Gangsters Go for a Look That Blends In

These days gang members don’t always look like thugs.

Taking advice from older criminals--some imprisoned, some retired but consulting, some still active--many hard-core gang members have traded their outfits for a more conservative look, a look police say enables them to expand into white-collar crimes without the early warning the old costume set off.

You may still have the classic Hollywood vision of a gang member: Baggy pants. Bandannas. Tattoos in full view.

But now a more conventionally dressed breed of gang member is emerging throughout Los Angeles. Some wear dress shirts and slacks, the better to blend in. And though not adopted by all gangs, the new look is proving to be a headache for law enforcement agencies as they try to keep track of the estimated 130,000 gang members in the county.

“It used to be we drive down the street and spot the gang members,” says Lt. Gary Nanson, head of the Los Angeles Police Department Valley Bureau’s Special Enforcement Unit. “Now they’re less visible. You can’t tell who the bad guys are.”

Nanson and other investigators say the wardrobe change is linked to a recent move by gangs toward more sophisticated felonies, such as identify theft and credit card fraud.

“As far as credit card fraud, that is something we are finding more and more,” said FBI Special Agent Steve Gomez, adding that even major Crip gangs--East Coast, Hoova, Rollin’ 60s, Fo-Tray, Main Street, Eight Tray Gangsters--are involved.

A major fraud investigation is underway into one of those Crip sets. LAPD detectives said the case is so big that it was transferred to the financial crimes squad downtown.

“It’s incredible,” says James DeSarno, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles. “They’re not supposed to be doing that. They’re supposed to be on the corner selling drugs.”

It’s dinner time in Chinatown and LAPD gang expert Officer Jerry Velasquez is having a meal at the popular Ocean Seafood. He’s irked to see gang members there savoring shrimp and lobster.

“This one guy was in a suit and he was reaching and his gang tattoo slipped out from his collar,” Velasquez says. “But most people wouldn’t know. You can be sitting at a nice restaurant and there’s guys at the next table with suits and ties and they look like businessmen. But they’re killers.”

“Everyone’s going ‘low pro,’ ” says Gabriel Velasquez, a former member of Blythe Street, a Panorama City gang. “You got a lot of homies just be wearing regular clothes. Baggy pants is out of style now. Man, that was like letting the police know.”

Not only do the police not know, neither does much of the public.

“People are always telling me they don’t see as many gang members as they used to,” says Nanson, who often addresses town hall meetings on gang awareness. “I tell them not to get a false sense of security. You actually need to be more cautious than before. They’re just changing their look.”

The police believe another reason for the wardrobe change is California’s gang enhancement law, which adds years to prison sentences for crimes linked to gang membership.

In recent years, that baggy look has caught on with young people of all classes, most of whom aren’t affiliated with any criminal gang. Even major clothing companies, such as Levi Strauss, have introduced lines of baggy jeans.

As a brilliant sunset bows out, a big teenager in a blazing red Jevon Kearse football jersey struts along Chase Street in Panorama City. If you’re profiling is out of date, this 16-year-old could be a poster boy for gang membership. Confident walk, black baggies, scarf almost completely covering his head and face. If he walked into a bank, they’d dive for cover.

But Robert Gudiel, walking home from his part-time job, is not a gang member. He just likes to dress this way.

“The police, they gotta update,” Gudiel says. “They think I’m a gang member but the gangsters aren’t dressing like this anymore. The police always stopping me and my friends. It kind of gets on your nerves after a while.”

A few blocks away and a few hours later, on Willis Avenue, a stronghold of the Blythe Street gang, though there are lot of guys who look like the gang members of yesterday, none is. At least none claims to be.

Finally, three Blythe Street gang members pedal by on bikes. They swarm around a pretty young girl, then ride on.

Their hair is cut neat but not short, their pants and shirts fit well. They admit they are gangbangers but refuse to give their real names or street names because, as one puts it, “That be admitting, and with the new [gang enchantment law] thing, that be stupid.”

“The old look, it was cool for a while, but now you gotta go low pro,” says one of the teenagers who used to wear the clownishly sagging trousers that topped out at the lower buttocks and revealed underwear.

The popularity of the old gangster look can get an innocent killed. On May 5, Javier Hernandez was washing and waxing his cherished Chevy Suburban at his parents’ home near Culver City.

He was wearing baggy shorts, had a shaved head and tattoos. He was not a gang member. In his 24 years, the only blemish on his record was one traffic ticket. But his look may have gotten him killed.

“Somebody may have thought he was a gang member,” said Det. Mike DePasquale, homicide coordinator at LAPD’s Pacific Division. “That’s the only clue we have right now, the way he was dressed.”

In part, the trend away from looking like a stereotypical gang member grows from prison and jailhouse wisdom, since inmates have plenty of time to figure out what went wrong.

“There a lot of gangsters dressing casually, like Miller’s Outpost, like those malls, like, you know, like in long-sleeve dress shirts,” says Fabian “Trigger” Nava, 34, a heavily tattooed former member of the Columbia Li’l Cycos clique of 18th Street.

He spoke by phone from the Wayside jail in Castaic, where he is trying to appeal a recent murder conviction. “Plus, everybody’s shaving their head nowadays. You can’t tell who’s who.”

Warned Lt. Nanson: “You’re walking through the mall parking lot and you see some guys that look like gang members. Even if they’re not, you avoid them,” Lt. Nanson says. “Then you might walk right close past some nicely dressed guys and they might whisper ‘Give up the Lexus.’ ”