Sierra Town Tries to Stop Gangs Before They Start

Last October, 15-year-old Brad Whiteside was crossing through a park in this Eastern Sierra town when he was jumped by two other teens. He was beaten so severely that he lost vision in one eye for a week.

The boy’s mother, Susan Flaherty, was so outraged over the daytime attack that she organized a citizens group--Bishop Residents Against Gangs--to help fight a growing juvenile crime problem here.

At the group’s first meeting, an emotional, standing-room-only crowd of more than 300 packed the junior high school auditorium to hear law enforcement and school officials address the issue.

“We only expected 100 people, and that’s how many chairs we had set up, so we were surprised at the turnout,” Flaherty said. “People are frustrated and angry.”

This has been a relatively crime-free area where many people still leave their house and car doors unlocked. Residents generally have had to worry about nothing more serious than minor offenses such as malicious mischief or petty theft.

But in the past year, the sparsely populated Owens Valley has seen an upswing in more serious crimes by teenagers, including drug offenses and aggravated assaults. In one of the most disturbing incidents, termed a “wake-up call” by the Inyo County district attorney, a Bishop teenager was convicted last year of attaching a bomb to a cluster of 500-gallon propane tanks outside the high school.

The device was spotted by a school official and removed by Navy specialists from China Lake Naval Weapons Center before anyone was hurt, but the incident unsettled the community.

“There has been an increase in juvenile delinquency in the last year--truancy, thefts, fights--enough that it’s noticeable,” said Inyo County Sheriff Dan Lucas. “We see changes in our little community. It’s been kind of a safe haven, and nobody wants it to change.”

The rise in juvenile crime has been accompanied by a rash of graffiti around town and teenagers dressing in gang-style attire, fueling residents’ fears that street gangs are in the first stages of organizing here.

Some residents are convinced that gangs from Las Vegas, Reno and Southern California are trying to stake out turf and recruit local youths for drug sales and other activities. Gang members from Las Vegas were arrested here last year, and others are known to have visited the area.

“If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck,” Bishop police Officer Reg Sides told the community meeting in January.

But other people, including some in law enforcement, believe that no gangs are operating in the area. They say the crime increase signals nothing more than a high point in a normal cycle of teenage misconduct, and that those organizing to fight gangs are overreacting.

Many of those most concerned about the wave of juvenile offenses moved here from Southern California, where they said they saw once-peaceful areas turn into gang war zones.

“I think some of the graffiti is by people coming in and trying to set up territory to sell drugs,” said Tim Ford, a Bishop businessman who grew up in North Hollywood. “In the Santa Clarita Valley, I saw an element come in with a dress style and an attitude, and I saw it change. Now the gangs and crime there are unbelievable.

“I’ve seen it start to change here, and I said I’m just not moving any more. I’m going to do something about it.”

Sandy Holbrook, who heads the Bishop group’s “citizen patrol” committee, moved here from the Shadow Hills area of Sunland. “What’s happening here is not as severe as down there, but it’s just beginning,” she said. “If you nip it before it happens, then you don’t have it.”

The assistant principal at Bishop High School, Maggie Kingsbury, who worked in the Riverside school system before coming here, said that “I see an increase in the gang-style dress that gives me some concern. I think we’ve got to put preventive measures in, or we’re going to end up with issues of safety and concern about weapons that would be very similar.”

The anti-gang fervor has helped unleash a darker undercurrent of vigilantism and racism. Flaherty said she heard from some local residents with what she termed a “baseball-bat mentality” who wanted to run suspected gang members out of town themselves.

Sheriff Lucas also encountered that attitude. “I talked to several people after the . . . meeting who were asking me questions like, ‘How bad can we beat someone up when we make a citizens arrest,’ ” Lucas said. “Those types of questions to me are a little scary.”

Despite the uproar about gangs in the Owens Valley, some parents from surrounding communities still would rather send their children on long commutes to be educated in Inyo County.

Lone Pine High School Principal Donna Carson said that partly because of “white flight” and fear of gangs, parents of 20 students from Ridgecrest are sending them on a 154-mile-a-day round trip to attend high school in Lone Pine.