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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Hispanic gangs gather strength Hispanic gangs gather strength By JACOB QUINN SANDERS Violent crime in Portland edged down recently in neighborhoods that are home to high levels of gang activity, but the number of gang members the Portland Police Bureau tracks is up. In November 2003, Portland cops knew of 354 members. In March 2004, it was 383. Then up to 419 in September. And last month they had files on 453. Almost all of the increase is among Hispanic gangs. ?They make up probably 90, 95 percent of the ones we?ve added lately,? said Russ Corno, the intelligence officer in the Police Bureau?s Gang Enforcement Team. Not that they?ve been hard to find. The last decade saw Portland?s population grow 14 percent, yet the Hispanic population spiked 170 percent. The city?s black population has increased 24 percent in the same period. Nearly every Hispanic gang member added to the Police Bureau?s list of known and suspected gang members confirmed their membership to cops. At the time of Portland?s first drive-by gang-related shooting in 1988, members of the oldest Hispanic gang, 18th Street, had almost no other Hispanic gangs to fight. Today, 18th Street is the largest of an expanding culture of Hispanic gangs, reaching from Hillsboro to Fairview, that largely exists on the east side of Portland. City police do not need self-identification to list someone as a gang member. Identification rules demand ?clear and convincing evidence,? which includes committing or planning a crime on behalf of the gang or for the gang?s benefit, knowledge of the gang?s history and rituals, flashing hand signs or using body language specific to a gang, or having gang tattoos. There are 15 potential criteria. Portland cops were forced to discard files on 2,800 suspected gang members in 1995 after one of them filed suit alleging that the Police Bureau?s standards were too vague. The 15 criteria resulted from that ruling. One is announcing gang affiliation to police. The openness in Hispanic gangs comes from members? machismo and pride in their heritage and in their friends, police and social workers say. A 2004 study by the Latino Gang Violence Prevention Task Force in Multnomah County referred to a Gresham school-retention program sponsored by El Program Hispano. In the program, young Hispanics answered questions about the attraction of gangs. Pride and identity were common answers. ?They like to be Latinos but they do not like to be different, but they are not Americans,? the study reads. ?They do not know what they are.? And poor families, largely immigrant families, leave holes for gangs to fill. ?When Mom and Dad work two or three jobs each and are hardly ever home, the kids see that the gangs are the ones who love them, who nurture them,? said Virginia Salinas, a program development specialist in Multnomah County?s Department of Community Justice. The gangs, like other organizations nefarious and legitimate, have a hierarchy. At the top are hard-core members who conduct the gang?s business and have been ?jumped in,? a ritualized beating at the hands of other members that marks initiation into the gang. The next stratum comprises associates, then peripheral affiliates. Lowest on the list are the most vulnerable, the chamaquitos ? literally ?little boys? ? usually between 10 and 12 years old, who hang out with gang members, often through relatives already in gangs. On the street, Hispanic gang members protect turf and reputation but have not morphed into criminal enterprises, police say. They wear their colors, flash signs, fight, hang out on corners and in parks, write graffiti ? which gang team Lt. Eric Hendricks called ?Phase I of gang activity.? They tend to be in their late teens and early 20s. Contrast that with Portland?s black gang members, who have learned hard lessons about saying too much about who they are. In 1994, Portland police and Multnomah County prosecutors brought racketeering charges against 17 members of the Woodlawn Park Bloods and Loc?d Out Pirus. Three years later, they used the same law to target six members of the Kerby Blocc Crips. Their tool was a state Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations act passed in 1981, which was modeled on the federal RICO law passed by Congress in 1970 to thump and dismantle the Italian mob known as La Cosa Nostra. Since those cases, gang cops say, the attitude of black gangs in Portland has changed. ?I can?t think of one right now who came out and said, ?I?m a gang member,? ? gang team Sgt. Ed Hamann said. The makeup of the gangs has changed as well, police say. They tend to be older and more interested in making money than protecting turf. Some now live anonymous lives in Beaverton or Southeast Portland and commute to what one gang officer calls ?the playing field? in inner Northeast Portland. They have organized into a kind of corporation to deal drugs. They learned to carry guns only for immediate protection or to shoot someone ? it used to be they?d carry guns all the time. They wear their colors less often. They are, as a group, more discreet. ?They went from carrying dope in their pockets to carrying dope in their ass,? Hamann said. And though black gangs still account for much of Portland?s violent gang-related crime ? shootings, aggravated assaults with handguns, stabbings ? their numbers are dwindling. Hispanic gang members outnumber black gang members in Portland by a count of 205 to 159, according to the most recent Police Bureau calculations. Next come Asian gang members, with 62, then 23 whites and four Native Americans. ?The balance of power,? Hendricks said, ?has shifted.?
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#1. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#0)
They're just forming the gangs that Americans won't form. Remember now...Diversity is our strength.
I guess I'm ahead of my time. I was raging pissed off about his back in 1979. Of course, I was living in L.A. then so it was more in my face than it was with most people. I'm glad people are FINALLY waking up to this problem.
I saw it in the '80s in a small agricultural town. The crime was 95% hispanic and there were trailer parks in town where the police refused to enter without backup.
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