A Dangerous Kind of Cool

What's the attraction of being a gang member? Members claim their turf with graffiti that has evolved into such an art form that the letters are no longer legible to the uneducated eye--as the Crips do on the East Campus bridge; they communicate through hand signs that not only let them know enemies from friends but also can inform them about planned attacks; they write notes with a unique lettering system; and they wear clothes that wannabes all over the world try to duplicate. There's no doubt about it; gangs are cool.

Trinity senior Justin Lessek, a student teacher at Northern High School this year, said even in the relatively contained classroom setting he stepped into every day, he saw and heard the influence of gangs on Durham's teenagers. One male student flashed hand signals during lectures, and two female students often doodled gang symbols onto their notes and homework. Lessek described one symbol as a 6-pointed star with a "6" written in each of the points.

Why have these students affiliated themselves with gangs? Lessek said the boy is someone who seems to crave a lot of attention, and gang involvement probably offers a way to achieve this. One of the girls Lessek termed a "wannabe," but he believes the other girl could be more involved. "She has gotten into a number of fights at school even though she is quiet in class. She is a transfer student from New York, and so I think she may be looking for acceptance in a new place," he said. "And she probably also feels like she's got something to prove."

It's this coolness and sense of belonging that attracts kids to an organization that seems to offer love. Gangs provide status and pride for their members and give them an atmosphere of acceptance most of them lack at home. As district court judge Marcia Morey put it, "Gangs are family."

Even the media perpetuates a thrilling and exciting spin on what is actually a deadly game. An officer at the Durham County jail, who asked to remain anonymous because of his work with gang members, agreed with Morey: "Gangs have a lot to offer these kids--it's money, glory, a lifestyle," he said. "Gangs have more to offer these kids nowadays than their families. You get young kids who see guys driving around in BMWs and they think that's the life. They don't look at what they did to get to drive that car."

Carrington Middle School Principal John Colclough said he thinks gangs are a problem because the lifestyle of adult gang members is easily glorified by younger students; knowing this, gang members can begin recruiting.

"I see it less in actual gang members and more in fascination by the students with gang dress, the language, the lifestyle," he said. "And that's where the danger comes in." Colclough added that because of conversations he hears among students, he believes gangs are recruiting at both the middle and elementary school levels. "[The students] have knowledge of what is out there; they have intricate knowledge of how it all works--those of us who are not initiated have a hard time keeping up."

Colclough's observations are noted by other school officials as well as judicial administrators. Morey, who spends about one-third of her time in court with juveniles, said she views many young gang members as victims. "Kids are being used as vulnerable pawns in this fairly sophisticated system with adults using children who don't have police records of fingerprints or photographs," she said.

Although criminal activity is part of defining a gang, Morey noted some complications with the definition. "It's difficult to determine the extent of the problem because being in a gang, per se, is not a crime. Many of the violent offenses committed by juveniles are not done individually, but as a group, so is it gang-related? Not all the time, but quite a bit of the time."

Quantifying gang activity in Durham is a difficult task for other reasons, as well. Supposedly sworn to secrecy, initiated gang members do not wag their tongues out of a combination of loyalty and fear. "A true gang member definitely won't [tell]," said the officer at the Durham County jail. "You can sometimes tell by the clothes with colors or there are some tattoos. But one of the rules is not to talk to anyone about gang activity who is not a member."

King added that the police department is cautious not to label any one type of person as a gang member. He explained that gang membership crosses boundaries of race and socioeconomic status, as well as neighborhood lines, so it is impossible to label any one area or type of person as affiliated with a particular gang. "There is not a certain type of person. What we see here in the jail is 17 to 22 year olds," said the jail officer. "A guy I talked to today looks like he needs to be at Duke studying; he is highly intelligent and talked highly intelligently. Others come in as illiterate as can be, so there is definitely a broad range." He added that some kids in gangs are from wealthy families. Because of Durham's racial makeup, he said, most gangs are mainly black, but many also have white members.

The jail officer said that although the Bloods and the Crips are the national gangs that seem to have the largest presence in Durham, the city also plays host to the Aryan Nation, Hell's Angels, the Ku Klux Klan and the Latino Kings. "Bloods have different sets but all are under the heading OBloods'--it's like the Boy Scouts having different troops; they're not rivals," he explained.

The number of "wannabes" also obscures the number of actual members so that police cannot go by dress or graffiti alone. "A lot of what you see is just style," said the officer at the jail. He added, however, that the style can be deadly. "We heard about an undercover officer in L.A. who was going to do a drug buy, and he was not supposed to dress as a gang member, but he had his hat turned to the wrong side and they killed him because he was disrespecting them."

The position of "wannabes" is a dangerous one. Thomas warned that rival "wannabes" can face the same dangers as true gang members. "We have people who are not yet officially in, who are doing extraordinary things to gain status. That's frightening because you never know what they will do," he said. "Someone says you're a Blood, so the Crips come after you. It's just as dangerous as if you had fully invested in being in a gang."

Lessek, the student-teacher at Northern, said he suspected only a few of his students were involved in gangs. What was scariest, he said, was the familiarity all of the students seem to have with the groups. "A student could be telling a story about another kid before the bell rang. In the middle of the story, another student would try and clarify who exactly was in the story by asking something like OYou mean John the Blood, or John with the long hair?'"

Students' nonchalant attitude about gang activity is what frightens county and school administrators--and for good reason. Last month, two area teenagers were killed in gang-related violence. Fifteen-year-old Catrina Carr, a student at Chewning Middle School, and 19-year-old Omontay Toomer, who had attended Northern High School, were murdered in unrelated incidents. The Herald-Sun of Durham reported that Carr was a victim of the Crips; the gang heard that Carr's boyfriend, a student at Northern, was a Blood, and they meant to shoot him. "Gangs are the most dangerous thing facing young people right now," said Colclough, the principal at Carrington Middle School.

And Thomas, of Northern, noted that each year, gangs become more of a danger. "If you had asked me [whether gangs are prevalent] last year, I would have said we see very little gang [affiliation], but it seems that this year, the group of ninth graders came in already tied in to some affiliation," he said. "And kids do come and say Osomeone is after me because they think I'm a Crip or a Blood.'"

Morey said many of the youths she encounters are also frightened by gang activity. "A lot of the kids who come into court are in fear of their lives," she said. "Lots of the kids I've talked to don't believe they'll see their 21st birthdays."

Gangs are becoming a bigger problem in Durham, but officials are at a loss for a solution. Police and teachers must toe the line between providing education and further publicizing--and thereby glorifying--gang activity.

Both King and Dodson were reluctant to share specific information about Durham gangs, fearing that the more it filters into the community, the larger the risk that some kids will think it's cool. Indeed, the Sheriff's Office is careful about how much information they release because they do not want youths getting hurt or killed after unknowingly flashing the wrong sign or wearing the wrong clothes.

Still, Morey emphasized the importance of informing young people of all of the dangers to which they are vulnerable. "People can sweep it under the rug so we appear to have a nice big community," she said. "But not educating puts kids at risk and in danger in some neighborhoods, and we have to face that."

At every level, Durham is working to save its youth from gangs by educating them about the negatives of gang life. In addition, many schools boast zero-tolerance rules for anything gang-related. "I see schools as being about the safest place kids can be," Colclough said. "Since we have zero tolerance, the kids are able to express themselves in a safe way. They don't face a lot of the violence that they would outside."

The city provides an extensive parks and recreation program to give students after-school alternatives to gang involvement. Durham also has a summer youth employment program as well as many religious groups and YMCA programs. Mayor Nick Tennyson added that the city also works to educate the community about gang activity. In the schools, police have developed a program called Teachers Against Relentless Gangs Evolving Through Schools--TARGET--which educates teachers and administrators about how to recognize gang activity in their classrooms and schools. "It helps teachers know what to be aware of," King said. "We tell them to let the school resource officer do the counseling, so we can nip it in the bud before it escalates." Dodson added that teachers are an important connection to students because they see them in the classroom every day and notice when a youngster's clothing or attitude changes.

The Sheriff's Office uses the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, starting with the elementary school grades, to try to save children from the lure of street life. "We give a lesson on gangs. We address the attire, the hand signs, etc., and tell them how to stay away from them," King said. "We start from a young age."

The police are also a physical presence in the schools. Each school has a school resource officer who deals with discipline and looks into possible gang-affiliated activity. Additionally, school counselors are trained to help students who are dealing with gang-related problems. At Northern, one of the teachers who works in gang intervention used to be affiliated with a Los Angeles gang.

"This is just a case where we need a whole community of heroes," Tennyson said. "The best thing to do is to volunteer time to work with young people. It's an easy thing for the other side to just trying to recruit folks out of the mass, but we're trying to save them one at a time."