‘Gangsters’ Show Little Wanna-Bes Who’s Bad : Education: Two feuding groups at an Encino elementary school are scared straight by LAPD officers in disguise.

The two gangs were to meet at noon. The Thunderheads and the Snakes would square off on the playground, settling their scores once and for all. In preparation for the face-off, gang members scrawled their insignia on notebooks, daring the other side to mess with them.

But these weren’t ordinary gang members. They didn’t wear gang colors. They didn’t carry weapons. None was more than 5 feet tall.

They were two groups of fifth-graders at Lanai Road Elementary School in Encino--10 10-year-olds less than two weeks into the very earliest stages of imitating the walk and talk of hard-core gang members.

But Principal Ronald Ferrier, who caught wind of the rumble before it took place, was determined to stop the Snakes and Thunderheads before they got into any real trouble. Ferrier called a police gang-intervention unit to the school and they arrived in full gang attire, carrying a message they hoped would be too powerful to forget.

“I wanted to nip this thing in the bud,” Ferrier said Wednesday. “I knew we had to stop it. If they kept talking about this in junior high, it would be a different situation altogether.”

In a society where children of all ages and socioeconomic levels have access to gang images through music videos, television and movies, experts say, gang imitation among elementary school children is hardly rare. Many gang prevention programs target elementary school-age children, but Los Angeles police said they only recently began entering schools posing as gang members.

Dressed in high-top sneakers, baggy pants and dark sunglasses, Officers Tony Newsom and Michael Piceno of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Jeopardy program showed up at Lanai Road School Tuesday. As the two approached an outdoor lunch area, showing their attitude in their swaggers, a lunch table of unsuspecting Snakes and Thunderheads turned quickly into a group of wide-eyed and humbled fifth-graders.

“Who’s in a gang here? I heard there were some gang members here,” Newsom said, as the students sat perfectly still, mouths agape.

“Who are the leaders?” Piceno asked. “I want to talk to the leaders.”

“If you guys are from a gang,” Newsom said. “You better act like you’re from a gang. Are you prepared to fight us?”

“You’re too big,” one of the fifth-graders finally said.

“I’ve got my younger brother in the car,” Newsom replied. “Should I go get him?”

In less than 10 minutes of posturing, the officers seemed to persuade the 10-year-olds that playing gang was a dangerous game.

“We were just hanging out with our friends,” said 10-year-old Corey Emmert after the officers took off their costumes, Superman-style, and revealed their identities and their guns. “We just did it to hang out. It was all bluff.” Snakes leader Andy Mechammil said he was through with the gang game.

“I learned not to be in a gang,” Andy said. “It’s bad for you and you could die.”

Ferrier said the children reacted exactly as he hoped they would.

“I know all of these kids very well,” he said. “They think gangs are cool as long as they are at a distance. But when confronted face-to-face with what they thought were real gangsters, they were scared straight.”

Ferrier, who has been a principal for about 17 years in Los Angeles Unified School District schools, said experience has taught him that no child is immune to the influence of gangs. Children of all ages, from all neighborhoods, he said, have access to gang images in real life or on television.

Manuel Velasquez, who has worked as a crisis intervention worker for Community Youth Gang Services in the Valley for more than a decade, agreed. He said educators who don’t raise the issue with their students--no matter how young--are making a big mistake. “So many schools are in denial that there’s a problem on their campus,” he said. “I feel like John the Baptist saying, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming.’ There’s a war out there. We could win half of it by admitting and acknowledging that the problem exists.”

Velasquez, who through the private nonprofit group counsels children of all ages who are at-risk for or are already involved in gang activity, said he has seen 8-year-olds dressed like gangsters.

“Elementary school children are at the age that they’re looking for all kinds of heroes,” Velasquez said. “They see music videos and action movies and want to play them out. When I was a kid, we used to play Army. Times have changed. I’ve seen little kids on bikes playing out a drive-by shooting.”

Like Velasquez, Newsom said gang education is most effective with young children.

“The younger we catch them, the easier it is to stop them. Just like a fire.

“If these kids were allowed to continue, in another three months they would have been dressing in baggy pants. It’s part of the cycle. Just like domestic violence, you go from one step to the next. You don’t start off swinging.”

Marlene Mechammil, Andy’s mother, said Wednesday that she was shocked to learn that her son was the leader of the Snakes.

“‘Not my Andy, I thought.’ He’s not into that,” she said. “It scared the hell out of me. I didn’t think these things were happening at elementary schools.”

She said her son probably got involved with the Snakes--without really knowing what it meant to be in a gang--because he enjoys playing a leader.

“I really don’t believe it was as serious as a real gang, but I’m so glad it happened in elementary school and not high school,” she said. “I’m glad it got nipped when it did.”