I’m not sure. I think the reporter is trying to give background, but the background doesn’t fit exactly. The whole “Yakima / Mexican Gangs / Tribal lands” stuff is taking place 140 miles from Tacoma. So I’m not sure what relevance, if any, it has.
Tacoma DOES have a huge number of Blood and Crips. One a previous thread I listed information on them, there are about 50 ‘sets’ between the two gangs.
So I assume that if the police are beefing with local gangs its probably the local black ones and not the Mexican ones, which are concentrated on the other side of the state.
Tacoma’s Park Avenue neighborhood battles gang graffiti
Park Avenue: Volunteers clean up 70 properties
STACEY MULICK; The News Tribune
Published: 08/12/09 12:05 am | Updated: 08/12/09
Residents in the Park Avenue neighborhood in Tacoma’s South End are in a battle. The enemy: gang graffiti.
Last weekend, volunteers gathered to paint over graffiti on more than 70 properties that were tagged Aug. 4, National Night Out.
“Almost all of them were covered,” said Brad Allen, coordinator of the Park Avenue Neighborhood block group.
No new taggings have been spotted since Saturday. The group’s neighborhood patrol has been looking for new graffiti, checking on old tags and noting burned-out street lights.
“We are doing our thing day and night,” Allen said.
Last week’s vandalism was the second time in recent weeks that gang members had spray-painted properties in the neighborhood, which extends from South 56th to 64th streets and from South Yakima to Pacific avenues.
“We’ve never been hit before like these past two weeks,” Allen said.
The first round of gang graffiti appeared in two waves on nearly 50 properties in a 24-hour span July 23.
Between 9 and 10 a.m., taggers hit more than 30 properties. Between 1 and 2 a.m. the next morning, a rival gang crossed out the first batch of graffiti and left its own messages on 15 properties, Allen said.
Crews had painted over most of the graffiti during an emergency cleanup when a second round hit on National Night Out, when neighbors gather to fight crime issues such as this.
The second time, Allen said, the vandals targeted any type of surface – vehicles, garages, garbage cans, sides of homes.
“Anything in their way got hit,” Allen said.
Residents launched another emergency cleanup Saturday. They got help from five other neighborhood groups in the city.
Police suspect rival gangs are battling over turf within the 35-block Park Avenue Neighborhood. Allen said a recent police crackdown on gangs on the East Side also might be pushing the activity into his neighborhood.
“They are pushing this way to see what’s going to give,” Allen said.