Schools Attack Attire in Move Against Gangs : Campus wear: Educators and parents alike support banning certain apparel, a first step toward curbing violent acts.

A box in the basement office of the Orange County Probation Department overflows with jackets, Los Angeles Kings and Raiders caps, crisp blue bandannas and canvas belts. Officers have confiscated the clothing, some marked with the monograms of dozens of Orange County gangs, from a growing number of youths in trouble with police.

In the past two years, the pile of clothing has grown with the increase in gang activity, largely in the central county communities of Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Westminster.

Aiming to stop gangs from gaining a foothold in their communities, the Tustin Unified School District last week banned gang-related attire, and the Orange Unified district will consider a similar restriction before school starts.

Even though certain jewelry, haircuts and clothing may signal nothing more than the current fad of youngsters seeking an identity, educators, parents and youth authorities believe that this trend is dangerous, disrupts education and may lead children into drugs or lawlessness.

“We want our campuses safe,” Tustin school board member Gloria Tuchman said. “We will not tolerate gang activity. Dress is the first step.”

Gang members do not differentiate between “wanna-bes” and gangsters, she said, adding that wearing gang-related attire turns students into potential victims of shakedowns or beatings at school.

Some gang members, whose parents are fleeing the inner city, move to such family-oriented communities as Rancho Santa Margarita or Laguna Hills, said Deputy Probation Officer Bill Collins, who has set up a gang-suppression team in South Orange County. “Now he becomes a big fish in a small pond. He starts appealing to younger, impressionable kids who maybe rented (the gang movie) ‘Colors’ a couple times and want to annoy their parents.”

Gang clothing can lead to gang attitudes and gang behavior, he said. “You’re walking and talking and acting like a duck. Pretty soon, you’re a duck.”

Parents, reporting that their children were being assaulted or intimidated by gang members on or near school campuses, spearheaded the Tustin ban adopted last Monday by a slim 3-2 majority.

According to the new policy, students are expected to wear clothing that is “clean, neat and appropriate.”

“Attire and grooming that is disruptive to the teaching/learning process, draws excessive attention to the individual or a group of individuals, or is potentially unsafe will not be tolerated,” it states.

Parents will be called to bring clothes or take offending students home to change.

Parent leaders at A.G. Currie Middle School in Tustin said that two types of gangs have affected the neighborhood over the past two years: one drawing from an influx of low-income residents and another from upper middle-class students in Irvine and North Tustin.

“When you have guys doing graffiti who call themselves Uzi and another name that directly challenges police like Copkiller, you know people don’t need that kind of stuff,” said Todd Ferguson, co-president of the Parent Teacher Organization and a junior high school science teacher in Yorba Linda.

After conferring with police, the parents succeeded in banning gang-related attire at the school last year.

“Wearing clothes doesn’t make them a gang member,” Ferguson said. “It’s the behavior that goes with the whole gang attitude. Once you display the gang attitude--anti-authority to parents, teachers and police--then you have the problem.”

Some students say the ban infringes on their freedom of expression. “I think a student should be able to wear whatever he wants,” said Albert Ewens, 15, a junior at Tustin High School, which instituted a dress code last year. “If he wants to wear gang things, he should be able to.”

In neighboring Santa Ana, where the school district has had a longstanding dress code, summer school students at Century High wonder if the bans work.

“If they take away the gang clothing, kids will just find some other way to show they’re in a gang,” said Suntara Sovan, 17.

But Raul Dorado, 15, voiced what seemed to be a minority opinion in favor of the bans:

“I think it’s a good idea because when you see someone with a red shirt or a Raiders cap, someone might come up and get in a fight with them. . . . Raiders stands for ‘Right after I die everyone runs scared.’ ”

While gang-related incidents are relatively few in the cities of Tustin and Orange, the fear of gangs and gang violence is real.

Two years ago, the typical crime of juveniles was auto theft. Now the largest percentage involves possession of weapons, with a full third of the 140 central county gang members on probation having shot someone or been shot themselves, said Coleene Hodges, head of the Probation Department’s Gang Violence Suppression Unit.

“Some of them were wearing the wrong clothing in the wrong location,” she noted.

Roger Duthoy, assistant superintendent for secondary education in Orange Unified, which will consider a dress code Aug. 15, said police told him there are 15 organized gangs, mostly inactive, in the city. Tustin Supt. David L. Andrews said police have identified 30 gang members in Tustin.

Most hard-core gang members in Orange County have dropped out of school or are in continuation schools, Hodges said. Nonetheless, schools feel the pressure of gangs.

The growing predicament of educators is being acknowledged by the state Legislature, which in the upcoming session will consider a spate of bills providing legal support for schools regarding gangs, violence and hate crimes on campus.

“Educators are concluding no area is safe from gangs in Southern California,” said Sheila Benecke, president of 4th District PTA, which covers Orange County. “They’re just invading and growing and spreading. Some are combative. Some are not. Nevertheless, there are gangs, and the potential is there for risky behavior.”

The local PTA has not taken a position, but Benecke said she supports limiting gang attire at schools.

Educators said more middle-class children, often unsupervised and seeking an identity, are attracted to the stylish dress of the gangs without realizing that it can bring danger to them and their campus.

Currently, “the gang color in Southern California more than anything else is black,” said Greg Bodenhamer, director of Back in Control, a parent-training program in Orange. Non-gang members who wear black may not even want to get involved with gangs but like the sense of power and control it offers, he said. “They like the tough, take-no-prisoners mentality.”

Some, said probation officer Hodges, wear gang attire hoping only to blend in and be left alone.

Rather than emulating the Crips and Bloods of Los Angeles as they tended to do several years ago, more are now copying the Mexican-American barrio gangs.

Girls particularly want to wear the eye makeup, the high bangs and even the accent of the girls who support young male gang members. “Many will start telling the other kids they are adopted, that their real mother was from Mexico.”

Youths are able to fool their parents because the pieces of gang clothing by themselves are innocuous--colored shoelaces, red or blue sweaters, caps, jackets and all-black sunglasses or bandannas. Ironically, according to probation officer Hodges, some gang attire is meticulous: every hair in place, pressed black pants and brilliant white T-shirts or high-buttoned Buffalo plaid shirts.

Hodges applauds the school districts’ rules and proposals:

“In the past, schools provided a safe environment. It was an easy thing to do. They said don’t smoke. They had earthquake drills.”

But times have changed. “You didn’t have kids making bombs on campus. Or bringing guns to chool.” One elementary school in Long Beach recently started drills on how to protect one’s self during drive-by shootings, she said.

Restricting campus attire is reasonable, she added. “Just as one gang member in a house exposes the whole household, one gang member in a school exposes the whole school.”

Times correspondent Shannon Sands contributed to this report.