Suburban Wanna-Be Gang Gets Attention of Authorities : Behavior: Police say the Gumbys, the group allegedly ‘claimed’ by one of five friends held in slaying, generally stick to smaller crimes.

From Mike McLoren’s recounting to police of the swirl of flying fists, knife blades and words exchanged that May night, one question stands out.

“What are you starting . . . with Gumbys, ese ?”

When McLoren told police that Micah Holland had “claimed” Gumbys that evening, it opened a whole new set of questions.

Were the five friends accused of killing 16-year-old Jimmy Farris part of a gang or merely a clique?

Gumbys, a suburban wanna-be gang, first caught the attention of police about two years ago. They believe the gang is a loose affiliation of teen-agers and some young men in their early 20s. The Gumbys, they believe, probably began in North Hollywood and have spread up the Ventura Freeway. Police have found the gang’s graffiti as far north as Westlake High School, Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel Hawes said.

Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Semow declines to comment on what role, if any, the possible gang affiliation might have in the case. But at least one defense attorney has subpoenaed police records tracking the Gumbys.

Speaking generally about the group, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Berg said Gumbys are a multiracial mix of kids from affluent and poor families.

How the group came to choose a name based on Art Clokey’s 1950s friendly little animation creation is a mystery to police.

“Pretty weak, huh?” Berg said. “Like you’d want to be known as that.”

Like other suburban wanna-be gangs, Gumbys are not very likely to be particularly attached to--or proud of--their gang, said Berg, with the juvenile intervention unit at the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station.

“None of these kids are willing to really stand up and claim a gang,” Berg said. “Out here it is a little different. Most [urban] gang members usually are pretty upfront and they’ll claim a gang.”

While Gumbys generally stick to stealing and tagging the cars of rival gangs, police said the group has lately strayed into far more serious territory.

John Thayer, public information officer for the Santa Barbara Police Department, says two Conejo Valley suspects arrested in the attempted murder in August of a 25-year-old Santa Barbara man were both affiliated with Gumbys.

Sociologist Daniel Monti, an associate professor at Boston University and the author of the 1994 book “Wanna-Bes: Gangs in Suburbs and Schools,” said descriptions of the Gumbys fit the pattern of behavior he has studied in wanna-be suburban gangs.

Suburban gang activity usually remains limited to smaller crimes, but can escalate into more dangerous territory, Monti said.

“These gangs represent a very interesting hybrid of suburban unseriousness and inner-city seriousness,” Monti said.

Monti said it is quite possible some of the boys accused of killing Farris could have been gang members while others were not. In suburban gangs, he said, members often hang out with kids who haven’t committed to the gang yet.

“They are trying on their gang role, seeing how comfortable they are with it,” Monti said.

The types of kids who participate in suburban gangs--youths who do well in school, who don’t seem prone to trouble--can be shocking to parents, Monti said. While he was researching his book, Monti said, he noticed startling resemblances between his own 15- and 18-year-old children and the gang members he had been interviewing.

“There wasn’t a night when I didn’t come home and see something in my own kids of the kids I had been talking to,” Monti said.

But perspectives blur between generations.

“How much of a gang can you be in Agoura?” scoffed one teen-ager who knows all the defendants.

The former girlfriend of one of the boys agrees.

“I don’t consider them a gang,” she said. “It’s more or less a family. They look out for each other.”

Whether the Gumbys had anything to do with his son’s death matters little to Jim Farris.

“The impression I get is that they were just a bunch of kids that banded themselves together as a wanna-be gang,” Farris said. “But how do you define a gang?”

“Call ‘em whatever you want, a gang or a bunch of bad boys,” he added wearily.