From The Morning News in Springdale, Arkansas

Gangs Not New To Area

Cpl. Jesse Ray, Rogers Police officer, photographs a grafitti painted fence in the 2100 block of South D Street in Rogers.File photo by Eugene Williams,

The Morning News By Don Dailey & John T. Anderson

ROGERS -- Gangs have been active in varying degrees in Rogers since the mid-1990s, but a recent shooting death involving a gang member has brought the issue to the fore.

"There is and has been gang activity going on in Rogers," Police Chief Steve Helms said this week.

Helms said the city hasn't yet seen the more serious gang activity, such as drive-by shootings, open drug sales on street corners, and beat-in initiations for prospective gang members.

A Little Flock man was killed May 6 in what police called a road-rage incident in Lowell on Bloomington Street. One of the three people arrested in connection to the shooting is a member of the Hispanic street gang Sureo 13, according to court documents.

Although police and the Benton County prosecutor said the shooting was not gang related, the fact that one of the suspects is an apparent gang member has some people fearing that more serious gang behavior is starting to show.

Cesar Aguilar, executive director of the Rogers Community Support Center and community activist who held a well-attended public meeting last year to discuss ways to combat gangs, said he hopes the judicial system sends a message that gang behavior won't be tolerated.

"I hope the prosecutors and judges make an example out of this," Aguilar said.

Aguilar was encouraged after police made some high-profile arrests late last year. Three men suspected in a string of armed muggings were arrested and a few days later a man suspected of being a gang member and a known associate of the mugging suspects was also arrested.

"I thought it was getting much better," Aguilar said.

Rogers Mayor Steve Womack said he is troubled by the shooting. He sees it as another indication of gang presence in Northwest Arkansas, if not necessarily proof of an escalation.

"I don't know if I would characterize it as getting progressively worse," Womack said.
Helms said Rogers police are not ducking the problem.

"We took an aggressive approach and instituted the crime-suppression unit," he said.

The unit has been gathering intelligence on gang activity since last fall. It is an outgrowth of a unit begun in the mid-1990s by then-Police Chief Mike Jones at a time when gang activity was becoming more prevalent. That unit displaced the gangs out of Rogers and into Siloam Springs, Helms said.

Some current members of the unit have been to training on spotting and dealing with gang activity.

Evidence of that activity includes admissions by individuals that they are in a gang, graffiti depicting known gang symbols and drawing of gang symbols on notebooks in schools, Helms said.

"(Officers) on the street come into contact with individuals walking the walk and talking the talk," Helms said of intelligence gathering.

One of the crime-suppression unit's tasks is to survey and identify just who in Rogers is in a gang. Officers use what they call hard identifiers to tell whether an individual is likely to be in a gang or associate with gang members. Those identifiers include certain tattoos and clothing styles and colors.

The crime-suppression unit has compiled a list of 25 to 30 individuals believed to be gang members or associates, Helms said. An associate is someone who is not a member of a gang, but hangs around with and behaves like gang members.

Helms said the gang members the department has identified came to Northwest Arkansas from larger cities in the Northeast and on the West Coast as well as some from Mexico.

When an officer identifies an individual as a likely gang member or associate, the officer takes a picture of that person and gathers as much information as possible about him or her. That information and photo goes into a file. Because gang activity isn't limited to Rogers, that intelligence is available to other law enforcement agencies, Helms said.

Benton County Sheriff Keith Ferguson has said he doesn't believe gang activity is prevalent in the unincorporated areas of the county, but it is an issue that bears watching.

Andy Lee, Ferguson's opponent in the Republican primary for sheriff, has said gangs are active in the county and that the sheriff's office must work with the cities to combat the problem.

Robert Walker, 70, operates Gangs Or Us from his home near Columbia, S.C. He has 50 years' experience in law enforcement and has been doing this consulting work for about 10 years.
He said the Rogers Police Department is doing the right thing.

"Cops should be keeping track of what is going on in the community and have (information) about members," Walker said.

Rey Hernandez, co-chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Anti-Gang Committee, which was created out of the public meeting held by Aguilar, said gangs aren't going to go away without effort from the community, but it is not too late.

"Right now, this part of Northwest Arkansas is just now starting to see the organization and proliferation of gangs," Hernandez said.

He said gangs proliferate where young people feel like they don't belong. The gang gives them structure and a family type atmosphere.

"The young people feel they are rejected by society so they form their own," Hernandez said.
Steve Metheney, co-chairman of Northwest Arkansas Anti-Gang Committee and a Benton County sheriff's deputy, said he's identified signs of numerous gangs in Benton County, based on interviews with suspects and reading symbols such as graffiti and tattoos.

Like others in law enforcement, he hasn't seen the more advanced violent gang behavior, but he warns it's coming if something isn't done to stop it.

He said the problem that everyone anticipates is when gang members start claiming neighborhoods --setting up territory.

Cpl. Chris McCarville, a spokesman for the Springdale Police Department, said his city has seen an increase in what appears to be gang graffiti in recent years. The city has an ordinance that requires property owners to clean up any graffiti. Part of the reasoning behind that ordinance is that "tagged" property leads to graffiti from rival gangs or groups, McCarville said. Quick painting over of graffiti can slow the back-and-forth of gang rivalry, he said.

Springdale placed officers in schools seven or eight years ago to improve the information flow between officers and students, McCarville said. That cop-to-kid connection helped solve "two or three" graffiti cases recently, McCarville said.

"We don't solicit that information," he said. "A lot of the time, kids just come forward."
Springdale police are considering a gang task force, McCarville said, not because gangs are a problem but because the city wants to remain proactive in monitoring gangs.

Irving Spergel, a sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, has studied gang behavior and conducted national studies on community group responses to gangs beginning in the 1980s. He said actions of suspected gang members are a tip-off as to whether gangs are becoming truly dangerous.

"Focus on the behavior," Spergel said. "If they've got the guns, and they've got the drugs, and they are on the street corner," then a community has a true gang problem.

The type of arrests being made by police also can indicate the sophistication of gang members. Fighting arrests are common for younger gangs. Drug arrests are the mark of older, more sophisticated gang members' activity, Spergel said.

The reaction to gangs should be a group community effort, with police, parole officers and community rehabilitation programs focused on helping the individuals arrested and breaking the cycle of gang involvement, he said.