The Growing Menace : Police Confront Slashed Budgets and a Shroud of Silence as They Try to Stem a Rising Tide of Extortion and Robberies.

IT WAS 6:30 ON A FRIDAY NIGHT, AND TWO TABLES of young Asian men were slurping up $50 worth of steaming pho , Vietnamese noodle soup, at a popular Chinatown eatery.

But when the checks were delivered, both tables refused to pay. Instead, two of the young men signed “Iron Dragon” on the check, followed by a pager number. And they informed the owner that they would return the next day to collect $3,000 from him and expected monthly payments of $700 thereafter.

The anxious owner told the shopping center manager, who contacted police. Eventually, during one of the group’s return trips, police arrested four adults and five teen-agers on charges of extortion and assault of a security officer they were accused of beating as he tried to get their vehicles’ license plate numbers.

Such arrests are rare in the Asian-American community, where authorities say Asian gangs extort tens of thousands of dollars monthly from fearful merchants unwilling to report the crime because they fear retribution and distrust police.

Though extortion is among the most common crimes committed by Asian gangs, they also routinely engage in armed robberies, particularly home-invasion attacks, and drug dealing. They almost always prey on fellow Asians, capitalizing on the cultural and language barriers that keep victims silent. And beneath this shroud, the number of Asian gang members is increasing.

“It’s growing by leaps and bounds because the Asian population in Los Angeles is growing. Every day I speak to someone and hear about another gang I’d never heard of,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Young, an expert on Asian gangs.

The conspiracy of silence between crime victims and gang members, coupled with government budget cuts, has hindered both law enforcement and Asian gang prevention efforts. Because authorities have been unable to pinpoint the extent of the Asian gang problem, government officials have devoted more money to fighting the larger and more visible black and Latino gang problems.

“Perhaps Asians should make some more noise” about the gang problem, said Young, who is one of only four deputies in the department of 7,000 who study and deal with Asian gangs. “If you don’t have officers or people tracking the Asian gangs . . . what’s going to happen? How are we doing to deal with the problem?”

More Asian gang specialists are needed because of the cultural complexities and the differences between Asian gangs and their black and Latino counterparts. Although the latter are often preoccupied by turf, Asian gangs are mostly motivated by money, authorities said.

Perhaps the most widespread crime among Asian gang members is extortion. Gang members call it “insurance” because they claim to fix broken windows, paint over graffiti and guard the business against troublemakers in return for monthly payments.

“Extortion is actually good for the Chinese community; if they pay us, they don’t have to pay (for) insurance (policies),” contends Joe Ung, 23, an ex-gang member now serving a four-year prison term for extortion and burglary. “In this country, (people) don’t understand that.”

As Ung tells it, the gang first contacts a merchant to ask for a donation, to help the gang “keep the area safe.” The merchant doesn’t have to pay, but if he chooses not to, the gang “can’t help him if something does happen” to his business, says Ung, a 12-year veteran of an Indochinese gang.

But George Yu scoffs at the idea that gang members provide services. Yu, property manager of Far East Plaza shopping mall in Chinatown, said he hears plenty of rumors among merchants about extortion, but few mention any work in return.

He did recall one instance of a shopkeeper who paid a young window washer $25 a month. Yu said he asked the shopkeeper why he kept the youth “when he wasn’t even doing a good job.”

“I have to,” the merchant said with a shrug. “When I first said no, my windows were broken.”

But “the little punks . . . don’t even want to wash windows,” Yu said. They simply use threats of injury or damage to the business to force merchants to pay, Yu said. “With this type of young kid, they really feel they’re invincible. These guys have no respect.”

The brazen gangs also invade the homes of Asian families. Armed with weapons such as AK-47-type assault rifles and 9-millimeter pistols, the thugs tie up and brutalize a family for hours--often raping the women and beating the men--before escaping with large amounts of money, jewelry and other valuables. Some Asians tend to keep such items at home out of fear that banks will fail, as has happened in their native lands.

Business owners are often targets of home-invasion robberies. Gangs pay a low-level restaurant or nightclub employee a commission of sorts to provide information about where the boss lives, how much cash he or she carries and other intelligence, according to one gang member. Such information helped the 19-year-old and some friends pull off one robbery that netted $40,000 in cash.

“You have to call them urban terrorists,” said Long Nguyen, an officer in the Police Department’s Asian Crime Investigation unit.

Law enforcement officials say Asian gangs fall into three categories: the street gangs of mostly teen-agers who commit small-time robberies and burglaries, the organized crime gangs with members in their 20s and 30s who engage in most of the extortion and other more serious crimes, and the crime organizations based in Asia with worldwide networks in drug and weapons trafficking, alien smuggling and extortion.

Although rivalries exist, gangs of different categories often work together. The international associations, especially, have taken to hiring teen-age street gangs to carry out their crimes. This way, the international groups avoid detection and keep their mostly adult membership out of prison, law enforcement experts say.

Yet secrecy about Asian gang activities persists because the Asians often deny the problem exists, gang experts say.

“The gang issue, it’s pretty much in the closet in the Asian community,” said Larry Lue, counseling director at the Chinatown Service Center.

Los Angeles police detectives say Chinatown merchants have been victims of extortion and robbery for years, but many do not trust police. That distrust often stems from experience in their native countries, where police bribery and brutality are common.

Merchants also fear retaliation from gang members. For example, since the arrests in the Vietnamese restaurateur’s case, the owner has received threatening phone calls on a weekly basis.

“We’ve got some 40 members,” the anonymous callers hiss. Or, “The nine are getting out of jail and they are going to come in and thank you personally.”

As a result, the restaurant owner is leery about testifying against the gang members when court proceedings begin in the next few weeks.

Also accustomed to rampant extortion in their native countries, some shopkeepers view this crime as simply an annoyance that comes with owning a business. “The attitude is, ‘Just give them some money so they’ll leave us alone,’ ” said Far East manager Yu.

Asian community members such as Yu, Lue and the Chinatown Public Safety Assn. understand the fear, but try to persuade merchants to speak up and trust the justice system. More Asian faces on local police forces would help, these leaders say. Only 3% of the Police Department’s 7,000-member force is Asian.

Besides being protected by victims’ silence, Asian gang members have been hard to identify and track because they are highly mobile, traveling from city to city to commit crimes, and generally do not flaunt their affiliation through turf pride or clothing styles, experts say. But this is changing.

Some of the new Asian street gangs, particularly those with Southeast Asian and Filipino members, have begun to mimic their Latino and black counterparts by dressing in loose-fitting pants and long T-shirts, wearing certain colors and marking buildings with graffiti.

For instance, one gang of Cambodian and Chinese teen-agers have declared themselves to be the Asian “Bloods” and often don red bandannas, adopting the color of the prominent black gang. Their tags are scrawled on walls and freeway overpasses throughout Chinatown.

“It’s fashionable to wear gang attire now. It’s a sign of the times,” said Nguyen.

Still, most Asian gang members, particularly those in the more organized, sophisticated groups, do not readily admit their association, experts say.

“Many go to school, go to college . . . they can be very clean-cut,” said Dan Guzman, a gang-awareness specialist with Community Youth Gang Services. “One gal was even a model. Many do it for a time. They just need money for a fancy car or clothes.”

Because tracking these gangs is so difficult, authorities are uncertain about the numbers and affiliations of Asian gang members.

The Police Department estimates there are 34 Asian gangs in the city with a total of 2,282 members. Countywide, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department estimates there are about 120 Asian gangs, with 5,000 to 25,000 members. But a state Department of Justice report released earlier this year estimated the total number of Asian gang members statewide was only about 15,000. The report also estimated there are about 160,000 Latino and black members statewide.

Without firm data on the extent of the Asian gang problem, law enforcement and community leaders say they cannot persuade decision makers to spend more money on Asian police officers and gang-prevention programs. Asian-American community leaders say public entities also still view Asians as the “model minority,” mistakenly believing Asians don’t have social problems that warrant funding.

Although Asians are the third-largest minority group in the county, there are no gang-prevention and diversion programs in the Asian community. There are no job programs that target Asian gang members. Only an occasional lecture or seminar is conducted to help parents and teachers identify and deal with Asian gang members.

Budget cuts have already forced the reduction or elimination of law enforcement programs that deal with Asian gangs. Of the four Asian gang experts in the Sheriff’s Department, Young is the only Asian. The six Asian gang officers in the county Probation Department shoulder caseloads that take them from Long Beach to the San Fernando Valley.

Meanwhile, other traditional gang-prevention programs, like Guzman’s Community Youth Gang Services, have not reached out to Asians because of lack of money to hire experts.

Yet gang experts agree most Asian youths get involved with gangs for the same basic reasons their Latino and black counterparts do: to belong, be protected and feel important.

Community workers say generation gaps between Asian parents and their children are also to blame. Immigrant parents, they say, tend to put too much emphasis on success in school and are typically too busy working 15 hours a day to pay attention to their children’s feelings. Asian immigrant parents tend to be overly authoritative, sometimes beating children for failing to get straight-A report cards or giving up on them when they fail to meet parents’ high expectations, Asian workers say.

Ung, the eighth of 11 children, said he might not have ventured into gang life “if my family spent more time with me.” He said his parents, who fled Vietnam in the late 1970s, were too busy making ends meet to pay much attention to their large brood.

“We ran left and right . . . fighting, shooting marbles at neighbors’ houses,” said Ung in a jailhouse interview. His older brother also joined a gang and served prison time for manslaughter before starting a new life as a business and family man in another state.

Ung, whose girlfriend is due to give birth in November, said he, too, looks forward to being a family man when he leaves prison. “I’ll keep my kids away from following my footsteps,” he said.

Because most older gang members like Ung are behind bars or involved in more serious crime, there are few gang “veterans” available to talk younger members out of the lifestyle.

And even those trying to straighten up are ambivalent about helping others.

“When they get older, they’ll find out on their own,” said Temper, 19, a Korean-American member of a gang whose Korean, Filipino and Latino members live in Koreatown, Pico-Union and Echo Park. “Even if I talk to them, it won’t go in their head. It’s like me talking to a tree.”

Gang experts also say job programs that have helped with some Latino and black gang members don’t work with Asian gang members because of the high volumes of money they are used to making quickly through sophisticated crimes. “If a guy’s making $2,000 a month extorting money, how are you gonna replace that . . . with chump change from McDonald’s?” Guzman asked rhetorically.

So the tactic some community workers have taken in dealing with Asian gang members is to simply win gang members’ trust through constant support and badger them with a loving touch.

The county’s six Asian probation officers are leaders in the effort. They perform a juggling act, acting as a law enforcement officer, counselor, parent and friend all rolled into one. They mix home and school visits with daily telephone calls and even nighttime cruises through gang neighborhoods to keep a high profile.

Sung Oh, the unit’s Korean-speaking officer, takes his juvenile probationers out for hamburgers, persuades them to go to church and makes them cut their long hair. A gravelly voiced, energetic father of two daughters, Oh even keeps a set of Lego toys in his office to entertain juvenile probationers during their office visits.

“I give them toys. They are 14, 15 years old,” Oh said. “They’re still babies.”

The probation officers strive to instill self-respect and ethnic pride in the gang members assigned to them, said Ernie Takemoto, another Asian probation officer.

Probation officers regularly send gang members to the Korean Youth & Community Center and the Chinatown Service Center, two agencies in the Asian community that target troubled youths. Working with nearby Castelar Elementary School, the Chinatown Service Center also conducts seminars to teach parents how to recognize gang involvement and improve parenting skills.

In these efforts, the success stories are few, the failures many.

Said Takemoto: “We assume we were successful if we don’t hear about the kid again.”