Gang Life May Be Dying Away : Violent Culture Losing Luster for Next Generation

Orange County’s deadliest gang members may be dead or behind bars, but the violent culture that created them is far from gone. The real question is whether young people’s attitudes are changing.

Eddie, 18, and Sal, 20, grew up together, but joined different gangs. Now both attend Rancho Santiago College, and say they have put the old ways behind them. Their heads are shaved, their pants are baggy and the tattoos will stay for life, but something inside is changing.

Sal said he most recently had a gun pointed at him on a Saturday night outside his own front door. A car slowed, rolled down the window and flashed a gun barrel at him.

“They started talking nasty, talking stupid, about their little gang,” said Sal scornfully. He stood silently, not responding to their taunts and shouts of “Where you from?” They rolled up the window and drove away. Rather than jumping in a car and chasing them, Sal unlocked his door and went to bed.

“I used to be willing to die for a street, but not no more,” he said. “If someone attacked my family, my sister or brother, then they would pay, but that’s it.”

Eddie described in detail the drive-bys, muggings and other mayhem he says he committed up until about two years ago.

“It made me feel good, his pain, to hurt my enemy, to watch him go down,” said Eddie, describing how he pummeled a rival gang member three years ago. Now, he feels remorse--not because of the beating, but because he did it in front of his rival’s mother. He reminisces about his first gun, a .38 caliber that an older friend bought for him at a pawn shop for $130. He doesn’t know if any of the people he shot at died.

“I never looked back,” he says, laughing.

But he does regret the Friday evening armed robberies he used to commit outside a check cashing establishment.

“I used to mug [people] all the time,” he said. “Now I feel bad. Those people, I think they really needed the money.”

Now, Eddie said, he spends more time with his “party crew,” a group of close friends about his age whom police and parents “probably would think is a gang. But it’s not. All we do is party, kick back with the girls.”

Police say the parties can be violent, but do keep kids off the street.

Instead of plotting drive-bys and throwing hand-signs that signal gang affiliations, Eddie now scouts for good backyards for party space. Instead of tagging garages and lampposts with graffiti, he draws up fliers for parties, and makes arrangements for deliveries of beer kegs and sound systems. He attends community college during the day and works at the Boys Club in the evening.

Eddie remembers when he used to think “tonight’s a good night to die.”

Now, he is superstitious about even using the word “death.” He won’t go to friends’ funerals either.

Veteran gang members and police speak about a “new generation,” although they are only referring to teens a few years younger. Still, that next generation may not be as willing to sign on to a deadly form of entertainment.

Santa Ana Police Lt. Hugh Mooney said one factor in declining juvenile violence is the changing perception of gangs among the newest wave of teens reaching high school. The image of the gangbanger has lost some of its luster. The violent deaths of high-profile gangsta rappers, such as Tupac Shakur, and the toll taken in their own neighborhoods has chilled the attraction to gangs for many youngsters, Mooney said.

Gabriel Gutierrez, a sophomore at Century High School, has no intention of joining a gang, shaving his head or engaging in anything remotely connected to the “homeboy” way of life. He hates gangs, firsthand. His older brother, a longtime member of the Delhigh gang, calls several times a week from jail, where he is serving time for drug dealing, but Gutierrez will not speak to him.

“When I was small he was my big brother, my idol. I wanted to be just like him. I thought the gangs were totally cool.” Then his older brother stole his parents’ stereo, their TV, even Gabriel’s clothes, to sell for drugs. He tried to get Gabriel to smoke a hit of crack.

“I told him, ‘I’m the younger brother, I’m the one supposed to be getting in trouble. You’re the one supposed to be helping me out.’ He didn’t say nothing, just kept doing what he was doing, smoking crack.”

Still, Gabriel was almost “jumped in” to a gang, but he thought about his mother crying, about seeing his older brother stagger home with no shoes, beaten up, and changed his mind.

Gabriel said his large size has shielded him from gang threats, and landed him a spot on high school sports teams, although he hurt his back this year. He has no problems with police in his neighborhood, either.

“The police do what they have to--they have to arrest people if they have guns,” he said. Younger teens at the Santa Ana Boys and Girls Club echo his feelings. They’ve been approached once or twice about joining gangs, but said no. Even appearances are changing.

“Those bald heads are nasty, ugly!” said Roger Martinez, 13. “My mom would kick my butt if I did that.”

Still, all have heard gunshots on Minnie Street or Littlebrook. Most have peered out their bedroom windows at night and seen a body on the ground.

And there are kids like Enrique Pech, 13, a seventh-grader who saw his uncle shot in a drive-by when he was 10 years old.

“He was from the Lopers [gang],” the boy said in a barely audible voice. “He took me to the liquor store, to buy some chips and soda, and I heard shots. I saw his friends shooting at him.”

He found a phone and dialed 911. His uncle lived, but is paralyzed from the waist down.

“It was scary. I had nightmares . . . that if my brother joins the gang they might shoot him. He used to have baggy pants and a bald head. Now he dresses like normal people. My family told me, ‘Don’t talk about it, just ignore it.’ ”

In Santa Ana now, there is a sense of a world turned upside down and shaken badly for the last several years. There are tentative steps toward normalcy.

The Delhigh gang is largely behind bars, according to police. El Salvador Park has been emptied of the once powerful F-Troop gang through aging, incarceration and a breakup of the dominant leadership.

But soccer player Hector Candelas, 15, still goes there only if it is an exceptionally sunny day and plenty of people are already there.

“If there’s 50 people, you can just play and have fun. But if there’s like 10 people, no way,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. They gang up on you.”

The same sad dialogue still exists between “mad-dogging” gang members and frightened teens who are not members.

“Where you from?” the gangs will shout.

“Nowhere,” is the appropriate reply.