Police match gangs’ growth

They all once belonged to gang members, some of whose photographs – surveillance and mug shots – fill a corkboard in the same Spartan room.
Officers know their names, affiliations and activities.

A short time ago, they knew very little, Police Chief Robert Ferdinand said.
“We didn’t have a need to know,” he said.

Gangs weren’t a problem in Hazleton and the surrounding area until a few years ago, when graffiti started popping up along with gang colors and related criminal activities.

“From my perspective, I was looking at stuff, and I don’t think at that point we were really saying that it was gang-related,” city Detective Chris Orozco said. “We were really in our infancy in trying to understand things.

“We were all seeing the same things ... graffiti … colors … particular groups hanging out and causing problems,” he said. “We were all seeing the same things.”
Ferdinand initially turned to a state police trooper who specializes in gangs to educate his department, he said. The presentation “opened our eyes,” the chief said.
The real deal

Officers quickly realized the signs they were seeing weren’t wannabes, but the real deal – Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, Neta and Trinitarios.

“From that point on, I started sending guys to training courses on gang activity – how to recognize it, how to combat it,” Ferdinand said. “Shortly after that, we talked about forming a gang unit, now called the Street Crime Unit.”

The unit, more than a year old, continues to learn about Hazleton’s gangs, which vary in size and strength, said Orozco, its coordinator. All six of the aforementioned gangs operate locally, he said, but they are not the only ones.

“We have smaller gangs that have been absorbed into the larger ones and smaller ones that have spawned off the larger ones,” Orozco said. “It is a constantly changing situation.”

Today, the department estimates there are about 200 gangsters – “card-carrying members and associates,” Orozco said – in the Hazleton area.

And some of these gangsters have ties to New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago, while others were born and raised in the Hazleton area, said Jared Lewis, a gang expert and the director and founder of Know Gangs in Jefferson, Wis.

“Hazleton definitely has a much larger issue with gangs than other cities of the same size,” he said.

Lewis believes some gang members came to the Hazleton area because the larger cities where the gangs have traditionally thrived are getting better at cracking down on their activities.

In a smaller town, they don’t attract as much attention, he said.

In other instances, family members move to small towns to get their children out of the cities, but those children bring the gang mindset and lifestyle with them, Lewis said.

The impact on the innocent

The Street Crime Unit focuses on watching and talking with gang members and gathering information about them and their activities, Orozco said.

“We can document, keep track and try to disrupt,” he said. “If we know about an activity that’s going on … we’ll try to disrupt that.”

He preferred not to say much about what police know about gangs operating in the area, but did say their activities revolve around drug dealing and that gang-on-gang violence does occur.

Both are a concern for law enforcement, Orozco said, because innocent bystanders could get hurt or killed just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“That’s where we have the concern,” he said. “Where there are shots being fired … the people in the neighborhood, they’re the ones we’re worried about.

“That’s always a fear of law enforcement … that someone that is not involved or related to these activities gets in the middle of something that happens.”

Unlike West Coast gangs, those that operate in the Hazleton area aren’t territorial or turf-oriented, Orozco said. Their graffiti tells others that they’re here, but doesn’t define boundaries, as many believe, he said.

Some people believe they can avoid certain areas in the city where gang members hang out and be safe, but that’s just not the case, Orozco said.

“To say, you’re going to avoid the downtown, I don’t know if that’s the answer,” he said. “It’s not only downtown. You could be in a neighborhood … at the mall. They can go wherever you can go.”

However, he said people shouldn’t worry about getting mugged or robbed by gangs. “That’s typically not what they’re doing,” he said.

Gangs focus on dealing drugs – a culture that ordinary citizens aren’t in touch with, Ferdinand said, adding that while chance encounters may occur, people normally wouldn’t run into gang members in their everyday lives.

The drug trade does indirectly affect people in a community, Orozco said, because drug users often commit petty crimes to get money to buy drugs.

“That’s where people’s cars get broken into, where people’s houses get broken into,” he said.

Car break-ins happen very frequently, said Ferdinand, who advises people not to leave items of value inside their vehicles.

“If it’s not in the car, it’s not drawing someone’s attention,” he added.

These petty crimes aren’t the only impact on a community. Ferdinand worries about the effects that the gang lifestyle and culture has on the community’s young people – those being recruited into gangs and those being intimidated by its members.
“It’s a concern for any parent,” the chief said.

The second part of the series will look at how children are affected by gangs and how parents can help.

How gangs show their allegiance
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention list common gang identifiers in its Parents’ Guide to Gangs:

Clothing
Gang members may use a particular style of dress to identify with a particular gang, set, clique or crew. This might include clothing or bandanas worn only in certain colors that are representative of a gang.
Other clothing that might be worn by a gang member could include pants worn well below the waist (sagging) and gang-themed T-shirts with pictures of gang members, prison scenes, graffiti or slogans. Also, two- or three-toned beaded necklaces; sports clothing of specific teams, or colored fabric belts, occasionally with a metal buckle that includes the initial of the gang.
However, gang clothing trends change and may be different from one place to another, so clothing alone may not be enough to indicate a child’s affiliation with a particular gang, though it can be a clue.

Colors
Many gangs use one or more colors as a symbol to represent their gang. These colors may be worn on shirts, bandanas, multicolored or single-colored beads, belts, hats, shoes, shoelaces, headbands, jewelry and other items.

Sports items
Letters, colors or symbols may have a specific gang meaning in local street-gang culture, such as Kansas City Royals (KC = Kill Crips). Sports items may be purchased in a nontraditional color to correspond with the gang’s colors or may be altered with graffiti or extra symbols or writing.

Symbols and numbers
Some symbols and numbers may have special significance within the gang culture in a particular area. A few common symbols from some of the large gangs in the United States are stars (five- and six-pointed), crowns, pitchforks (pointing up or down), three dots in a triangle and numbers.

Tattoos
Tattoos are used to show an individual’s loyalty to his/her gang. These tattoos often include the name, initials or symbols of the specific gang and may be found on the hands, neck, face, chest or arms.

Graffiti
Gangs use graffiti to mark their territory, brag about their reputation, mourn fallen members and threaten or challenge rival gangs. For this reason, graffiti can be very dangerous and should be removed as soon as possible.
Youths who are participating in graffiti may have items such as spray paint, spray-paint plastic tips, wide-tipped markers, or sketchbooks with graffiti works in progress and may have paint on their clothing, backpacks or other items.

Hand signs
Some gangs use specific hand gestures to communicate their affiliation with the gang and issue threats or challenges to rival gangs.

Music and movies
Gangsta/gangster rap is a style of rap music characterized by violent, tough-talking lyrics that glorify street-gang culture. Many popular movies also focus on street gangs and their activities. Youths may show their interest in gangs through fascination with music and movies that portray street-gang cultures.