November 6, 2007

If you don’t believe that there active gang members in Clarksville, finding proof is as easy as logging on to MySpace.com.

Agent Jay Skidmore of the Clarksville Police Department Gang Unit said you can go on the social networking site, browse through users using a Clarksville zip code and come up with several thousand hits – the gang members will be obvious because you’ll notice gang colors.

“If you go through their friends, you’ll see they are friends with gang members all across the country,” Skidmore said.

The social networking site is one major way that gang members recruit juveniles to join up and do their dirty work – and they may be eyeing your child as a possible member.

When a boy or a man decides to join, there will be several obvious signs that they have done so – unexplained bruises or wounds on their body.
Upon joining, to get into the gang, the person will go through an initiation called a “beat in.”

For one such gang in Clarksville, the Gangster Disciples, the gang members will say joining is as easy as picking up a nickel and a penny off the ground that they drop. (The nickel and penny symbolize the gang’s favorable number, six.)
When the person leans down to pick them up, the gang members kick them in the ribs and beat them down.

Another way into a gang, Skidmore said, is by being blessed in, meaning the person has a family connection to another member and they are allowed in.

Female members can choose to be beat-in, which Skidmore said earns them more respect, or they are sexed in – the members roll a dice and whatever number it lands on, that’s how many of the members the gang she will have to have sex with in a row.

“The hardcore members prefer the beat-in,” Skidmore said.
Members will also recruit anywhere where young people are left alone, such as the mall or movie theatres where parents drop their kids off.

Gang members prefer to recruit young people, mostly with clean records to avoid suspicion, to commit crimes for them.

“The youngest one I’ve seen was 9-years-old,” Skidmore said.
The gang would scout out houses with pet doors and send the 9-year-old through it, have him unlock the door, then loot the home.

The major indicators that your child may be into a gang is that he or she prefers to wear one certain color of clothing and refuses to wear other certain colors – preferring their gangs colors over their rivals.

If your child doesn’t know their friends last name or real names, they may also be involved in gangs, because the older gang members go by nicknames so when police arrest the younger member, he only knows the person by a moniker, which may throw police off their trail.

“Parents should know who their kids’ friends are,” Skidmore said, adding that parents should also frequently check their child’s MySpace profile and do regular searches of their rooms.

Another indicator is when gang symbols are doodled in homework or notes – for the Gangster Disciples it’s a six point star.

Skidmore said kids who join gangs have that way of life so ingrained in them, they will write the letters and numbers of their rival gang in reverse and draw a line through it as disrespect to the rival gang.

In one situation, Skidmore said he saw math homework from a child who was a member of the Crips gang, who wrote the number five backwards with a slash through it and the letter b backwards with a slash through it, the number and letter of the rival gang, Bloods.

Those who are aligned with the Crips gang won’t write the letters CK together in any word because it stands for “Crip Killer,” they will instead use two Cs.

Skidmore said a drastic drop in grades may also be an indicator that a child is involved with gangs, because the child has to weigh wether to study for a math test or study the Gangster Disciples Book of Knowledge or the Latin Kings Manifesto – if the child fails the math test, he only gets an F, but if he fails the gang’s test, he gets beaten.

THE FIVE POINT SYSTEM

Skidmore said the state follows a five point system to determine if a city is susceptible to gang activity. If a city has the following, it may be susceptible:

• A population over 30,000.
• A major university or college – Skidmore said the leader of the Gangster Disciples, Larry Hoover, would have his members recruit young kids and entice them to join by offering to pay their college schooling. The gang wants members who are smart, and with no criminal record, so they can enter the field as lawyers, doctors and law enforcement to help further their cause from the inside.
• An existing drug problem – “The business of gangs is drugs,” Skidmore said.
• Direct access to an interstate
• A military installation – Skidmore said gang members may join the military to learn leadership, weapons tactics and have access to weapons that can be stolen.

Clarksville fits all five of those points.

ABNORMAL CHARACTERISTICS

After talking to several connections with law enforcement officials from all over the country, Skidmore said there are things that the gangs do here that aren’t seen anywhere else, such as gangs forming alliances with each other in order to keep power.

Two such groups, the 93 bloods and the 74 Gangster Disciples, grew up in the same neighborhood of Birchwood, and aligned themselves with each other to gain more power.

Also odd for gangs is when a gang member is arrested, Skidmore has seen some who completely change their alliance. And instead of being a “gangster for life” some may lay low and hide for a while or quit a gang if several of their fellow members have been arrested.

“When a gang members gets caught, it’s everyone for themselves,” Skidmore said.

BEATING THE SYSTEM

Gang members can be very smart, Skidmore said, evident by some of the things they do to throw police off their trail.

Female members are often the ones that carry the weapons, drugs or other contraband because they think a police officer won’t search a woman.

In the summer, Skidmore said you’ll notice gang members wearing plain white T-shirts and denim shorts, and they will all dress similar because if a cop comes hears of or sees illegal gang activity, the clothing description he gives to backup or dispatch matches about 25 other members in the area.

FIGHTING THE BATTLE AGAINST GANGS

There are several things a citizen can do to help fight gang activity from the more than 1,500 documented gang members in Clarksville.

• Ask questions – Asking your child questions about what he or she is doing is key to being involved in their lives and finding out about gang activity, Skidmore said.
• Seek answers
• Be involved with the kids.
• Refuse to be intimidated – If you know of gang activity, or your child being told what to do by a gang member, Skidmore said call the police. “That’s what we’re here for.”
• Refuse to give in – Skidmore noted that groups such as Take Back New Providence have helped clean up a lot of gang activity in that area.

Police fight their battle against gang activity by using several sources, including School Resource Officers, insightful Web sites, churches and political infrastructures.

Skidmore said there are ways to make life more difficult for gang members, such as having Buildings and Codes cite them on a regular basis if they violate code or pulling them over and giving them a speeding ticket for going two miles over the speed limit.

“We try to make life as hard for them as hard as they make it for the neighborhood they are in,” Skidmore said.

Fighting gang activity is a constant battle, Skidmore likening it to a game of Whack-a-Mole, once you eliminate one problem another one might pop up, or you may not have problems for some time.

IDENTIFYING THEMSELVES

On arrest reports for those booked into the Montgomery County Jail, there’s a portion that lists if the person is the member of a gang and their gang moniker. Those arrested who are identified as part of a gang are listed in the Arrests section of Crime Watch inside the Leaf-Chronicle.

Older gangsters, Skidmore said, are proud of their affiliation, and will tell their arresting officer. Younger gang members may not, because they still might think it’s illegal to be a part of a gang. Other indicators of possible gang alignment come from the tattoos on them.

Skidmore said he goes through arrest reports and notes those who have a gang affiliation.