cuchulainn
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There's an interesting quote from Jerry Brown in the final paragraph
from The Argus
http://www.theargusonline.com/Stories/0,1413,83~1971~1712821,00.html
from The Argus
http://www.theargusonline.com/Stories/0,1413,83~1971~1712821,00.html
Youths, abundance of guns make a deadly mixture
By Julia Reynolds and Dan Noyes - CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
(Note: Some names and nicknames of gang members have been changed.)
OAKLAND -- When Rogelio Higareda Solis left his girlfriend's home in the Fruitvale district, he inadvertently stepped into one of the Oakland's fiercest battlegrounds.
He never came back.
Higareda, a 25-year-old father-to-be, went outside to investigate a flurry of gunshots. He found a 17-year-old shot on the sidewalk and ran to his side. The boy had been shot in the hand. Higareda would not be so lucky.
The gunmen, whom police suspect were gang members, returned and opened fire. Higareda was hit and died on the street, caught in the crossfire of what is an increasingly violent trend in Northern California and across the country: the mixture of youth, gangs and an abundance of guns.
According to a recent report from the California Attorney General's office, "Gangs have spread from major urban areas in California to the suburbs and even to rural communities." At the same time, their access to guns seems unlimited.
This mixture of youth, gangs and guns is helping to fuel a rise in violent crime and bloodshed in Oakland and other communities. Gang-related homicides are rising drastically in California, increasing nearly 61 percent between 1999 and 2001, according to state Department of Justice figures. The gang violence tracks a general increase in homicides, both in Oakland and in the state.
This year, Oakland homicides are on target to more than double the 1999 total of 68, and approximately four out of five murders are committed with a gun. Though Latino gang activity accounted for some of these homicides, the vast majority of victims and suspects continue to be African American.
The number of murder suspects in Oakland 26 years old or younger has increased from 18 in 2001 to 28 during the first nine months of this year. Six of the suspects this year are younger than 18.
But Oakland is not alone among Northern California cities facing an upsurge of youth, gang and gun violence.
Trail to Salinas
The Higareda shooting grew out of turf wars between two rival gangs known as Norteos and Sureos. In this case, according to those familiar with the case and the school, the 17-year-old boy shot in the hand was caught up in a Norteo/Sureo rivalry and attended Oakland's Fremont High School. His shooting was most likely a retaliation for an incident the day before, police said.
Fremont High is known to have a growing Norteo-Sureo problem that is of large concern for police. Police say the conflict began escalating last spring and continued when school started in September.
There are currently more Norteos attending Fremont than Sureos, but since students can carry cell phones, one police officer said it is easy for a Sureno to call in other gang members "to back their play."
In the farming community of Salinas, 75 miles south of Oakland, the school bell marks the beginning of another battle in this ongoing gang warfare.
Every weekday around 3 p.m., the streets of Salinas awaken as masses of energetic school kids and weary field workers head home. It's the time of day when the police in this agricultural city of 140,000 begin to worry. They will stay on high alert well into the night because that is usually when the war between the Norteo and Sureo gangs plays itself out.
On one such afternoon, a reporter for this story witnesses Juan, 16, shoot at a Sureo driving down his street. The bullets hit the side of the car, but Juan doesn't think the occupant has been hurt.
"I wasn't trying to kill him, just scare him. That's how it happens around here," he relates matter-of-factly.
"These new guys, they come around here thinking they can take over, but naw, that ain't gonna happen. We just want to scare them, let them know this is our turf and they better get out before something worse happens," Juan says.
Asked where he got his gun, Juan says, "It ain't nothing. You can pick up a gun in like 10 minutes. Guns are like candy -- everyone has some and everyone wants more."
Last year, Oakland had a stunning 28 homicides for every 100,000 residents. But Salinas also had a staggering number of killings for a town of its size and makeup, with a murder rate of 14 per 100,000 residents -- double San Francisco's 7.8, and nearly equal to that of Los Angeles, with a murder rate of 15 per 100,000 population.
Salinas police say the majority of their 20 homicides last year were gang-related. Violent gang crime there is largely a result of a rivalry that dates back to the mid-1970s between Norteos, who tend to be acculturated Chicanos, and Sureos, who are often Mexican immigrants or urban Southern Californians. With North versus South gang factions doing battle in the streets every week, the violence faced by many young Latinos there has been likened to a civil war.
For Salinas police, going after the gangs means going after firearms, too. "Our goal is guns, first and foremost," says Officer Mark Lazzarini of the Salinas Police Department's Violence Suppression Unit, which grew out of a 1995 program to stem youth access to firearms. "We go after the gangs because they have the guns."
Popular models
In an investigation in Salinas last year of a gang gun battle that left an 8-year-old boy seriously wounded, police raided a house and found a cache of more than 10 weapons that included assault rifles, shotguns, handguns, a bulletproof vest and several hundred rounds of ammunition.
Officer Lazzarini says the residence was a "cold house," typically a place where a gang sympathizer lets gang members stash weapons and hold meetings without risking the random searches to which criminals on probation are subject. The house's occupant, Beth Pierce, 27, whose brother was a gang defector and was killed last year, eventually pled guilty to contributing to the delinquency of minors.
"Most of the guns were under her 2-year-old's bed," Lazzarini says.
While it's impossible to estimate the number of guns in circulation in Salinas, the government does track seized firearms that have been used in crimes to see whether any patterns emerge.
ATF's most recent report, covering crimes in the year 2000, shows young people's favorite guns are not "Saturday night specials." Semiautomatic pistols account for nearly 39 percent of crime guns. Shotguns and rifles, usually less regulated than handguns, are increasingly popular and account for 40 percent of the crime guns recovered in Salinas. Among the most popular is the North China Industries 7.62 SKS armor-piercing rifle, commonly called a Norinco SKS, which concerns police because they can penetrate bulletproof vests.
Unlike Salinas, the 2000 ATF report for Oakland shows some inexpensive "Saturday night specials" are popular youth-crime guns, and topping the list are handguns.
Oakland police recover more than 1,500 guns a year. Gun tracing can provide indications of trafficking and determine whether guns associated with crime are originating from a particular retailer, distributor or other source.
It was this sort of tracing that led to the 1997 breakup of the largest East Bay gun trafficking case ever, involving Sean Twomey, a one-time federal firearms license holder who sold more than 1,000 weapons, worth approximately $150,000 when he first purchased them, into the black market and the hands of Oakland and Bay Area youth and criminals.
Twomey specialized in Lorcin 9 mm and Intratec 9 mm handguns, two weapons prized by criminals for being inexpensive and powerful. Twomey trafficked in three of Oakland's six most popular youth-crime guns, according to ATF statistics.
Several murders and numerous other documented incidents of violence were com-mitted with Twomey guns, and more than 100 have been recovered at crime scenes. The case resulted in passage of the 2002 California Gun Trafficking Prevention Act. That law closed the legal loophole that Twomey exploited to buy hundreds of guns from two major distributors, because they were not required to check Twomey's fake firearms license with law enforcement.
Even though law enforcement shut down Twomey's source of illicit guns as long ago as 1997, and he is currently in federal prison until his expected release in 2004, hundreds of his guns are still in black market circulation.
The impact of Twomey's guns will linger long after his prison term ends, as Oakland police expect to see his guns showing up at crime scenes for years.
The Twomey case is unusual in Bay Area law enforcement. According to Oakland Police Lt. Rick Hart, local youth don't obtain guns from "one source dealer or location where they all go. If there were, we would address it. The guns are coming from numerous places ... there are so many guns available coming from so many different sources, it's hard to pin down."
Gangs deal guns
Recent investigations of California's violent prison gangs and interviews with gang members reveal their easy access to guns is improved considerably by organized gang trafficking in firearms.
One source that helps flood Salinas with firepower is the powerful prison gang Nuestra Familia, which has long held a strong base in that city
Paul Salcido, a Nuestra Familia member who was convicted of murder and attempted murder, testified in April 2001 before a San Francisco federal grand jury that Nuestra Familia members in Salinas were buying brand-new guns in the manufacturer's packaging.
Salcido testified that there were "a lot of individuals coming from Arizona that were purchasing guns from drug dealers down there. ... They would come to us and ask us, 'Do you want to buy any weapons?'"
In May 2001, Nuestra Familia "regiment commander" Armando Santa Cruz was in charge of arming a crew of young gang members who sold heroin in Salinas's old Chinatown.
According to FBI reports, Santa Cruz bought Norinco SKS rifles from Salinas resident Jerry Esteban, also known as "Shackles," who federal agents reported was part of the Sons of Samoa street gang.
To fulfill an order for his Nuestra Familia boss, Armando Santa Cruz obtained two SKS rifles from Esteban. The guns were to be delivered in the parking lot of a Rohnert Park restaurant in exchange for$1,000 cash.
Unfortunately for Santa Cruz, his Nuestra Familia boss was also working undercover for the government. The FBI had secretly videotaped the entire SKS delivery, and Santa Cruz was charged in both state and federal court for racketeering, gang activity, gun and drug trafficking, as well as a murder conspiracy case in Salinas.
Guns easily obtainable
Whether by organized trafficking or other means, guns are easy to come by in Oakland and Salinas.
"You want guns. Give me 200 bucks and I'll be back in 15 minutes," says GQ, a 23-year old Norteo gang member in Salinas who sells crystal methamphetamine for a living. GQ keeps a 9 mm handgun in his garage. His 20-year-old home-boy pulls out his own "nine" to show off. The homeboy points to a gunshot scar in the back of his head, right above his gang tattoo.
"Nines are something like two or three (hundred dollars)," says Jess, 16, a Salinas gang member who agrees that most kids here can get their hands on a gun in a matter of minutes. If they don't have the cash, they can always steal weapons from neighbors' homes. But among friends, guns are often passed around like a cool sweatshirt or a favorite record album.
"In the last three years, we have confiscated over 300 weapons off the streets," says Lt. Henry Yoneyama, head of the Salinas police force's VSU. "Out of those 300 weapons, we have not identified any one source, what they call straw purchasers or somebody dealing in handguns and being a major supplier," he says. "Someone breaks into a house and steals maybe two or three weapons, and then they show up on the street."
ATF reports indicate that many crime guns were originally purchased from local gun stores. Nearly 33 percent of crime guns recovered in Salinas were first purchased at gun dealers located 10 miles or less from Salinas. Among youth aged 18-24, all of the crime guns traced by ATF were bought in California, with 45 percent purchased in Monterey County. And among youth 17 and younger, 62 percent were bought in the county.
A report from the Oakland Gun Tracing Project on juvenile crime guns in 1998-99 disputes the idea that most crime guns are stolen from private homes.
It found that only 4 percent were reported lost or stolen. Most of the crime guns were bought initially in the Bay Area, and 37 percent of Bay Area crime guns were purchased first in San Leandro. More than half of the firearms traced to a specific dealer were first sold at San Leandro's Trader Sports.
Trader Sports is the second largest gun retailer in California and had the third most denied sales (sales where the buyer turned out to be someone who could not legally purchase the weapon) by a California retailer in 1999, according to a recent University of California, Davis, study on gun commerce.
As in Salinas, the ATF reports that most -- 75 percent -- of Oakland's crime guns first come from California federal firearms licensees and most of those from legal sales in Alameda County.
More than half of the crime guns recovered in Oakland in 2000 were first purchased at FFLs located 10 miles or less from Oakland. The ATF's conclusion: In Oakland, as in Salinas, a small number of federally licensed dealers gen-erate a large number of crime gun traces.
"They're (guns) too readily available and they switch hands too often," says Officer Lazzarini. Often, the crime gun itself never turns up and police have to turn to bullet analysis to follow the trail of weapons around town.
When Sureo gang member Miguel Rivera, 17, was arrested for homicide, police conducted ballistic "fingerprinting" tests on bullets used in the murder. By comparing the bullet's unique markings, investigators found that the same gun had been used in at least 14 other shootings. At least two were linked to Rivera, while someone else may have committed the other shootings.
Though Watsonville has a youthful and low-income Latino population comparable to Salinas, the city did not see a single murder in 2002 and has had only three so far this year, with only one involving a gun.
This rarity of deadly force in Watsonville could in part be due to the lack of easily available firearms in the community. Through July, only three of 127 aggravated assaults and eight of 45 robberies were committed with a firearm.
Watsonville has gangs, but if there's violence, it usually involves a sharpened screwdriver or a knife, says Watsonville Police Department crime statistics analyst Linda Peters. We really don't have that many guns.
Watsonville police statistics show a steady decline in the percentage of crimes committed with firearms. Between 1996 and 2002, the proportion of aggravated assaults using guns fell from 12 to 5 percent. The percentage of robberies with firearms fell from 22 percent to 16 percent. This decline came despite a 36 percent increase in gang-related crime during the same time period.
Center for Investigative Reporting reporters and researchers Justin Kane, Nada Bezhiz, George Sanchez, David Montero, Alison Pierce and Oriana Zill de Granados contributed to this report.
This report was produced in partnership with KQED's Bay Window documentary on gun trafficking "GunShots," which is being broadcast on KQED TV9 on Thursday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m.
Political leaders tend to take pragmatic approaches to their city's problems.
Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero says, "Our goal is not to wipe out gangs. That's not going to happen," she says. "Kids join gangs for a variety of reasons, for support, to belong to something. Our goal is to reduce the violence." Caballero admits that with recent budget cuts, local violence prevention programs have had to cut their staff and hours drastically.
"You can have a war on guns, like the war on drugs," suggests Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, whose proposals to put more police on the street have met stiff resistance. "But the results might be just as disappointing."
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