Gangs Get Boost From New Blood

The messages that Juvenile Court official David Flores reads these days in the graffiti and gang slogans scrawled on East Los Angeles alleyways, homes and businesses are more disturbing than ever.

“I see new gang names showing up on the walls, and placas (logos) indicating that old, formerly quiet gangs are joining forces with younger groups and becoming active again,” said Flores, administrator of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court schools. “It’s very depressing.”

The trend is also seen in crime statistics showing that gang murders are on the rise in some communities east of the Los Angeles River.

In the unincorporated area of East Los Angeles, for example, gang murders rose from none in 1988 to 11 in 1989. Similarly, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division, which includes the community of Boyle Heights, reported 10 gang murders in 1988, compared with 20 in 1989.

“The sad thing about it is that many of the new groups are composed of very young boys, 10 to 14 years of age, who are trying to make a reputation for themselves,” Flores said. “I think we are entering a potentially violent period in East Los Angeles.”

There are no easy answers to the gang violence that has returned to East Los Angeles after two years of relative peace. But interviews with law enforcement officials, gang experts, concerned parents, educators and gang members suggest that old-line veteranos --imprisoned since police crackdowns in the late 1970s and early ‘80s--are returning to the streets as ex-convicts determined to revive gangs that had dwindled to a handful of members.

“The guys that come out of prison . . . have a reputation in the neighborhoods they came from,” said Fred Martinez of the California Youth Authority’s gang information services unit. “They also have the palabra (authoritative word) and influence.”

One of the best examples is the Geraghty Lomas gang. Its membership was gutted by drug overdoses, gang murders and heavy prison sentences, and only about 15 aging Geraghty Lomas veteranos were left to claim their hilltop City Terrace barrio.

As their power ebbed away, a new group of mostly nonviolent but raucous youngsters calling themselves Rockwood Stoners emerged in the area. These newcomers wore their hair long, listened to heavy-metal music and partied with people who did not respect neighborhood boundaries.

Disturbed by what they saw as a breakdown of the neighborhood and the gang codes they lived by, Geraghty Lomas began courting the younger Stoners, who numbered close to 100. In October, the gangs voted to merge into a new gang called Geraghty Lomas/Rockwood.

The new, more potent gang, authorities say, is now at war with many of its combined list of 49 enemy gangs.

“We got them up again, that’s what they wanted,” added another gang member, 16. “They (Geraghty Lomas veteranos ) gave us guns, and we started taking care of business.”

Geraghty Lomas/Rockwood is only one of a growing number of East Side gangs to have propped itself up in the past year with new recruits of Stoners and impressionable youths. Others include El Hoyo, Barrio Nuevo and even White Fence, one of the oldest Latino gangs in the city, authorities said. Separately, some groups of Stoners have cut their locks and traded in their heavy-metal garb for traditional cholo dress of oversize Pendleton shirts, khaki pants and short-cropped hair combed straight back with gel.

The fact is “they’re back to killing themselves for dirt (territorial boundaries), and that’s really sad,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Joe Guzman.

Only a mile northwest of the East Los Angeles sheriff’s station, Patrick Vasquez, 30, whose 20-year-old brother was killed in a gang fight a decade ago, lamented the fact that “they (gang members) don’t think about what the mothers, the wives and children are going through.

“Every morning I tie my shoes and wonder if I’ll be untying them at night or if the coroner will be untying them for me,” Vasquez said. “A lot of these kids think it is all fun and games.”

Still, the decline in gang murder rates in unincorporated East Los Angeles--the birthplace of Latino gangs--from 22 in 1980 to zero in 1988 led some gang experts to believe that gang warfare there was a thing of the past.

The decline, which was preceded by a concerted anti-gang effort involving local parents and churches, the Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, the California Youth Authority and the Community Youth Gang Services Project, prompted some agencies to switch funding and resources to other parts of the city that seemed to need them more.

A growing number of parents and teachers living and working in East Los Angeles neighborhoods that had been peaceful for years now want those resources back.

At Stevenson Junior High School, for example, Principal Edward Amarillas said at least 5% of the student body of 2,550 students is involved with an estimated seven gangs from the local area. “Two years ago, it was half that percentage,” Amarillas said.

Principals from six junior high schools in the area met at the school district’s regional headquarters in Boyle Heights to discuss the worsening problem of gangs and their growing influence on children. The principals discussed setting up new sports and other after-school activities for students.

A group of concerned parents called a news conference in November to demand that county officials strengthen existing gang prevention services in their area.

At the news conference held at Soledad Enrichment Action, a social services organization funded by Catholic Charities, the group of about 20 mothers also called for additional sheriff’s patrols and a return of Community Youth Gang Services Project workers who had been transferred to South-Central Los Angeles and other communities when gang violence east of downtown subsided.

“The killing has started again,” said Virginia Lopez, a spokeswoman for Concerned Parents of East Los Angeles, a group organized 15 years ago to raise money to bury victims of gang violence. “We don’t want any more suffering.”

“We want our gang services back,” added Rita Figueroa, who lost two sons in 1971 and 1973 to problems related to drugs and gangs. “I know what it takes to bury them, what it takes out of your life and how it hurts.”

BACKGROUND

In East Los Angeles, community leaders complain that the presence of gangs is often exaggerated by the news media. They estimate that less than 10% of area youths are active in gangs. Yet few deny the gangs’ existence and the pain and suffering they inflict when violence erupts. After two years of relative peace, gang violence has returned to unincorporated East Los Angeles. Parent groups and individuals are calling for the return of a concerted anti-gang effort.