Posted on 03/08/2002 7:28:16 PM PST by usadave
Among the upscale homes, sparking new schools and pristine parks of North Fulton is a danger lurking just below the surface – teenage gang activity.
Gangs are not new to North Fulton. In fact, some well-known gangs, such as the Crips and the Bloods, have been here for more than a decade. What is bothering area police is evidence that several Hispanic gangs are developing rivalries with one another.
"This is major stuff. This is not a bunch of local kids watching too much television and listening to rap music,” said Alpharetta police officer Joey Meadows. "This is the real thing.”
Officers have noticed graffiti from several different Hispanic gangs, some of which are known to be based in Los Angeles. Known gangs in the area include the Vatos Locos, SUR 13, Melitos or M13, Western Locos and the Brownside Locos.
Recently the gangs have been publicly taunting and insulting one another through graffiti. Meadows, who primarily serves as a youth officer working with at-risk kids in the Alpharetta Police Athletic League program, has been studying gang activity in the area for years. He has file drawers full of confiscated gang paraphernalia and weapons.
Police have apprehended young "gang bangers” committing crimes and found them with gang "Bibles,” which spell out an individual gang’s rules, and other gang-related literature.
Roswell police attribute several recent burglaries to gang members, while Alpharetta police believe gang members may be responsible for a series of recent taxi cab robberies.
It seems the gangs primarily congregate on the south side of Alpharetta and the northern portion of Roswell, although unincorporated areas of Fulton County have also seen more activity.
"We have had an upswing in activity. We’ve increased our officer training on what to look for and how to determine what is and what isn’t gang activity,” said officer Paul McCabe, of the Fulton County Police Department. "You are always going to have gangs coming in and out of the county. That’s why are job is as hard as it is. You have to keep up with who they are with at one point and who they are not, who they are mad at and who they are not.”
A hot spot for gang activity is the Governor’s Point apartment complex off Old Roswell Road, where in February police were called to break up a fight of roughly 30 Hispanic men. When police arrived, everyone had vanished. But there was a great deal of blood at the scene – enough blood to cause police to worry that someone may have been killed in the brawl, and the body taken away.
Governor’s Point also experienced a gang-related shooting last year, when someone fired repeatedly at an apartment. No one was injured in that case.
"There is some truth to the expression ‘The writing is on the wall,’” Meadows said.
Roswell police have found gang graffiti behind the Town Center Mall, where the Riverside Locos have left their mark. Alpharetta police have found graffiti at the school bus stop in Governor’s Point and on nearby Lowe Lane as well as other areas.
Gangs members are frequently seen wearing their "colors” at the Roswell Lanes bowling alley and at the Star Time Entertainment Center.
Roswell’s Crime Suppression Unit, which consists of several officers who target areas of high crime, has reportedly put a damper on gang activity in Roswell. As a result, gangs may be moving into Alpharetta, where they don’t have to reckon with a dedicated crime unit.
"The Crime Suppression Unit follows up on crimes and activities and is proactive. I think it’s been a big help in cutting off gang activity and other activity,” said Sgt. Les Bennett, of the Roswell Police Department. "I personally appreciate Crime Suppression. They don’t target gangs, they target criminal activity. They target areas that are having problems.”
Being part of a gang is thought to be a survival mechanism, just as it was for the Irish immigrants in the 1820s who took over the Five Points neighborhood in New York City.
Gang members band together as a surrogate family. "With the Hispanics, there is a lot of pride. They don’t like the idea that they are treated as just laborers over here, so they band together,” Meadows said. "In Los Angeles, they had to be in gangs. So when they came here it was the same thing. Kids get shipped here to live with relatives after getting into trouble, but it’s down here too.”
The violence that coincides with gangs is a far cry from the activity of the Jets and the Sharks in "Westside Story.” A 16-year-old man was shot and killed in Roswell’s Chattahoochee River Park in March 2001 in a gang-related incident involving the Vatos Locos. A white Roswell teen, Robin Rainey, who was known to be associated with the Vatos Locos, was charged in connection with the crime and was sentenced to three years in jail after turning state’s evidence and testifying against the shooter.
"They all can be rivals within themselves. You can have two factions of SUR 13 and they hate each other. It depends on the gangs. They can be rivals within the same name, of different factions. They can both be claiming SUR 13 and not like each other,” Bennett said. "The biggest thing they argue over is turf. That’s been what we’ve seen the most of.”
Assuming that the parents know what their sons are up to (and how could they not), whey do so many Mexican parents condone their children's gang related activities? Could it be that gang activity is such an integral part of the Mexican culture that it doesn't upset or surprise the parents when their children join gangs?
I am sincerely sorry to hear about the crime problems that you and the other law abiding residents are experiencing there in North Fulton County.
My wife was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. Her parents owned a small tract house in a nice neighborhood in North Hollywood. Their neighborhood was almost exclusively white then just because there weren't that many Mexicans around in that area back in the 1960's and early 1970's. My wife could remember the neighborhood as being very safe both in the daytime and at night. The neighbors all knew each other and respected each other's properties and rights.
About a year ago we moved out of the San Fernando Valley, and out of Southern California. But while we still lived there, whenever we would drive through my wife's old neighborhood to see where she grew up, she couldn't help but to cry because the neighborhood was almost unrecognizable to her. Lowriders and junked cars lined the streets, there was grafitti on fences and walls, almost all the houses had bars on the windows, and everyone that we could see who were standing around outside of their houses were Hispanic, including groups of teenaged boys who would all stare at us as if they were wondering what a couple of white people were doing in their neighborhood.
Too bad, Georgia, California tried to warn you. Thank your open borders politicians for giving you the "wealth of diversity". Learn spanish while you're at it, it's going to be your new language.
}:-)4
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