OUR GANGS

There are 100 known street gangs in Orange County, with recorded members totaling more than 7,000. Although they are predominantly in Santa Ana, Westminster and Garden Grove, gangs also exist in Fullerton, La Habra, Placentia, and as far south as San Juan Capistrano.

Each operates from a different power base. For example, Latino gangs’ power base is territory, its expansion or protection. Asian gangs are profit-oriented; their crimes are theft, robbery, larceny, extortion and car theft. They operate in business districts and major shopping centers. Profit is also the motive for black gangs.

This is not to say that the county’s gangs have an ethnic bias. “Orange County is an equal opportunity employer” when it comes to gangs, says Tom Wright, supervisor of the Gang Suppression Unit of the Orange County probation department. “Almost every gang is multiethnic, whites in black gangs, Asians in Latino gangs.”

Detective Mark Frank of the Westminster Police Department notes that Asian gangs don’t follow the same patterns as the Latino and black groups. The Asian gangs don’t wear tattoos or spray-paint their symbols, nor do they claim territory. They are mobile and mostly pay their visits to the Vietnamese business areas.

Lt. David Salazar of the Santa Ana Police Department says the city has about 60 street gangs, with 5,500 to 6,000 identified members. The crimes that have brought them to the attention of the police department include homicides, drive-by shootings, assaults, car theft, narcotics dealing and petty theft. Santa Ana has Latino, black, white and Asian gangs.

And, Salazar reports, even the gangs have their acolytes. “In the last few years it’s (gang membership) become somewhat of a fad,” says Salazar, “with a lot of wanna-bes imitating gang members in dress” and behavior.

Detective Rick Ritter says most gang members in the city of Fullerton, whether Latino, black or Asian, are locals and grew up together, attending the same schools, and that gang activity is more “like high school competitions, nothing like the scale of Santa Ana or Los Angeles.” Some are second-, third- or fourth-generation gang members, and most of them get along in their multiethnic neighborhood.

Their crimes are “beer runouts (running into a convenience market, picking up a six-pack and running out without paying), assaults,” according to Ritter, not drive-by shootings or gang fights. There are hard-core gang members as well as associate gang members.

Wright adds a new development in so-called “mutant” (a term Wright himself coined) or “hybrid” groups. These new gangs are “career crooks,” Wright says, profit-oriented, very aggressive or violent, and some members are 14 years old, younger than traditional gangs. A typical Latino gang, for example, has members between the ages of 17 and 22.

Mutant gangs seem to be a spontaneous spinoff, taking the best of the more established gangs--such as the colors from the black gangs (red and blue rags) and the idea of territory from the Latino gangs. “They are going very much against the grain of gang culture,” Wright says, and their methods have provoked confrontations with the established gangs.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S GANG UNIT ACTIVITY

The District Attorney’s Gang Unit has filed 792 cases against gang members.

ETHNIC BREAKDOWN OF CASES FILED AGAINST GANGS:

Group: %

Latino: 73

Blacks: 19

Asian: 3

White: 4

Out of County: 1

MAJOR CRIMES FILED:

Crime: Number

Homicide: 12

Attempted murder: 18

Assault with a deadly weapon: 71

Shooting into a residence: 10

Robbery: 51

56 preliminary hearings

12 Section 707 hearings (to determine if a minor should be tried as an adult)

15 gang search warrants

TRIALS COMPLETED:

Category: Number

Juvenile trials: 78

Jury trials: 10

Overall conviction rate in trials: 91%