Pals in the Posse : Teen Culture Has Seized the Word as a Hip Name for Groups; Not All Are Harmless

Not quite boys in the hood, it’s more like boys in the halls.

You go to high school. And you and your friends have this little group. You’re tight. You have something in common--anything from sports to girls to parties and music. Maybe you work as a team to spray-paint your nicknames--your tags--around town.

They’re your boys. Your clique. Your tribe. Your crew. Your mob. Your pals. Your cronies.

Your posse.

Arsenio’s got one. So does Eddie Murphy. In the ever-evolving world of American youth culture, a growing number of teen-agers have formed informal fraternities as an alternative to gang membership--a sometimes confusing array of coteries based not on turf wars, crime and violence but on common interests and time spent together. From homies to homeroom.

But now, authorities say, many such cliques--especially the graffiti tagging groups--are resorting to the same gang-style violence that has polarized youths everywhere, from inner-city street corners to suburban shopping malls.

This week, as investigators probe the death of a 17-year-old student gunned down Monday by a fellow teen-ager on the Reseda High School campus, police are eyeing posse rivalry as a motive.

“These posses, crews, tribes--whatever you want to call them--they may have started out innocently enough but, in growing numbers, they’re starting to mimic the kind of stuff real gangs do,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Joe Guzman, a gang expert who lectures nationwide.

“It’s the way gangs are romanticized in our culture--from the newspapers to the movies--we’ve pulled them out of the gutter and given them status. A lot of these other kids can’t resist the attraction. They’re becoming gang wanna-bes, developing turf, drawing lines on the sidewalk, crossing each other out. The dynamics are changing at a rapid pace. And what happened at Reseda may well have been an offshoot of this.”

Added to the more than 100,000 gang members in Los Angeles County, Guzman said, are about 30,000 youths affiliated with a posse or crew. And the number is growing.

Of particular concern are the tagging crews. Begun as a form of individual expression--driven by ego to spread a tag on every bus stop, bridge and billboard--tagging has evolved into a group endeavor.

The tags are usually three-letter phrases--EWF for Every Woman’s Fantasy; TIK for Think I Care? and INF for Insane Family--hung around city streets like so much dirty laundry. In the frenzied battle of one-upsmanship to see who can unleash the most graffiti, losing taggers once abashedly removed their scrawl.

Recently, though, some have resorted to violence to protect their tags or to defend themselves from the challenges of more traditional gangs whose turf they have invaded.

“Now they end up starting turf wars,” Guzman said. “They’ve started shooting one another.”

But in youth culture, names are deceiving. A posse in inner-city Los Angeles may be something completely different from one in the San Fernando Valley.

In either case, some insist that a small number of troublemakers are giving posses a bad rap.

“The term posse means different things to different people,” said Chilton Alphonse, director of the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation in the Crenshaw district. “It’s just a word, man. If you and I go bowling on Wednesday nights, we’re a posse.

“There’s bad posses out looking for trouble and good ones who donate their time to fight gang violence. They’re just kids with a common thread. The Boy Scouts are a posse. So are the Girl Scouts.”

Many such groups, known as “party crews” or “housers,” are youths who organize underground parties and like to invent new dance steps. They come up with hip-sounding names for themselves, travel in groups, meet for pizza on weekends, make up T-shirt designs.

“For kids, the hip lexicon of the day is to call your friends your posse,” said Donna Gaines, whose book “Teenage Wasteland: Suburban’s Dead End Kids” explored a 1987 suicide pact among four New Jersey youths.

“It’s the influence of the street culture on kids who don’t necessarily want anything to do with the street. You know, suburban kids who listen to rap and hip-hop music think they’re Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Posses are the way kids seek recognition. It’s somewhere between hanging out and being in a real gang.”

Linguists say that the word posse has undergone urban evolution.

It comes from the Latin phrase posse comitatus , or, the power of the community, according to Edward Finegan, a linguistics professor at USC.

“It’s an old legal word, but it’s not uncommon for Americans to think of it only to describe that group of men in the old American West who jumped on their horses to help the sheriff round up a outlaw.

“And apparently, many young people have stretched the word further, shifting its meaning to define a group of vigilantes, or the outlaws themselves.”

In the 1970s, Jamaican gangs in New York called themselves posses. Soon, use of the word spread into popular music, rap, hip-hop.

“It was a dance hall term used in reggae that spread into the American hip-hop culture,” said Jonathan Vanmeter, editor of Vibe, a New York City-based street culture and music magazine. “Now rappers use the word a lot. Eddie Murphy calls his entourage his posse. It’s become a black American male thing.”

But posse also means more.

The word now is used in a line of clothing--Cross Colour Posse. And next month, Action Sports Magazine--a national sports magazine based in Laguna Beach--is running a story about the new breed of snowboarding posses.

“The word has sports applications as well,” said managing editor Sada Valov. “Snowboarders and skateboarders have posses, people they practice with. It’s a word in the limelight now.”

Posses surfaced as part of the investigation into the shooting death of Michael Shean Ensley at Reseda High School.

Ensley, who had recently transferred from nearby Taft High School in Woodland Hills, was apparently friends with members of KO, the Knock Out posse. School officials say there may have been tension between some Reseda High students and the KO--formed by Taft athletes, mostly football players, who worked out together in the school’s weight room.

Knock Out posse members said this week that their group is not based on violence, but rather is a fraternity of athletes. They said Ensley was not a member but had several friends in the group.

“We go to the movies together, and we play miniature golf on weekends,” said one youth. “That does not make us violent. That does not make us a gang. In fact, we resent the term.”

But LAPD homicide Detective Phil Quartararo, who is investigating the Ensley shooting, said that tensions had developed between the two schools that may have involved a pair of posses.

“We don’t know if these groups were involved,” he said. “Posses, crews--you call them anything you want. They’re gangs. And we’re taking a look at all of them.”

Meanwhile, as officials from both schools try to help students sort through their emotions about the shooting, posses seem here to stay.

“The water is muddy when it comes to these new groups of kids,” said Warren Mason, an administrative assistant at Taft High School. “We have students calling themselves posses and others tagging crews. Then the tagging crews change their names.

“It’s all very confusing. The kids might know what they’re talking about but most adults don’t.”