Gang Violence in rez

Larry Di Giovanni

CHINLE — Gang activity in the Chinle Unified School District will worsen if school leaders don't toughen the consequences for violent behavior such as fights and carrying weapons. The warning was delivered Wednesday night to about 150 parents by a California gang expert.

As the Know Gangs director out of Modesto, Calif., Jared Lewis was a former police officer there for eight years and said he arrested more than 1,000 gang members. Chinle already has a disproportionately high gang problem for a community its size and needs to toughen its penalties by removing students permanently from school who exhibit violence toward others, he said.

Lewis has visited Chinle since Monday, talking to Chinle High School students, school officials, teachers, parents, but mainly students and that has included getting out of his car when he spots a gang member to talk to him or her. Chinle Unified brought Lewis in as part of a three-day School Safety Seminar, asking him to speak during several high school assemblies.

Wednesday night he presented his gang topic at the Chinle Community Center, including how parents can identify if their child is in a gang.

Outside the center's gym in a hallway, the school district's security officers displayed weapons fastened to two large boards confiscated from students. They include bats, butcher's knives, switchblades, nun chucks and brass knuckles. Lewis said of the homemade weapons displayed at Chinle High School "I've only seen (this) in prison, not on a reservation. Somebody out here is teaching kids that."

Chinle already has the telltale signs of deep-rooted gang activity, Lewis said. Buildings, abandoned or not, are frequently "tagged" with graffiti with words, letters and other markings designating a gang's territory. At a gang awareness activity for Chinle High teachers and staff, participants were awarded points for naming the gang names have they seen. At least 14 names were given. Lewis has even seen placards and fencing tagged with gang words in car pull-out areas at Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

The Chinle gang members Lewis talked to indicated they have spent time in large cities such as Phoenix or Albuquerque, a migration-to-reservation effect. Where spotting a gang member is concerned, Lewis looks foremost at two things: who youths "hang out" with and what types of behavior they exhibit. The behavior would include students who frequently get in fights, get suspended from school and stay out late.

On a social level, students most at risk for gang membership come from poor homes where there has been a breakdown in the family structure. A high number of single-parent homes are a fact of Navajo reservation life, he noted, and on other reservations as well. Look at whom your children go to school with and come back home with, he advised parents.

There are other easy-to-spot signs of gang influence on a youth, such as wearing a specific color of clothing red, blue and black are typical and clothes that have numbers. Tattooing, hand signs, bandannas, hats, hair styles, the music listened to and even a little "dance" youths do called a "crip walk" are indications of gang affiliation.

A "crip walk" may resemble a rap-type street dance, but the crip-ster is actually spelling his gang's symbols or letters with his feet. "That's something that is happening all across the nation," Lewis said.

Noting how many small metal pipes Chinle Unified security personnel have confiscated this school year alone two boxes full, some on display Wednesday night is an indication of marijuana use on a large scale.

"There's a tremendous amount of drug use going on among the kids here," Lewis said.

When he opened up the floor after his presentation, the drug use issue was one topic mentioned. Andrew Benallie, a parent and grandparent, said Chinle junior high students are "pushing drugs" in and around their schools. A teacher who declined to give her name to protect her job said there is a number of so-called "goths," or black-clad "gothic" students at school. Two of them may have been involved in an February incident of stomping a cat to death inside a Chinle High hallway, seeing it disposed of, then tossing it down a hallway again, she said.

Just a few years ago, the school had a policy of no hats worn in school, no bandannas and no CD players. But that was apparently too difficult to enforce and now students are only told not to wear hats in classrooms, she said.

"I feel sorry for anyone who's in a position of authority here," she said. "You have to stick your neck out (to take a leadership role)."

One community member and parent who is taking a leadership role is Harrison Yazzie, a local pastor and president of the high school's parent-teacher-student organization. He has tried to present a zero-tolerance resolution on gangs and school violence to the five-member Chinle Unified board at two successive meetings, but has been stalled.

Lewis said it was disappointing for him to hear that Yazzie had been limited by the school board president, Rose Martinez, to just a two-minute presentation at the last board meeting when the topic involves something as important as school safety.

The School Safety Seminar is a good step for the school district, but Yazzie said he believes far too many school officials are in "denial" of how bad gang influence is at Chinle High School and elsewhere in the community. He noted that some people appear reluctant to express their views not just out of fear of gangs, but out of fear of offending the school board. He said he offered Martinez some gang awareness literature, "and she refused it."

Martinez was the only school board member at Wednesday night's presentation by Lewis, but she didn't stay long, Yazzie said. He added he was deeply "disappointed" the other four school board members didn't attend.