much sitting ducks. (Well, not MY family, of course...)
"Just seeing his daughter in chains was very difficult," Kosal Tha said. "It kind of felt like a whole new world to him."
I do lock my doors now at night, and leave the outside lights on. Yes, Mr. Tha. It is a WHOLE NEW WORLD, thanks to families like yours.
Easily explained - spoiled brat wanting attention.
This would also describe Osama bin Ladin, another gang leader born into wealth and privilege.
Thanks "liberals".
Thanks "multi-culturalists".
Thanks Demonpaths.
Thanks MTV, BET, Hip Hop "culture".
Thanks, leftists, socialists, bi-lingualists everywhere.
Surprising? Not when we have MTV, BET, and a multitude of other outlets telling our children that thugs are cool, violent rap is "artistic expression" and the fake jewelry-adorned life of a gangsta' or pimp is something to aspire to, to "keep it real in da streetz."
What's the world coming to?
Tell the town fathers to show more compassion.
The crips have been franchising for nearly 30 years. The war on drugs has made them rich and they have expanded across the country in an organized orderly fashion.
Take values and religion out of a society and people start looking for something else to find meaning in their lives. No mention of that in this article of course. Commie-lib Madison is reaping what it has sown. God to these kids is Snoop-dog and their religion is found in their gang customs. Expect more of this. This is the natural result of a divorce and abortion on demand, narcissistic consumer culture.
"Tep's parents, who immigrated from Cambodia 20 years ago and do not speak English, "
Yeah, God forbid they learn the language.
Maybe, if they had bothered to learn a little English they would have known what their son was doing.
For the good folks there, get armed and ready.
--"A HOLDUP AT A BAR IN PAHRUMP WEDNESDAY MORNING marked just the second armed robbery in Nye County this year, and Sheriff Tony DeMeo has a theory about what has kept that number so low. "One reason why is I encourage everyone to carry a gun out here," DeMeo said, only half-joking. "I have a very strong Second Amendment policy. You take your chances (committing a crime) in Nye County."--- HENRY BREAN
That was my first thought. Twenty frigging years and they STILL can't speak the language. I had better not say any more.
If you do not own one why not lack of training find the local gun club go and ask they well jump at the opportunity to help you.
Thee is plenty to say about not learning the language of the nation. My father immigrated to the USA from Holland. He never spoke another word in Dutch as he thought it would "insult" his Amercan citizenship. I asked him to teach me his native language, and he did begrudingly. It was fun in a lot of ways when he would get frustrated and try to yell at us in English...he would yell, then stop, get a funny look on his face, and ask Mother "did I tell them off right?" We would start laughing at him which would only increase the anger...I also learned to run really fast!
If those folks won't try to learn a new language, then to hell with them. Madison deserves all the idiots in the world, and it looks like they are getting them one at a time!!
Criminal gangs are by nature illegal and serve only to increase criminal enterprise. Shut em down and jail the members and the latest supreme court stupidity, regarding capital crimes and death penalties for underage murderers, does not help in the shut em down and lock em up program.
Being a member of a criminal gang should strike more fear into the hearts of youth than anything else they might face. If this festers for another 40 years it won't be festering. How far does the thirst for power and control go? All the way baby, and when the time is right and the numbers sufficient...
Bingo.
susie
Another gift from MTV and the liberal establishment.
Well stated!
I'm an immigrant, I feel the same way as your father. I know a guy from Italy who's been in this country 20+ years, speaks English so badly and with an accent so thick that it impedes comprehension. He works for the government, something in computer maintenance. The liberals here (Minnesota) instituted a program for him - the Accent Reduction Program. If you can't make yourself understood in 20 years, what the dickens is such a program going to help?!
I'm an immigrant, I feel the same way as your father. I know a guy from Italy who's been in this country 20+ years, speaks English so badly and with an accent so thick that it impedes comprehension. He works for the government, something in computer maintenance. The liberals here (Minnesota) instituted a program for him - the Accent Reduction Program. If you can't make yourself understood in 20 years, what the dickens is such a program going to help?!
Late in getting back. My father came from Italy - he knew more American history than he did Italian because he had always wanted to come here. Italian was never spoken in the home - THIS was his country. I truly find any other way of thinking by immigrants an insult - and always will.
Huh? That was quick -- It usually takes corrupt pols YEARS to get their name on buildings. But not our Governor "Bingo" Jim Doyle (WEAC-WI)!
Still, the aftermath of the Oregon shooting has hit the East High community hard, with staff members stunned by some of the former and current students charged.
I would think it hit you folks in OREGON pretty hard, right, Diana???
The gang connection casts the crime in a hyperbolic light that scares people and keeps the defendants held on exceptionally high bails, Callaway said.
Again, HUH?? The Chicago creeps have been coming up here to recruit for the past 20+ years. WTH is wrong with high bail?
"You can call it gang wannabes or wannabe thugs or one-too-many-hip-hop videos, but to them, they were a gang," he said. "They were thugs. It just got too serious too quickly."
The former gang member would not allow his name to be used because he said his safety could be jeopardized.
Well, which is it, young feller? Either it was a "play group" or you're scared for your life. You can't have it both ways.
...because rap star Snoop Dogg wears Crips colors on television, giving the gang mass-media cachet, Blue said.
Shoot, the last time I saw this piece of garbage, he was in PINK and playing golf with Lee Iacocca. How do they make this mental leap?
I'll stop now....Maybe our dynamic AG Peg Lautenschlagerkeg (DUI-WI) will take this case, too.
"I would think it hit you folks in OREGON pretty hard, right, Diana???"
Nope. In Madistan one always sides with the criminals, no matter if they inflict their carnage within Madistan or elsewhere. 'We're SHOCKED! SHOCKED we tell you, that these fine East High students would ever be involved with anything like this!' :(
Good one on Snoop-Dogg, LOL! He's totally sold out, Man!
That’s just plain rude. Why don’t you learn some manners. Maybe it’s easy for you but it’s not for everyone else.
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