by PATRICK O’DONNEL and KATE WOODS
Arrests and community participation rise, but setbacks still
pull effort sideways
While the South Valley has made strides in gang suppression,
Hollister still seems to be struggling, but inching closer, toward
that goal.
Last week two men, both of whom had previous arrests for
gang-related crimes, were arrested for a non-gang-related fight at
Calaveras Elementary School that left the Hollister school on
lockdown for two hours because one of the men had a gun.
by PATRICK O’DONNEL and KATE WOODS
Arrests and community participation rise, but setbacks still pull effort sideways
While the South Valley has made strides in gang suppression, Hollister still seems to be struggling, but inching closer, toward that goal.
Last week two men, both of whom had previous arrests for gang-related crimes, were arrested for a non-gang-related fight at Calaveras Elementary School that left the Hollister school on lockdown for two hours because one of the men had a gun.
Elsewhere, a San Juan Bautista man was arrested late last week in connection with a shooting on Oct. 27 on Central Avenue in Hollister, which left a 19-year-old injured. Not surprisingly to police, both men are believed to belong to rival gangs.
But still at large are the perpetrators responsible for a gangland shooting that broke out on the same street just the week before, which left three people injured.
A separate drive-by shooting in a downtown neighborhood last month also goes unsolved. In that case, a suspected gang member fired a hail of bullets from a moving car into a home where a rival gang member is believed to live. The intended target wasn’t there at the time, but eight others – four adults and four children including a baby – were. A man was critically injured inside the home and airlifted to San Jose.
Gangs are a reality in San Benito County, but are taskforces and study groups really enough of an effort on the county’s part?
According to San Benito County Gang Taskforce Chairman Rick Maddox, the group has had several meetings with the community and is making progress, but true progress can only be made with movement from the entire community – especially from Hispanic residents since local gangs target primarily Hispanic youth.
“We’ve had four meetings and the turnouts have been good,” Maddox said. “There are things we’re already implementing. One thing is having interpreters available during every shift at the police department. A lot of times the police will visit a home and the child is the only one in the house that speaks English and he’s not going to tell his parents he’s in trouble, so they translate improperly. This problem is quickly solved with the additional translators available to the department during every shift.”
Money and political will needed
In order to be truly successful at combating gang violence, law enforcement needs to implement a three-pronged attack consisting of suppression, intervention and prevention, Miller said. While the community is stronger on the intervention and prevention parts – at-risk youth programs, neighborhood meetings and after-school tutoring – Miller said his police officers have to find extra time to deal with gang prevention efforts on top of their regular assignments.
“When time permits they do gang prevention activities,” Miller said.
At the December 20 County Supervisors meeting, County Administrative Officer Susan Thompson said community groups and various law enforcement agencies have finally come together in the county, all dealing with the same issue in light of the recent upswing in gang violence. Each agency now has a seat at the taskforce table.
Hollister Councilman Brad Pike said it’s about time.
“I’m glad to see this taking place but I’m kind of frustrated it wasn’t from the get-go,” Pike told citizens at this week’s meeting. He added he’d like to see the effort move from a predominantly prevention-heavy effort to one that focuses more on suppression.
That’s easier said than done. The sheriff’s department, police department, probation department, city council, board of supervisors and district attorney’s office are currently working together, along with concerned citizens, but as Hollister Police Chief Jeff Miller said at this week’s council meeting, resources are limited.
“We have virtually no budget for gang prevention programs,” Miller said. “It’s going to take time before the problem is under control. We need the help of the community.”
There are state and federal grants available to help the county address the issue. In order to qualify for funding the county has to show that it has a documented plan in place. Now that more agencies and community leaders are working together earnestly, gleaning those government monies might soon become a reality.
And the community seems to be getting Miller’s message about getting involved. Since he announced an opening last month for a seat on the Gang Taskforce for a Citizen-At-Large, eight people have applied for the responsibility. The council members will pick one of them for the job, though it will be a tough choice. All the candidates have extensive experience working with gang-influenced youth, and some actually are ex-gang members. The council will make their decision at a future meeting in January.
Seven at a time in Gilroy
Gilroy has seen its share of problems with gang violence. Former Gilroy City Councilman Charlie Morales said that south Santa Clara County had put together a similar program incorporating all the different cities in the region, the California Highway Patrol, the sheriff’s department, probation department, and local police agencies to create a gang taskforce. Morales, himself a former probation officer, said they created a similar program in Gilroy.
Their taskforce contained different individuals from the private and non-private sectors, school officials, ministries, and the previously mentioned law enforcement agencies as well as any other agencies that deal with youth and families.
According to Morales, who has a background in sociology, gangs are composed of all ethnicities – not just Mexicans or blacks, or Vietnamese, but Russians and Filipinos too. The propensity for gangs crosses cultures. It is a way of associating through peer pressure and appeasing an individual’s needs through violence.
Gilroy discovered that the best way to combat against this was with the three-pronged approach Miller described.
In Gilroy, the gangs try to identify themselves with locations of certain neighborhoods or streets or city boundaries then they set their moniker or “tag” on that neighborhood. The tag is the identity of who controls what.
Gilroy’s suppression part was relatively simple. They made sure that they had a full-press approach and did sweeps based on that intelligence.
“If anyone was out on probation or parole and he or she was found in violation of any crime, they were taken back to jail,” Morales said. “We have what’s called ‘Lucky Seven’ those are the seven people we’re looking for every time we make a sweep. We’ll look for warrants, parole holds, anything like that and the local probation department and the police and sheriff’s deputies will all go in and make the arrests. Also, if these people get out of jail we make them register as gang-members, we want to know when they’re back in a neighborhood. Otherwise, people can get released and go back into the same neighborhoods and we’d never know it.”
Morales says that there are no segments of society exempt from the impacts of gangs. That’s why it’s important to create neighborhood associations. Gilroy has close to 20. “From a sociological standpoint, if you have a broken window in an abandoned house, you have to repair that window or eventually the entire neighborhood will be in disrepair,” he said.
Neighborhood associations are highly effective in suppressing crime because everyone gets involved. If gangs take over neighborhoods, eventually police can’t get a handle on things and the neighborhoods are lost.
Non-professional organizations become very helpful with the intervention process, since the agencies try to intervene with children as well as families. Morales said that Victory Outreach is a great example, since the ministry is filled with reformed gang-members and prison graduates who have turned their lives around. They are helpful with interventions because they’re coming out of some of the same systems that produce these kids – San Quentin or Pelican Bay, for example – so they know where the kids are coming from.
Gilroy has a very united approach that goes back to the schools, Morales added. The schools can identify high-risk kids that gangs are more likely to recruit. Often their homework contains monikers, clues that a child is getting interested or involved with a particular gang. Another helpful deterrent are truant officers on school campuses who can help with identifying gang members. The second benefit of having truant officers on campus is that they can provide information to help keep teachers become knowledgeable about the elements in play outside the classroom.
Setback at Probation
Hollister’s Chief Miller reports that between his department and the sheriff’s, 17 gang cases have been processed since the inception of the taskforce in August 2004, resulting in 14 convictions. Two of the cases are pending and one suspect in another is on the run. But while there’s progress in the anti-gang suppression effort, Hollister recently suffered a curveball that came close to the issue.
On Wednesday, Sheriff’s deputies arrested Manuel Y. Gonzales, a Hollister juvenile jailer, in the parking lot of the San Benito County Juvenile Hall. Gonzales was reporting for duty when the deputies pulled a search warrant on him and found he was carrying a concealed, loaded .38-caliber revolver concealed on his person and a bottle of what turned out to be Vicodin, a narcotic prescription pain reliever. He wasn’t going to take the gun in, apparently, but he was planning to take the drugs to a juvenile inmate.
Deborah Botts, chief probation officer, said while it was a first for the county, she was immensely disappointed.
“I’m really disgusted with the staff member for blurring professional boundaries,” Botts said. “This is how it begins. You bring them a donut, a soda … and he blew it. The kids are there for a reason. They are there to be safe, protected and sober, and my staff interfered with that child’s sobriety.”
In a way, it was the effort against gangs that brought Gonzales’ shenanigans to light. Sheriff’s detectives were working on a gang investigation when they found out from an informant that Gonzales was allegedly providing a minor in the juvenile hall with contraband. Gonzales was immediately placed on administrative leave pending termination proceedings. He was charged with carrying a concealed firearm, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, smuggling controlled substances into a detention facility, and child endangerment. He is currently being held in the San Benito County Jail on $61,000 bail.
Botts emphasized that neither Gonzales nor the juvenile he was taking the drugs to are gang members. Still, such an incident doesn’t enhance Hollister’s efforts to discourage gang activity.
“We have reason to believe it only happened once,” she said. “This is not common practice and not condoned activity.”
Botts added that her department is currently reviewing policy and procedures to ensure consistency in departmental standards are enforced.
The Hollister Gang Taskforce meets on the fourth Wednesday of every month at City Hall. For more information and to verify meeting dates and times, call 831-636-4300 or go to the Gang Taskforce website, linked to the city’s website, at http://www.hollister.ca.gov/Site/html/community/gangtask.asp.
