- WILLOWS, Calif. (Reuters)
- In sleepy farming towns in California's fertile central valley, authorities
are fighting an unwelcome import from the big cities -- violent, youth
gangs.
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- Glenn County, around 100 miles north of the state capital
of Sacramento, boasts 1,188 farms raising rice, corn, olives and almonds
and a population of just over 26,000. It also has at least 12 Hispanic
and Asian youth gangs and is the unlikely scene of a raging war between
two rival Mexican gang clans -- ''Nortenos'' or northerners who wear red
and ``Surenos'' or southerners who wear blue.
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- ``We first started seeing gang graffiti around 1992 and
1993. At first, law enforcement tried to downplay it but that quickly became
impossible,'' said Brandon Thompson, the county's supervising probation
officer.
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- Police started seeing an increase in vandalism, assaults,
car thefts, arson, sex offenses, school disruption and juvenile drug arrests.
They have also logged one fatal stabbing and three handgun murders in the
past few years.
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- Juan, 16, who proudly wears tattoos on both his wrists
stating his membership of the Big Orland Trece gang, has been in juvenile
hall 21 times for stints as long as three months. He has just celebrated
the birth of his first child but is not considering renouncing his gang
membership.
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- ``The gang is like my family. I need it for protection.
I've never not been in the gang,'' he said.
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- His fellow gang member Cesar, 16, has often been in trouble
for fighting, which he regards as a normal part of life.
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- ``I fight people who piss me off. Whenever it happens,
it happens. If they give me a wrong look I fight them. I do bad but I do
it real good,'' he said.
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- MARK OF PRIDE
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- To accommodate youths like Juan and Cesar, the county
is expanding its youth detention facility from eight to 22 beds. Unfortunately
many youths regard a month or two in 'The Hall' as a mark of pride and
a source of status among their peers.
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- Gang violence has long been a serious problem in the
United States. A 1997 Justice Department survey estimated that there were
30,500 youth gangs with more than 800,000 members active that year, responsible
for 3,340 homicides. But the spread of gangs from big cities to rural areas
is an alarming new problem.
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- The war between the Nortenos and the Surenos that has
raged in California for decades started with a murder in San Quentin prison
in 1968 after a dispute between two inmates over a pair of shoes.
-
- Now, authorities in Glenn County are getting reports
of children as young as 12 and 13 wearing gang colors and trying to tattoo
themselves with illegal homemade tattoo guns. They are also seeing the
first signs of girl gangs organizing.
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- In the county seat of Willows, population 6,000, a gang
brawl developed two years ago outside the movie theater, the town's only
place of entertainment. It ended with a fatal shooting.
-
- To help tackle the problem, the county applied for and
received a U.S. Justice Department grant of $275,000 a year for 3-5 years
and hired three Spanish-speaking professionals to reach out to youngsters
and try to guide them away from gangs. The program was known as Project
Exito.
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- ``We try to distinguish between the hard-core gang members
and those we can still reach and shape,'' said chief probation officer
Linda Shelton.
-
- ``Most of these kids are still redeemable. They want
what everybody wants -- an education and a good job. They just don't know
how to get there. As for the hard-core ones, if we catch them committing
a crime we send them to prison,'' she said.
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- ANOTHER SIDE OF LIFE
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- Project Exito coordinator Danny Munguia said his team
was working intensively with 27 gang members. He had found them summer
jobs, taken them on day trips to San Francisco and organized basketball
evenings. That counts for a lot in towns where there is literally nothing
for young people to do and where the unemployment rate stands at around
11 percent.
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- ``We're not there to bust them. We just want to show
them there is another side to life, that they have more options and more
possibilities than just joining the gang,'' Munguia said.
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- But luring kids away from gangs is tough. In some cases,
gang membership runs through two or three generations of a family. In others,
teenagers feel alienated from their parents, many of whom work very long
hours in the fields and have little time or energy for their children.
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- Cesar has been driving a forklift, cutting grass and
cleaning buildings. He said he liked the work and the money but he was
not about to leave the gang just because of that.
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- Raoul, also 16, has been working in a kitchen and poses
for a photograph proudly wearing his hair net. Project Exito took him to
a Latino youth conference at a nearby college where he had a good time
and learned about his history and culture.
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- But Raoul also recounted with relish his role in a major
brawl at a high school football game which got him expelled and landed
him on probation.
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- ``Everybody was hurt,'' he said grinning broadly.
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- Even when a youth decides to leave a gang, it is not
easy. A brochure from Project Exito advises: ``They should begin spending
time doing other things and get good at making excuses ... They should
never tell the gang they plan to leave. They may be beaten or even killed.''
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