Posted on 06/19/2005 6:09:22 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
He's swept up in what local officials say is a rise in Hispanic gang activity in Dane County.
And he's too scared to quit.
"My cousin, he was involved in a gang, and I was with him all of the time, and he involved me in gangs," the teenager said in a recent interview.
The boy and his cousin moved from Mexico to Madison, where their gang is now among at least seven Hispanic gangs competing for youths' loyalties and for territory - sometimes imperiling lives and defacing property to uphold their power. Five years ago, just two Hispanic gangs were known in Dane County.
The young gang member wants out after a friend was seriously hurt by a rival gang. But "if you leave the gang, then they will probably kill you or jump you. That's one of the rules."
The Wisconsin State Journal agreed to conceal the teenager's identity, because he fears retaliation for speaking publicly. Local officials verified details of his account of gang life and said it offers insights into why gang threats, particularly involving immigrant families, are increasing across the area.
Interviews with 20 law enforcement officers and social workers reveal deepening concerns about aggressive tactics by Hispanic gangs to recruit and retain members, a fresh wave of gang graffiti and community residents' low awareness of gang operations.
'Just blown up'
Stephen Blue, delinquency services manager for the Dane County Department of Human Services, who has studied local gangs since the 1980s, put it bluntly:
"The Hispanic youth gang issue has just blown up."
There are few signs of organized violence or drug dealing by Hispanic gangs in Dane County, although such groups use violent tactics to defend drug turf in larger cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles.
The growth of the Hispanic gangs in Dane County is tied to the rapid rise in the region's Hispanic population, which grew 150 percent in the 1990s and continues expanding; an accompanying increase in vulnerable adolescents; and tensions between those newcomers and established Hispanic residents.
"What is amazing to us is it's Latino upon Latino," said Peter Munoz, executive director of Centro Hispano, whose nonprofit agency is striving to unite the Hispanic community. "It seems to be a divide based upon recent immigrants" from Spanish-speaking countries.
In addition, too many Hispanic teenagers feel alienated from the area's dominant Anglo culture, said Hector Alvarez, coordinator of a Centro Hispano program that focuses on adolescents. He warns that "if we don't address the gaps between the cultures, we will be seeing more gangs coming to our community. We have to get together all the people . . . to fix this issue."
Warning signs
Assessing gang trends is difficult because few reliable statistics are compiled. It's up to officials to determine whether an incident - such as graffiti that could be the work of a lone tagger, or violence that could spring from a dispute over a girlfriend - is gang- related.
While serious incidents of violence remain rare, officials with longtime contacts with local gangs insist that warning signs abound:
• A clash between members of two Hispanic gangs resulted in near-fatal injuries to a 17-year-old boy April 30 when a knife punctured his right lung and nicked his heart. His liver and diaphragm were also damaged, according to court records charging three alleged members of the South Side Locos with the attack in northeast Madison.
• A May 13 Latino festival at Madison's Memorial High School, expected to draw a few hundred people to showcase youths' talents, was canceled due to threats that a gang would attack people after they left the school on Madison's West Side. "There was going to be a melee out there," said Munoz, whose agency sponsored the event. "We were advised very strongly (by police) not to proceed."
• Graffiti linked to Hispanic gangs is appearing more often, particularly near Madison high schools. Madison police recorded just one case of gang- related graffiti in December 2003 and January 2004, but a year later there were 32 reports during the comparable period. Graffiti associated with Hispanic gangs dominated the reports. The number of reports remained high through April but sank to eight last month, for unknown reasons.
• Growing numbers of gang members report they're recruited at earlier ages - sometimes before their 10th birthdays - and are threatened if they consider leaving.
• Drive-by shooting incidents linked to gangs appear to be on the rise, although no one has been injured recently. One home on Madison's North Side was shot up three times in the last year.
Officials emphasize that youth gangs aren't just a Madison problem. Members live in nearly every community in Dane County.
Two high schools
The highest levels of gang activity in Madison schools this school year were at Memorial and East high schools, and middle schools were a growing source of problems, said Ted Balistreri, the Madison School District's security coordinator. "Clearly the schools are a reflection of what's happening out in our community," Balistreri said.
Some law enforcement officers and social workers also singled out La Follette High School as the site of significant conflicts last fall between Hispanic and black gangs.
Local gang experts say black gangs, some with strong drug- dealing operations, remain a fixture in the county and are suspected in a recent string of incidents in which students and others have been harassed at Madison Metro's South Transfer Point at Park Street and Badger Road.
Officials acknowledge a poor understanding of Asian gang activity.
They know of no organized white youth gangs. Cross-racial gang membership occurs, but it's rare. Girl gangs remain small, yet are a source of rising danger in schools and neighborhoods.
Despite obstacles to quantifying the size of the gang problem, Dane County gang experts agree that Hispanic youth gangs are becoming significantly more active after several quiet years. The greatest dangers are for gang members and their families, but neighbors and passers-by are at risk of accidental injury.
"The reality is the violent crime is gang-on-gang," said Madison Police Sgt. Daniel Olivas, a gang specialist.
Callers are scared
Kathy Sorenson, director of Project HUGS, for Have You Got Support, a nonprofit agency that counsels troubled youths and their parents, has maintained a low public profile - until gang activity started growing.
"All of a sudden, in the past two years, the types of calls we're getting have completely changed," Sorenson said, adding that parents and teenagers are "scared like I haven't seen in my 22 years in this business."
Sorenson said she's hearing from teenagers in Hispanic, black and girl gangs who join because they seek companionship, then endure initiation beatings and threats to them and their families if they try to quit. Some are depressed and reason that "at least if I stay in as a soldier and I'm killed, my family will be safe and they'll write songs about me."
She added: "Parents who are afraid and isolated and thinking they're alone need to know they're not alone."
The upswing in gang activities is unlike the early 1990s, when violence among black gangs surged as crack cocaine flooded to Madison from Chicago, Minneapolis and Milwaukee.
Gangs can begin to take hold, Blue and other experts said, when new arrivals here discover they don't have the skills for decent jobs, can't afford housing and can't thrive in the schools. Parents lose track of their teenagers as they sink into long work weeks, drugs, alcohol, language barriers, domestic violence and the anxiety of being separated from their native cultures.
Gang culture
Today, hip-hop culture, including baggy clothing and lyrics from popular rappers such as 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg, help make gang affiliation socially acceptable among young people, including "wannabes," those who are striving or pretending to be gang members.
Among the shortcomings in the handling of gangs, Blue and others said, is a shortage of Spanish-speaking social workers, under-funded social- service agencies and lack of information about the important differences among Hispanics based on where they come from - southwestern states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, from a mixture of urban and rural backgrounds.
Youths' fascination with gang life was evident recently as Lester Moore, a Madison police officer assigned to the Dane County Narcotics and Gang Task Force, spent a day discussing gangs with students at Toki Middle School on Madison's West Side.
The youths swayed in their chairs as Moore played excerpts from popular gang- oriented hip-hop music. During a discussion of gang signs, one boy flashed the hand sign of the Gangster Disciples, a black gang, prompting Moore to angrily eject him from the class for failing to show respect. The boy left, muttering that he was only showing that he knew how to make the sign.
A parent's guide
Maynard Runkle, East High School's bilingual resource specialist, this year wrote a parents' guide to dealing with gangs and also wrote a poem intended to awaken others to the perils of gangs. An excerpt:
"The sad eyes of fathers;
Their little soldiers now so big
Already warriors without a country,
Fighters for nothing ...
With angry faces,
Their souls more and more wounded."
The teenager quoted at the beginning of this story said his gang doesn't sell drugs or look for violence. It's a social club most of the time, he said, with members hanging out, watching TV, drinking beer and smoking because there's little else to do in Madison.
Fights flare, though, with rival gangs. He once was hit in the head so hard that he required stitches.
His parents are busy with work and "don't know if I'm in a gang or not" - partly because they've never asked.
God created school uniforms for a reason. If Torie were dictator, they would be mandatory in all secondary schools.
bumping
Wishful thinking.
In Anchorage Alaska there are a whole lot of illegals, and they've been there for a long time.
Mexican consulate set to open in St. Paul Tom Horgen, Star Tribune June 15, 2005
After years of anticipation, Minnesota's Mexican consulate will open its doors Monday on St. Paul's East Side. It will primarily serve Mexican immigrants living in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and northern Wisconsin. I don't think they are going anywhere
That never counts.
Oh, I'll bet everyone was just on pins and needles until the day they opened
Spare me the joy
If they feel alienated they can either go back where they came from (and feel accepted) or they should be given free housing in the dorms and prof housing of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where they will feel welcome.
they plan on mowing lawns to the North Pole.
Oh, oh. The dreaded "culture gap". Bend over, wisconsin. Time to dump your culture and start over. By law, if neccessary.
Guns in the hands of outraged citizens would put these gangs on the run. Easiest solution.
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