Teen crime on rise, begins to mirror larger area cities
Gilroy – Pint-size gangsters are popping up citywide, say police, who’ve observed a flare-up in teen gang violence over the past year. When most kids are battling acne or algebra, some Gilroy 14- and 15-year-olds are picking fights and pulling off thefts to prove themselves as kiddie criminals.
“These kids are the new up-and-comers,” said Anti-Crime Team Sgt. Greg Flippo. He’s been tracking Gilroy gangs since the early 1990s, when today’s young thug set was in diapers – if that. “They’re trying to make a name for themselves.”
That means more assaults and robberies, Flippo said, from street scuffles to large brawls with kids wielding bats, chains and knives. Deputy district attorney Steve Soares, team leader of the office’s Juvenile Delinquency Unit, said the vast majority of youth offenses countywide “are connected to some kind of gang mentality,” though far fewer are charged with gang enhancements. And as Gilroy grows, Soares said, its gang problems are beginning to mirror those of larger cities.
“It’s becoming more urban, more like other areas,” Soares said. “It’s very similar to the way things play out in San Jose, or Milpitas or Mountain View.”
With a population at roughly 50,000, Gilroy may soon be dubbed a “larger city” by the Department of Justice, which tracks reported gang problems and classifies them by area type. Among “smaller cities,” with populations of 2,500 to 49,999, 28 percent reported gang problems between 2002 and 2004; among “larger cities” of 50,000 or more, almost three times as many – 80 percent – reported gang problems.
In Gilroy, gangs have died down since the 1990s. Adult gang-bangers have been jailed, some facing convictions of 50 years or more. They’re not extinct, warns Flippo, “but it could be so much worse. Gilroy’s done a tremendous job of reducing the gang violence.”
But the rumblings among newer, younger offenders are worrisome. Youth organizer Timoteo Vasquez, of the Gilroy Youth Leadership Program, says more than half of the youth he talks to have had contact with gang members, who proffer drugs and bully kids. Some teens see prison as a rite of passage, Flippo says.
“It’s frustrating to see people throw their lives away,” he said. “You want to provide direction, but often they don’t want to listen to you.”
Fresh-faced offenders tend to go on informal probation, Soares explained – a sort of probation-lite, with the same conditions but none of the court dates. Teens on informal probation submit to curfews, searches and drug tests for six months, undergo counseling and take anger-management and property offense classes. If they flunk out, Soares said, they’ll head to court. If they don’t, they’re referred to community agencies such as the Mexican American Community Service Agency (MACSA.)
“I’m a firm believer in intervention,” said Enrique Arreola, MACSA’s Director of Prevention and Intervention Programs. “I think it does work … But in Gilroy, there aren’t a lot of programs that are geared specifically for youth that are already in gangs.”
MACSA offers a few: the Personal Enhancement Program, where case managers work one-on-one with teen gangsters, the Juntos en Cambio Program, which links first-time offenders to mentors and workshops, and the Workforce Investment Program, which prods high school seniors toward college degrees. The FLY program at Mt. Madonna High School uses a similar dose of one-on-one mentoring to steer teens from gangs, and Arreola hopes to hook more than $300,000 of state funding for the Ollin Project – a phased program already at work in San Jose that includes community service, life skills education and support groups.
It’s impressive, but it’s still not enough, Arreola says. A lack of anger-management programs has him riled.
“In South County, when kids are released from juvenile hall, they’re required to go to anger-management programs,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of them here, so many kids are forced to go to San Jose. Transportation is an issue. I think that’s why South County has one of the higher recidivism rates [for gang youth] in the county.”
Prevention programs are also at work, to stop teen gang-banging before it starts. Police give parents, school faculty and staff the know-how to recognize gang symbols and snuff gang activity. Once a month, vice principals of Gilroy schools gather at the police department with Anti-Crime Team officers and school resource officer Cherie Somavia to review gang trends. The colors stay the same, but gangs are constantly shifting and reinventing themselves, Soares said.
“There’s no national charter for a street gang,” Soares said. Lines drawn in 1950s prisons between urban and rural criminals have dissolved. Today, gangs often sort themselves by whether members are U.S. natives or born elsewhere. It’s the perennial teen question – which lunch table to sit at – taken to a scary extreme. “Kids have a clique instinct, and it plays itself out when they want to behave as a group, and single out others.
“I’ve been trying to get into these people’s heads for 20 years,” Soares said. “I think the biggest risk factor is lack of adequate adult supervision. A lot of these youngsters don’t feel safe. They don’t feel safe in school. They don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods. So they’ll clique up because they think it makes them safe.”
Drugs can also lure teens to gangs through addiction, and poverty can push others, who look to gangs to provide for them through drug sales or theft. For Flippo, who’s watched these kids grow up, the bottom line is parenting.
“If dad’s in jail, and mom’s using meth,” he said, “what kind of environment are they growing up in?”
