I had to post it up.Many folkz rather have the article up than linking to it.
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California city finds way to curb gang homicides
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Earth, Wood & Fire
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Rebecca Waddingham, (Bio)
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May 8, 2005
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AS A SMALL COMMUNITY with a big gang problem, Greeley is not alone. Many cities in California, like the central valley community of Modesto, also struggle with violent Latino gangs.
Modesto can teach Greeley a few lessons in how to fight them.
Modesto, home of Laci Peterson and former congressman Gary Condit, is about twice the size of Greeley and Evans.
Demographically, however, the communities are similar. The cities' median incomes are below the national average. They are on par with the national high school graduation rate. And the cities are more than one-fourth Latino.
Greeley-Evans and Modesto also are both situated in primarily rural counties, with agriculture as the main economic engines.
Judith Ray, acting finance director for Modesto, said her city has grown explosively during the past 20 years. It's about an hour and a half east of the San Francisco Bay area and 80 miles from San Jose, which both have among the highest housing costs in the nation. Many people have moved to Modesto but continue to commute to the Bay area or Silicon Valley to work.
Greeley has experienced a similar phenomenon, with many commuters working in Larimer and Boulder counties and Denver.
In Modesto, some high-tech industries have begun to creep north from Silicon Valley, but not many, Ray said.
"We have a wealth of jobs, but they are not all high-paying jobs," she said. "While it's changing, Modesto has traditionally been more of an ag-based community."
Similarities between Modesto and Greeley don't end there. Both cities also have a problem with violent Sureño and Norteño gangs.
Six people were killed in Greeley last year; each of those homicides had gang connections. In Modesto, 19 people died, 13 of them in gang-related crimes, much more than in previous years.
In June 2004, the Modesto Police Department decided to revamp its gang unit and rearrange priorities, said the unit's commander, Lt. Mike Perine.
"We'd done it lightweight for some time, and it became a real focus a year ago," he said.
The Street Crimes Unit grew from six full-time officers and staff to 24, which includes 16 officers, two detectives, two sergeants and Perine, the boss. Support staff and probation officers round out the total.
Of the 13 gang-related murders in Modesto last year, 11 happened between January and June, when the new gang unit was formed. There was one shooting in July in which two people died, and there has been one murder since -- a fatal shooting on May 1 that may have been gang-related.
Perine thinks extra community awareness and the souped-up, more aggressive gang unit are the reasons for the decline in violence.
"We became very proactive with weeding out the gang members," Perine said. "It's been extremely successful up to this point, knock on wood."
Perine said he did not have exact budget figures for the gang unit because the department absorbs it into the investigation division's operating budget. But he did say the expanded gang unit didn't cost Modesto taxpayers a penny -- the police department simply moved some people around and reorganized.
Several staff and resources came from the tactical control unit, which does community service policing, similar to Greeley's on-hold Community Outreach Program. Other staff came from probation searches and street-level drug investigations, Perine said.
"We shuffled our priorities around and got more focused on the proactive aspect," he said. "We didn't hire a bunch of people. We looked at where we had people out there."
Modesto has 1,725 active gang
members, about 1,400 of whom are Latino, Perine said. The police offer this running tally: 904 Norteños and 505 Sureños. Modesto also has a significant Asian-American population; there are about 260 Asian gang members and 55 Anglo gang members.
Greeley police estimate 450 gang members in Greeley.
The Modesto gang unit is effective because officers move pre-emptively and focus on community outreach and education, Perine said. On April 24, the department hosted its second major community presentation at an area Catholic church, in which parents were taught to look for gang colors, certain behaviors and other warning signs.
Perine said the response from the Latino community has been overwhelmingly positive regarding the community sessions.
"With a lot of parents, there was a language barrier, and they didn't really know what was going on with their kids," Perine said. Officers have been visiting different neighborhoods distributing pamphlets, in English and Spanish, notifying parents what to look for.
The Modesto community has stepped up along with the police force, Perine said. The Stanislaus County Office of Education, which serves the 27 school districts within Stanislaus, formed a community gang task force that meets once a month.
Perine said police officers are there to facilitate the meeting, but those who show up -- which can include business people, families, school officials and others -- are expected to do the work.
"They need to come up with the opportunities or solutions," Perine said.
The Spanish-language pamphlets are one strategy Perine believes is already working. Parents and school staff are beginning to understand warning signs and fight gang influences early, he said.
Perine's officers also attend monthly meetings of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and they attend monthly breakfast sessions with the Stanislaus Hispanic Leadership Council.
Perine is also familiar with Victory Outreach, a group of Christian former gang members now working as activists.
A list of community outreach programs sits in the police department, and a sergeant or lieutenant is a contact person for every organization, Perine said.
"(Community and religious groups) need to take the lead on these problems," he said. "We believe, and they believe, they will be able to reach out to some of these kids better than we are, better than law enforcement can."
He said the gang unit tries to attack gangs from both fronts -- enforcement and prevention. Gangs are not just a cop problem, he says; they are a community problem.
"Everybody needs a piece of this pie to resolve it," Perine said.
Perine and his officers also have two law enforcement counterparts: The Stanislaus County Gang Intelligence Task Force and the Modesto Narcotics Enforcement Team. Both often team up with the Street Crimes Unit for surveillance and "sweeps" through known gang territory, Perine said.
The drug enforcement team excels at surveillance, Perine said, and he often calls on them for help. As in Greeley, many gang members are also involved with drugs, so there are crossover investigations, too.
One likely reason for the revamped gang unit's success is the officers' unabashed aggressiveness in hunting down gang members. Perine was not shy about sharing his department's strategies.
Every four or five months, he said, the gang unit will partner with other departments and use about 60 people for sweeps. Concentrating on certain neighborhoods every other day for a week, officers will pull over people with broken taillights and drop in on random parole and probation checks, arresting violators.
"(Last month) we did four of those enforcements and arrested 97 people in four days," Perine said. "So the message is out there that we are taking this seriously, and we have had great success."
The gang unit is broken up into two teams, who switch shifts. At least eight officers and a sergeant are on duty seven days a week, 11 hours a day, Perine said.
Two deputy district attorneys also work directly with Perine's street crimes unit and are on-call 24 hours a day for search warrants and information. California has tough laws just for gangs -- it's section 186.22 of the California Penal Code, and "186" has become a gang-related slang term -- that make sentencing guidelines stricter for gang-related crimes.
From last month's 97-person crackdown, 18 federal indictments were handed down via the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which makes sentencing even more harsh, Perine said.
Busting gang members sometimes doesn't do much good if they are sent to prison, where gangs thrive. So Perine has been working with the federal Bureau of Prisons to arrange sending Modesto gangbangers to facilities out of state.
"We don't hide the fact that we are real aggressive and proactive about weeding these people out," Perine said. "If they choose to be involved with a gang crime, they will get our undivided attention."
They will get it from Modesto residents, too, through outreach programs and a school gang task force.
Modesto can teach Greeley a few lessons. Its success in fighting gangs has been so real because the community has come together with the ramped-up police effort, Perine believes.
"Absolutely I think it is working. It has to do not only with the enforcement posture but with education, parents getting involved and the community helping us resolve these problems," he said.
Violence has certainly decreased, but even if it hadn't, Perine would view the last year as a success.
"I think it would still be effective in that I am confident we are preventing the younger youth from getting involved in gangs," he said.
