Coronado Question: Does It Have a Gang Problem?

Coronado Island’s police chief, Jerry Boyd, has no doubt that there are dangerous forces at work on his orderly, tree-lined streets across the bay from San Diego. They are the Coronado White Boys, the island’s first gang, he says, and their message is “Crips, get out of town.”

Coronado parents aren’t so sure. Yes, some have begun hearing about a new club, the CWBs. And yes, it’s been hard to ignore the new teen-age fashion trend: white baseball caps worn askew. But don’t kids always dress funny?

Self-proclaimed CWBs, a bunch of skinny, skateboard-riding adolescents with a penchant for video games, say they are the victims of gang hysteria. They have no intention, they say, of doing harm to anyone, especially street gangs. They say they’re being harassed by the law, and recently they have won support from the local paper.

“Police Chief Jerry Boyd has taken what may have been a student’s private joke and made it into something terrifying,” an editorial proclaimed last week in the Coronado Journal. “Minors need to be protected from themselves and outside influences. Let us hope they do not need to be protected from the police.”

Local residents, many of whom settled on the 6 square miles of manicured lawns to escape big city problems, say the furor surrounding the White Boys is just not Coronado’s style. The exclusive community enjoys the lowest crime rate in San Diego county. Its phone book is

littered with retired admirals and colonels, and more of its high school students try out for water polo than for football. When school lets out on a sunny day, the fresh faces of local teen-agers look capable of nothing more ominous than under-tipping.

But Boyd says that, although most CWBs are law-abiding boys and girls looking for the social prestige of an in crowd, about eight members are out to protect their beach from outsiders--and to use force if necessary. Lately Boyd, a tough-talking veteran of the Los Angeles police force, has been warning parents that inner-city gangs may retaliate if they feel threatened by the CWBs.

“They’ll go looking for the ones who did them. If they can’t find them, they’ll go after anyone in a white baseball cap. Or worse yet, at noon, at lunchtime when there’s 150 kids out in the park, they’ll open fire,” Boyd told 45 parents who attended a home-school meeting Tuesday night. “People say that’s sensationalism, but it happens 2 1/2 miles from here every night of the week. It’s just a matter of geography.”

CWB members, who agreed to talk after school let out on Wednesday, said Boyd is grandstanding.

“We’re just a group of friends, not a gang,” said Jamie Johnson, an articulate 17-year-old who helped found the CWBs. “The first we heard of trying to reclaim the beach was what we read in the paper.” Instead of a negative influence, he said, the group has helped some of its members get off drugs. The CWB name, he said, was a joke, coined as an alternative to what other students called them: Grits, or cigarette-smokers.

“White is a neutral color, and we were trying to be neutral,” said Aaron Renshaw, a 15-year-old sophomore with a skateboard under his arm, who said the name was never intended to provoke minority gangs. “We have black kids and Mexicans in the group, too.”

The controversy began about a month ago, when Boyd says he first heard from his officers that the CWBs were mixing with the 16 out-of-town gangs--”bona fide, righteous gangs”--that frequent the sparkling waters of North Beach. Then, a few Saturdays ago, Boyd said, there was a “push-and-shove confrontation” between the CWBs and the Crips, a black street gang--a confrontation CWBs deny ever occurred. On several nights afterward, Boyd claims, police identified cars of Crips cruising the beaches.

“We’d ask, ‘Hey, there’s no party tonight. Why are you over here?’ They said, ‘We’re here looking for the white boys,’ ” Boyd said.

So Boyd wrote a letter to the paper cautioning residents to keep an eye out for gang activity. The Coronado School District responded with both barrels: a gang expert was brought in to address a joint faculty meeting of the middle and high schools; parents of “known” CWBs received phone calls from school administrators; the superintendent of schools sent a letter to parents warning that Coronado gang activity was in the “formative” stage.

Then came last week’s edition of the weekly newspaper, which suggested that Boyd was blowing things out of proportion.

In a letter to the editor, Suzanne K. Larsen, Aaron Renshaw’s mother, urged her neighbors to “dispel the myth” surrounding the CWBs. Writing on behalf of 12 CWBs, she made what many CWBs say is their first actual challenge: they invited the Coronado Police Department to a friendly game of Flag Football.

Boyd says that, in early November, about 15 of his officers have agreed to play, including at least one of three officers he has assigned to a street-gang enforcement unit. Around the same time, however, Boyd is scheduling a gang symposium for parents and students. In addition to photos of Crips, Bloods, B-Down Boys and other gangs, Boyd plans to exhibit a collection of weapons confiscated in Coronado and to invite a special guest: “a real gang member.”

“We’re going to open some eyes. We’ll have weapons on display. And I promise you, we didn’t go across the bridge, seize them and bring them back over here,” Boyd said.

Boyd says there are 50 CWBs, while the teen-agers put the number at less than 20.

Judging by attendance at the Tuesday parents’ meeting, the public debate has only made some parents more curious--and frightened.

“If I have spray paint on my garage in a symbol, should I be worried?” one woman asked Boyd after hearing about the placas , or graffiti symbols, that gangs often leave behind.

A concerned father wondered if it would help to publish identifying information about the CWBs in community watch newsletters. “Like when you go to Florida, (there are signs) that say, ‘This is an alligator. Don’t pet it.’ ”

And another parent asked if the free car-pool lane on the San Diego-Coronado Bay Toll Bridge was to blame for increased gang activity. “I’d go back to paying if it means keeping people like that out of here,” she said.

When the meeting adjourned, some parents joked to one another, “You walking out all by yourself? We should form a gang to walk to our cars!” But others seemed alarmed. Jan Iwashita, whose has sons in the fourth and seventh grades, said afterward, “Our first reaction was that it was just a bunch of Coronado kids getting together and having some fun. But now, you’ve got to kind of wonder who are these kids?”

The CWBs say they have an answer to that question. “We’re not the nerds. We’re not the bops, who follow all the trends. Categorizing us is difficult, because we’re all different--we’re just white boys,” said the only CWB member who has a car, who would not give his name.

“All of us intend to graduate, at least,” Matt Murphy, a 16-year-old sophomore, said. “God, I’m even going to homecoming,” which is this Saturday night at the Hotel del Coronado.

Boyd says he knows that some kids feel picked on. “What I’m hearing is ‘Coronado is a quiet, boring place, and the cops don’t have enough to do.’ Some people think we’ve made it up to increase our prestige. But we didn’t make it up. It’s real. It’s there.”

So far, Boyd concedes, there have been no seriously violent clashes between gangs. But he says eight CWBs have been arrested for possession of brass knuckles, billy clubs and pipes.

CWBs deny that any of their members have been arrested for carrying a weapon. Jamie said the only exchanges he’s had with visiting gangs have been friendly. “I’ve talked to them about us, and how the cops are giving us a bad name. They think it’s cool that we take care of each other,” he said.

On Tuesday, Boyd told parents that the few trouble-making CWBs are “not your average Coronado youngster who plays youth soccer. We’re accusing a small number of Coronado folks who don’t fit the mold. . . . I’m not sure our eight CWBs have what it takes to pull the trigger. But I know the other side does. Don’t have your head in the sand and think it can’t happen here.”

Meanwhile, the CWBs have responded to the outcry by taking off their white hats, and they are considering dropping their name.