School Gangs Less Visible Than in Past, Say Officials

Ten years ago, the gang population in San Diego was so small that police and school administrators barely acknowledged it existed.

Today, each of San Diego Unified School District’s 44 secondary schools, which can include students as young as 12, has among its student body at least one gang member, a phenomenon caused by school locations and the school district’s busing program.

San Diego street gangs are more than 1,000 members strong, a number that is only half of what police reported last year. Despite that drop, San Diego school police officers say they are bracing themselves to deal with gang confrontations as students return to classes today.

School officials say the first month of the new school year’s classes is the most tension-filled period of the entire school year because rival gang members vie to establish reputations among the student bodies.

“The first 30 days are critical,” said Joe Elmore, San Diego High School’s faculty police officer. “If anything will happen, it will happen in bunches.”

At San Diego High downtown, members from three of the city’s largest and most notorious gangs converge to attend classes--the “Logan” from Logan Heights, the “Lomas” from Golden Hill and the “Shermboys” from Sherman Heights.

Elmore said territorial disputes and revenge for wounded members or “home-boys” often result in rumbles or drive-by shootings in these and other neighborhoods throughout the city. Turf and drug wars are common.

While the number of gangs and gang members throughout the city has dropped overall, predominantly black gangs based in Southeast San Diego have doubled their memberships, police claim. And in the last two years police have reported a significant increase in gang-related violence among the Southeast Asian gangs in the Kearny Mesa and Linda Vista neighborhoods.

So far, gang violence in the neighborhoods hasn’t entered school hallways because “when the students come to school they seem to leave their gang wars back on their neighborhood streets,” said Wayne Chandler, who patrols Hoover High School in East San Diego.

“I know it’s tough to believe, but they (gang members) are very private about their dealings,” said Chandler. “They don’t want adults around to get in the way.”

School officials are trying to keep the opportunity for gang violence to a minimum by prohibiting students from wearing clothing emblazoned with gang insignia, handcuffs, studded jewelry or bandannas that signify gang affiliation.

“One of the first steps in controling gang violence in the schools is to identify and eliminate all gang-related clothing, graffiti or accessories right away,” Elmore said. “You take away their armor and they are forced to communicate just like the rest of us.

“That way you don’t have two (opposing) gang members sitting next to each other in the classroom flashing their fighting colors at each other,” he said.

Most gangs, however, have their own codes of communication. In clothing, messages can be sent by wearing different colored shoe laces or by wearing bandannas on different parts of their bodies. They also use sign language.

Officials say these codes can make it difficult for them to monitor gang activity.

Most disputes between rival gangs are resolved outside of school grounds when gang members get back in uniform, officials said, but occasionally street wars do spill over into the classroom.

“When you put gang members from one area together with gang members from another area something is bound to happen. It is just a matter of time,” said detective Felix Zavala of the San Diego Police Department’s gang unit.

San Diego police reported a significant drop in gang-related violence over the summer. Only one homicide attributed to a gang dispute was reported this summer, compared to five reported gang homicides in 1984.

There have been no homicides or major gang-related injuries at any San Diego school during at least the past two years.

Furthermore, the San Diego Police Department plans to continue its undercover drug investigations at city schools, which officials say has cut drug dealing and drug use at city schools in half.

“If we could just get rid of the drugs for good, then maybe we really will start to see big strides toward creating a positive learning and teaching environment,” said Thomas Payzant, San Diego’s school superintendent.

A statewide task force on youth gang violence visited San Diego last week and found that San Diego’s gang membership was small when compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where there are three times the gang members.

But school administrators, facing a new school year, say they will continue to stay on guard against gang violence.

“The gangs here are smaller than those north of here, but all it takes is the smallest guy in the pack to start a riot,” Elmore said.

In a drive-by shooting last year, a bullet was fired through the front door after school hours, when the building was empty except for a janitor and overnight security guard. The bullet sped through an outer door, tunneled through a second office door inside the foyer, and finally lodged inside a reference book in an administrator’s office.

Elmore said it is that kind of victim-less incident that keeps school officials on guard.

“It’s that kind of thing that reminds me how dangerous these kids can be,” he said.