Early Action Needed to Pull Girls From Gangs

Whether gang members are white, Vietnamese, black, Latino or of any other ethnic group, they are almost exclusively males in their teens and 20s. Young women, for the most part, associate only through their boyfriends.

This makes even more alarming a news report last week about Orange County’s growing Asian gang problem--groups of rival teen-age girls fighting with knives and arming themselves with semiautomatic weapons.

Police say there are at least six such gangs, a fraction of the number of male Asian gangs in Orange County, where gang activity is a serious criminal problem. The female gangs, which are allied with male gangs, are also small; most have only 10 to 20 members, while the male Asian gangs are much larger. All told, police estimate Asian male gang members and associates at several thousand. Female gang members, ranging in age from 13 to 20, tend to be younger than their male counterparts.

But though younger and fewer in number, they are dangerous. Five Vietnamese female gang members were stabbed in a free-for-all earlier this month in Centennial Park in Santa Ana. Others have carried weapons or otherwise been involved in crimes being carried out by male gang members, including home invasions that have turned violent.

While, of course, there have always been female criminals, the existence of Vietnamese female gangs is particularly shocking to the community. As Long C. Le, a Vietnamese-born Fountain Valley High School teacher, said: “Traditionally, Asian girls are supposed to be shy or demure. There was no such thing in Vietnam as a girl gang.”

These girls, of course, do not live in Vietnam. They live in the United States, where family life is much less structured. Some were born in Vietnam, and others are American-born children of immigrants. Some of the girls live in families fractured by the Vietnam War or its uneasy aftermath. Others have lived in refugee camps, where structured family life was nearly impossible. Some of the girls are runaways--a nearly unforgivable offense in Vietnam. Many of the girls are not so much rebellious as they are filled with despair.

Some parents are responding, learning to watch for gang identification marks and other signs that their daughters are aligned with gangs. Police have offered--and asked for--help to try to steer these girls back into the mainstream before it is too late. Schools also are trying to help. Westminster High School took a good first step last week by hosting an evening program for Vietnamese-American parents. About 30 parents came to hear police and school officials, youth counselors, job-training experts and community leaders discuss, in Vietnamese, problems in their community and where to go for help for troubled teens.

Le said the Vietnamese have a saying that roughly translates: “If you start by stealing an egg, pretty soon you will steal a cow.” Perhaps if they are gotten to early enough, these girls can be helped from turning their smaller mistakes into larger ones.