‘91 Seen as Year Gang Wars in County Took Turn for Worse : Crime: More youths start and end conflicts with firearms, and increasingly young members are turning up in areas previously free of bloody turf battles.

As 1991 draws to a close, law enforcement officials and gang experts say it will go down in the annals of county gang violence as a bloody year, one in which younger, more aggressive gang members routinely crossed turf lines and increasingly turned to firearms to settle disputes.

With a week to go before the end of the year, 28 known gang-related homicides have been recorded in the county, matching last year’s year-end total, the Orange County district attorney’s office said this week.

But more significantly, prosecutors expect to handle more than 3,000 cases of murder, attempted murder, assault, armed robbery and other violent crimes involving known gang members. That is up from 2,285 cases in 1990.

“There are definitely more gang members and more gang crimes,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Doug Woodsmall, who heads the prosecutor’s 3-year-old gang unit.

He added that he expects a record number of gang-related homicides, up to 30, before the New Year.

Gang violence “is on the rise,” he said.

Gangs, which officials say thrive in bad economic times, have spread to new communities, attracted younger recruits and claimed more victims this year in the county than ever before.

And even though the number of county gang killings remains far below Los Angeles County’s 700 total gang-related slayings, authorities say that gang-related violence here is growing at a frightening rate.

“It’s increased dramatically,” said Colleen Hodges, head of the Orange County Probation Department’s gang unit. “It’s continued on the upswing, and I don’t think it’s going to stop for quite a while.”

Just as alarmingly, Hodges said, in the past year she and other gang experts have noticed several “definite changes” in both the makeup and habits of gangs.

“None of them are for the better,” she said.

First, she said, the average age of gang members has been dropping steadily, with more elementary and junior high school students than ever arming themselves as they join local street gangs.

The use of firearms has become “the preferred method for initiating or settling a dispute,” Hodges added.

Gang members as young as 13 are being convicted of the most serious crimes, Hodges said, and are now regularly entering the department’s intensive supervision program--the administrative end of the line for the most hardened offenders.

In addition, she said, gang members are becoming more mobile. North County gang members are routinely found in faraway San Clemente; members of the San Juan Capistrano-based SJC Boys are turning up in Santa Ana and Stanton.

“They meet each other in Juvenile Hall and then party with each other” when they get out, Hodges said.

Lon Erickson, a gang investigator with the district attorney’s office, said mobility contributed to an all-time high in gang membership, with 12,000 known gang members belonging to 165 organized county street gangs.

Those gangs include Latinos, Asian-Americans, blacks and white skinheads, authorities said. They are found in central, urban areas such Santa Ana and Westminster, but they also increasingly are found in such once-immune communities as Mission Viejo and San Clemente.

Even the rising county numbers do not tell the whole story. The actual number of gang-related crimes may be much higher than those reported, officials said.

“There are others we suspect, of course,” Erickson said. “But nobody’s going to tell us.”

Gang prevention and probation workers said one of the major problems with fighting the increase in gangs is a persistent belief among county young people that gang membership is a romantic, adventurous way of life. For bored, lonely youngsters, especially those with splintered family lives, that can seem an attractive option.

That perception makes it nearly impossible to steer some children away from gangs, despite many anti-gang programs in the public and private sectors that have sprung up in recent years, experts said.

In Santa Ana, where half of the county’s gang killings occurred this year, the problem is most pronounced.

Many gang members come from that city’s poor barrios. Two and three families often live together, creating a stressful environment, and children are often insufficiently unsupervised, law enforcement officials and gang experts said.

With so many difficulties in some homes, peer pressure becomes almost insurmountable for some children living in areas where gangs are rampant, experts say.

“They feel they don’t have a choice,” Hodges said. “There’s a sense of belonging, a sense of identity” in a gang.

She recalled a chilling message that one jailed Santa Ana teen-ager recently wrote when asked to name his greatest fear.

“I’m afraid I’ll get shot and wounded and not die,” the 14-year-old boy wrote.

“What kind of fear is that, getting shot?” Hodges said. “It should be that he won’t have enough money to go to the prom.”

Others report that more and more elementary school pupils show a chilling bravado about gang life.

Donna Ortega, head of the Santa Ana Gang Prevention Unit, said younger children take their cues from older siblings, who brag about the crimes they commit. Almost all of the young children she counsels can name a dead or wounded relative.

And yet, some of the youngsters appear unfazed. Ortega recalled a recent day at Madison Elementary School in Santa Ana, when she encountered a 9-year-old boy, who was wearing an earring and sporting gang graffiti over most of his clothing.

“He was dressed like a little cholito’ ‘ (gang member), Ortega said. “He was bragging about his brother being in a gang. He thought it was cool.”

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Bill Scheer, who heads the department’s gang unit, said investigators identify and photograph up to 100 admitted new Latino gang members a week to put in their collection of “186” gang books, named after a state law that allows enhancement of penalties for convicted criminals who are members of organized gangs.

The books help detectives keep track of gang activity and solve gang-related crime. But those records are rarely enough to solve crimes. Even when officers believe that they know is responsible for drive-by shootings or an assault, they are often hampered by a strict code of silence, even among rival gang members.

“They would rather settle it on the streets,” he said.

Asian gangs are even harder to track and their crimes more difficult to solve, because they have fewer ties to turf, said Westminster police investigator Marcus Frank, an expert in Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian and Hmong gangs.

Their crime of choice is the home invasion, in which Asian gangs target other Asian-Americans, break into their homes, tie up the occupants and rob the family at gunpoint, seeking jewels, cash and other valuables.

In the past two weeks alone, there have been six home invasions reported in Westminster, Irvine and Orange, police said.

Frank said Asian gangs, once organized along ethnic lines, started to band together this year in order to build strength, promote recruitment and target non-Asian gangs.

“We’re starting to see more and more mixing, where they used to be split up,” Frank said.

The spread of gangs to once-quiet bedroom communities has also changed the look and character of county gang violence, injecting fear into neighborhoods where residents until recently felt far removed.

According to Sgt. Stan Jacquot of the county Sheriff’s Department gang unit, many cities in South County--including Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills and Dana Point--are seeing a rise in street gangs.

In those areas, many well-to-do teen-agers form gangs “out of boredom,” Jacquot said. They go to parties, drink, become belligerent and start fights. Some of the fights become serious, spurring further violence.

Ironically, South County gangs may also be growing because of families trying to flee the problem. When families pick up and leave North County to get away from gangs, their children often arrive in the new communities with more street knowledge than their new peers.

“They have tremendous credibility,” Jacquot said. “They teach (other kids) graffiti and hand signs. It’s romanticized, and it’s macho.”

With gang violence reaching new heights and infesting new communities, prevention has been spread perilously thin. Workers divide time between counseling older teen-agers who have gang experience and intervening early with elementary students, trying to reach as many as possible before they choose to join a gang.

“What we’re doing is right,” Hodges said. “We just don’t have the manpower.”