Vietnamese Gang Trend Has Authorities Worried

It started as a shoving match. A girl at a Fountain Valley skating rink pushed a smaller girl. A boy stepped in to defend her. A larger boy pushed him. The fight was on.

Within minutes, hundreds of youths from Orange and Los Angeles counties--mostly Vietnamese--joined in. By the time police broke up the melee last Jan. 16, one 17-year-old had been stabbed. His alleged assailant and five others were arrested.

Less than a month earlier, a Saturday night birthday party at the Murdy Park Recreation Center in Huntington Beach had ended in violence when rival Vietnamese gangs started fighting. The night’s toll: three teen-agers hospitalized with stab wounds and several people arrested.

These are only two of several incidents police mention when they discuss an emerging trend in Orange County that has law-enforcement authorities and community leaders concerned.

Since last summer, police say, increasingly sophisticated gangs of Vietnamese youths have begun to emerge in the county’s Southeast Asian community, leading to an escalation in violence and crime. In particular, police point to increases in car thefts, auto burglaries, purse-snatchings and street robberies.

In the past, Vietnamese gangs had been more rumor than fact, police investigators say. But that has begun to change. Now, members are choosing names for their groups, selecting leaders and, in at least one case, wearing similar jackets.

“They are starting to evolve much like the (Latino) and black gangs did 40 to 50 years ago,” said Detective Marcus Frank, a specialist on Southeast Asian crime for the Westminster Police Department.

It is a worrisome trend, said Robert Gates, a deputy probation officer in the Orange County Probation Department’s gang-suppression unit. “The major concern we have to look at right now is that it is getting more serious--and I don’t think the number of kids getting involved in these gangs or groups is diminishing.”

Last December, Costa Mesa police reported two shooting incidents involving Vietnamese youths. In February, violence broke out during the annual Tet lunar New Year celebration at Santa Ana’s Centennial Park, and a bystander was wounded in the foot in the gang-related shooting.

“There certainly has been a great increase in violent incidents--and there are many more incidents that go unreported,” Frank said.

Police estimate that there still are fewer than 100 Vietnamese gang members in Orange County, just a fraction of the county’s 5,000 to 7,000 members of the 50 street gangs that have been identified by the California Gang Investigators Assn.

At Orange County Juvenile Hall, there are 12 Vietnamese teen-age gang members currently being dealt with through the Probation Department’s gang-suppression program, Gates said.

For the most part, Vietnamese gang members here are 16 to 21 years old and are living with single parents or guardians, or on their own, police say.

“They like guns, and only the best guns,” Frank said.

Among the organized gangs recently identified by police are:

- The Teaser Mohawk Boys, whose members have taken to wearing black jackets with Mohawk head designs or with the letters TMB. Police also have seen ink drawings of the gang name scrawled on members’ hands or arms. Most members live in Garden Grove and Westminster and are suspected of being responsible for an increase in car thefts and car and home burglaries. Police say there are about 17 to 20 core members and 15 teen-agers identified as hangers-on.

- The Santa Ana Boys, whose members scrawl the abbreviation “SAB” on school notebooks and other materials. They are suspected of being involved in purse snatchings and strong-arm street robberies of gold neck chains and watches. Police say there are at least 30 core members, some as young as 13.

- Nip 14, which began as a group of Garden Grove teen-agers, most of whom were then 14 years old. But it has evolved into a serious gang, police say, although they are uncertain about the nature of the group’s activities. There are about 20 members, and police believe the name grew out of Latino gangs referring to Southeast Asian teen-agers as “nips.”

Police said other gangs also have been identified through interviews with inmates at Orange County Jail and Juvenile Hall. But police are less certain about their membership, their gang members’ ages and the extent of their criminal behavior. Those gangs include the Saigon Cowboys, in Garden Grove and Santa Ana, and the Pink Nights.

Police Threatened

Recently, another group surfaced when it was revealed that Westminster’s Frank and Garden Grove police Officer Brian Kittinger, another specialist in Southeast Asian crime, had been named in a threatening flyer apparently being circulated within the county jail. The flyer, bearing the name of a group calling itself the OCJ Boys, is being investigated by three law-enforcement agencies.

The newly identified gangs, police say, often restrict their activities to specific areas and seem to specialize in particular crimes, such as car theft or robbery. Customarily, they prey only on other Southeast Asians, said Westminster Interim Police Chief Donald Saviers.

“You’ll see five or six cities getting hit two or three times, but then it slacks off for a while,” Saviers said. “Some rob and get just enough money to support them for a few days and then they become concerned about the police.”

Saviers said some crimes affect the entire community. “I think that in most areas, where you’ve got Vietnamese youth particularly, that particular crimes are going to be up, such as auto theft. But most of the other crime is ethnic on ethnic, Vietnamese on Vietnamese.”

Fullerton College student counselor Vy Do discussed the growing Vietnamese gang problem during a recent seminar at Westminster’s La Quinta High School for teachers and administrators.

Easy Prey for Recruiters

He pointed out that many young Vietnamese arrived in this country after losing one or both parents in war-torn areas of Southeast Asia and are easy prey for gang recruiters.

“Very few have parents here,” Do said. “If they don’t have the supervision, they wind up in limbo with nobody to foster education.”

For some reason, he said, even the upheaval of war apparently did not transform Southeast Asian youths into gun-carrying gang members as stresses in the United States seem to be doing.

But despite problems in school, Do said, young Southeast Asian immigrants are highly motivated to gain money, power and prestige in the United States.

According to police, the rise in gang activity is linked to an increase in the use of cocaine and other drugs in the Southeast Asian community. In recent months, as many as 20 Vietnamese gang members who were arrested had needle marks on their arms and were suspected of injecting cocaine.

Exposed to Drug Culture

“Many of them have been exposed to the drug culture by living in lower-income housing areas like Buena Clinton (in Garden Grove), although we haven’t seen them in great numbers yet,” Frank said.

Drug sales have long been a problem in the Buena Clinton area, according to police. Although the area traditionally has been predominantly Latino, the number of Southeast Asian residents has been increasing slowly.

Unlike Latino and black gangs, Vietnamese street gangs are not territorial and tend to be more mobile, according to law enforcement experts on gangs.

There are other differences as well.

“In the past, the Southeast Asian gang members were more tight-lipped than (Latino) and black gang members, which has made it more difficult, because we had to (have) an understanding of their language,” Gates said.

Officers Speak Vietnamese

In Orange County, the Garden Grove Police Department now has two patrol officers who can speak Vietnamese, and the Westminster Police Department has one.

The reasons underlying the emergence of Vietnamese gangs in Orange County are somewhat unclear.

But Tuong Duy Nguyen, director of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., a private agency based in Santa Ana that operates a gang-diversion program, points out that it does not necessarily follow that a higher percentage of Southeast Asian teen-agers are turning to crime.

The Vietnamese population in Orange County has increased tremendously in recent years, Nguyen said, and the cultural transition to American society has been overwhelmingly difficult for many Vietnamese.

“You have to realize that we have only been here in your country 13 years,” Nguyen said.

Victims of War

The parents of many Vietnamese children were victims of war or pirates in the Gulf of Thailand, he said. Consequently, the Southeast Asian community has a greater number of children growing up in single-parent homes, or living with uncles and guardians, Nguyen said.

“The single greatest strength we have, culturally speaking, is our family unit,” Nguyen said. “And for many of these kids, it simply isn’t there. They’re on their own, and, like us all, they want the same things. And that means getting money--by any means.”

Most gang-suppression experts agree that not enough is being done to combat the rising problem.

It is too easy, they say, for troubled Southeast Asian youths to fall in with the wrong crowd, joining others in a cycle of hopelessness.

Lure of Billiards

Billiard parlors and cafes proliferating in Little Saigon along Westminster and Garden Grove boulevards are like magnets, drawing hundreds of young Southeast Asians on Friday and Saturday nights.

On a recent night at Saigon Billiards in Garden Grove, Daniel Bui, 24, sat on a stool and spoke above the din of clacking billiard balls.

“Yes, I agree,” he said. “More must be done to help some of these younger Vietnamese get off the street. But what? They are very sophisticated. You can’t offer them traditionally American things like the Boy Scouts or have them play basketball.

“They need diversions like they had in Vietnam when they were children. Games of skill. That’s why they like playing billiards. It’s not like eight ball you Americans play. That’s too easy. But with billiards, you have to think ahead of where the ball is going to hit. That takes skill, and that’s why it’s attractive to them. It’s a challenge.”

Trap for Teen-Agers

Andrew Quy, coordinator for an anti-gang program in Westminster, sees the billiard parlors as an alluring trap for Southeast Asian teen-agers.

“They don’t stay at home and they end up going to billiard parlors seeking other Vietnamese youths with similar problems,” Quy said. “It increases their potential to get in trouble.”

Gates believes an “across-the-board” effort is needed to head off the rising Vietnamese gang problem--an effort that should include law enforcement, schools, city councils, Southeast Asian leaders and parents.

“It has to go beyond just the schools,” Gates said. “It has to go into the Vietnamese community and become a cooperative concern that includes police, probation and local groups and organizations. We have to get right into that home.”

Businesses Complain

Recently, Southeast Asian business and community leaders have begun to complain about growing criminal activity, especially among juveniles, along Bolsa Avenue in Little Saigon. Crime has become a critical issue to many Southeast Asian leaders, who are pushing to develop Little Saigon as a major tourist spot--Orange County’s equivalent of Chinatown in Los Angeles.

One aspect of the problem, community leaders say, is that many Southeast Asian immigrants don’t seem to understand the legal consequences of criminal conduct in this country.

The Westminster office of attorney Tien Van Doan has begun publishing a magazine in Vietnamese with information on the U.S. legal system, with emphasis on the juvenile justice system, said the attorney’s son, Thinh Doan.

“Many juveniles feel that they can get off easy,” said Khuong Dinh Nguyen, Tien Van Doan’s office administrator. “They’ve been told that the system here is very lenient. They spend a few nights in Juvenile Hall and then get released. But they have little understanding of the criminal justice system here, especially when more serious crimes are committed.”

Increased Vietnamese gang activity is causing ripples at some Orange County schools, police say.

Few Previous Problems

At Westminster High School, for example, there had been few racial or ethnic problems involving Southeast Asians until recently.

“Now all of a sudden we have some bad feelings at the high school with Southeast Asians and a Hispanic gang known as West 13th,” Frank said. “They did leave each other alone before and as long as they didn’t interfere with each other it was pretty much OK. Now there’s tension.”

There are workable solutions, said Gus Frias, coordinator for an Orange County Department of Education anti-gang program known as Operation Safe Schools.

Recently, Frias pleaded with educators at a gang-diversion seminar “not to deny a gang problem exists.”

“At an elementary school here we did have a (Latino) student who was caught with a .357-caliber handgun,” Frias said. “We’re getting calls from teachers who don’t know what to do about seeing kids as young as fourth grade wearing (gang) tattoos.

“The worst you can do is deny it’s happening. Denial is saying, ‘I ignore the problem.’ Hopefully, you think it will go away. It won’t. This is happening right here in Orange County.”