Gangs

On Sunday, the Chapel Hill Police Department, in conjunction with the Sunrise Rotary Club, the YMCA, and East Chapel Hill High School sponsored a community workshop entitled Gang Involvement and Prevention: Help Your Children Make the Right Choice. Although there were only 20-25 non-police participants, the workshop was highly informative and charged us all to help bring awareness to the community. Unfortunately, there was a big disconnect between the materials they gave us and the ones they used in the presentation. My notes are disjointed but I'll try and get down the important facts and then clean up the writing and structure later on.

A gang is defined as a group of 3 or more individuals who share a common dress code, symbols, signals all toward a common purpose. Five (5) levels of gang involvement were given:

1. Great Pretender: someone who behaves and dresses in the manner of a gang member.
2. The Actor: someone who has casual association with a gang
3. American Idol (Gonna Be, Associate): someone who knows and likes gang members
4. The Believer: someone who has been formally accepted as an entry level gang member
5. Hard Core: someone who has made a total commitment to a gang

Gangs provide structure and a feeling of connectedness. Youth who do not have strong families or who are socially ostracized are at greatest risk. But the majority of gang members are not juveniles.

There are two (2) macro gangs in the US from which all others have evolved: Folk Nation and People's Nation. The Crips and Bloods are offshoots of these two. Crips, who identify with a 6-pointed crown, pitch forks, winged hearts, and the color blue are associated with Folk Nation. Bloods use the 5-pointed crown and the color red come from People's Nation.

There are also three (3) hispanic/Latino gangs: Sureno 13, Norteno-14, and MS-13. MS-13 is from El Salvador and evolved from paramilitary actions there. North Carolina has the 4th largest concentration of MS-13 activity in the US.

In Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 8 hybrid gangs have been identified. These groups are not associated with the macro gangs, but they are highly susceptible to recruitment. Identifying these groups and their members and working with them to promote alternative lifestyles is imperative.

Graffiti is the 'newspaper' of gangs. Symbology is used to establish territory, to brag, and to diss others. When you see graffiti, the police would like for you to take a picture of it and then give them the picture and the location. It is important that graffiti be erased as quickly as possible. In Chapel Hill, the police will offer to paint over it themselves if property owners can't or won't. They have the authority to remove the graffiti even if the property owner objects. No one to date has objected.

In Carrboro, the police do not have that same authority. They can ask and encourage a property owner to remove graffiti, but that's the extent of their power. During the January point in time count, we noted two private locations with gang graffiti. The graffiti is still present at both sites, and has multiplied several times over at one site. I spoke with the town manager, his assistant and the town attorney tonight about drafting a policy/ordinance that would give the police more authority. Apparently Mike Brough's office recently drafted an ordinance for the town of Tarrboro so hopefully Carrboro can use that to their advantage and move quickly. In the meantime, they have created an online Graffiti Report Form.

The workshop concluded with two (2) suggestions for what to do:

1. Know the signs; educate yourself, your family, friends, and co-workers. Don't panic.
2. Encourage community involvement to develop a proactive response to this thread. Mentoring programs have been highly successful in Jacksonville Florida. In our community, the Orange County Sheriff's Department has their GREAT program that includes a large outreach effort.