Hardcore Gangs Hit Ohio Suburbs

GANGS IN THE ’BURBS
Subversive element creeping beyond Columbus’ borders

Mark Ferenchik and Alayna DeMartini
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Just a block from their suburban high school, two teenagers were walking to school when a white Chevrolet Cavalier drove up one winter morning. Two teenagers inside rolled down their windows and yelled at the boys, calling one of them a "chink." Then they got out of the car, one gripping a baseball bat. Just minutes before classes would begin at Whitehall-Yearling High School that day in January 2005, Vang Lesh, 17, was hit in the head with the bat and kicked repeatedly. The attackers swiped his backpack and books, and then rode off. They later told police they had assaulted Lesh to earn their way into MS-13, a Latino gang. Since then, police in some Columbus suburbs have seen more signs that gangs have drifted within their borders. They’re discovering gang symbols scrawled on walls, gang drug dealing, gang fights, gang robberies.

Suburban school districts have tried to discourage students from wearing gang gear such as red bandannas, which can symbolize allegiance to the Bloods gang.

Last month, Reynoldsburg schools began requiring junior-high and high-school students to show identification at sporting events to prove they are from Reynoldsburg or the opposing team’s school district. One reason for the policy is to keep a lid on gang activity, said Assistant Superintendent Steve Dackin.

Licking Heights High School reinforced its anti-gang policies after four youths drove to campus on Jan. 20 to attack two students they had fought with the night before.

One assaulted a teacher who tried to break up the fight, said Jim Ramsey, the school’s police officer.

When Pataskala police checked with the Columbus police gang unit, they found a couple of the intruders had gang ties, Ramsey said.

The next day, school officials told students the district wouldn’t tolerate such violence or gang symbols.

In a Jan. 23 letter to parents, Licking Heights Principal Steve Hackett wrote that the school was banning anything that smacked of gang affiliation: bandannas, gang symbols or colors, gang graffiti, even gang drawings on notebooks.

Violators are suspended for 10 days.

"It’s helped out tremendously," Ramsey said. "We’ve shifted away from kids acting out here."
Other schools are taking similar steps.

Last year, Westerville North High School suspended two students who flashed MS-13 hand signs and drew gang insignia during an English-asa-second-language class. MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a notoriously violent street gang with roots in Los Angeles. It was formed by immigrants from El Salvador.

Gang crime isn’t nearly as serious or common in the suburbs as in some Columbus neighborhoods, but suburban schools and police departments are increasingly on watch.
"It’s not so centralized in the inner city as it used to be," said Pat Brooks, a veteran Columbus police gang unit officer.

Suburban police call Brooks and his colleagues when they suspect gang activity in their jurisdictions.

Most of the crack dealers in Reynoldsburg are gang members who live in Columbus, said Tye Downard, a Reynoldsburg police narcotics detective.

They go there to make more money, he said.

"If you’re selling 80 bucks worth of crack cocaine in Columbus, you can get $120 for it in Reynoldsburg," Downard said.

Police in Hilliard were alarmed last year when an MS-13 member told an officer he was trying to escape gang members in Chicago.

The man told the officer he was visiting relatives in the Columbus area before heading to Detroit, said detective Joe Berardi.

"The guy was tattooed all the way up to the neck," he said.

Columbus gang officers said MS-13’s presence in central Ohio is growing. Last year, the area’s leader, Nelson Flores, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for reentering the United States after he had been deported. He was kicked out of the country after he was convicted in connection with a drive-by shooting in Nevada.

Flores was known as "El Mula" ("The Mule") in a drug ring that flourished here.
Arrested after a traffic accident, Flores told Jim Sandford, a Columbus police gang unit detective: "We (MS-13) will own this town in four years."

Columbus police have identified gangs throughout the city’s poorest neighborhoods, and estimate there are about 600 active gang members citywide.

It’s difficult to say how many gang members are in the suburbs because most of the suburban police departments don’t keep a running total. But crime associated with gangs appears to be rising, prosecutors say.

In Franklin County, cases involving young gang members charged with violent crimes rose from 61 in the second quarter of 2004 to 194 in the second quarter of 2006. County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien attributes the increase to better tracking as well as more gang crime. Assistant County Prosecutor James Lowe, who concentrates on gang cases, said the vast majority of those charged live in Columbus.

In part, gangs have moved into suburbs as low-income housing has spread there, said C. Ronald Huff, a professor at the University of California at Irvine and a gang expert.

Gang members disproportionately come from low-income families, Huff said. When low-income housing becomes available in the suburbs, families move there.

"They want a better life for their kids," he said.

Carolyn Kimbro could afford to move from a South Side neighborhood to Reynoldsburg to raise her son, Anthony, in what she thought was a safer neighborhood.

"Trying to get away from the gangs, we ran right into it," she said.

Teenagers attacked her son at Reynoldsburg’s July 4 th fireworks celebration two years ago when he was 16.

The boys assaulted him as part of their initiation into a gang, police told Kimbro.

She was so troubled that she’s writing a play about youth violence and gangs.

Gang violence near Reynoldsburg High School has concerned police in the suburb.

This past October, four Easthaven Bloods members from Columbus, ages 16 to 19, robbed two teens near the school, even taking one’s black Dickies pants. One robber lifted his shirt, showing a handgun; another told the victims, "Where we come from, you either lay down or stay down."
They needed gas money, the robbers later told the police. They had come to Reynoldsburg for a drug deal, said Reynoldsburg police detective Ron Wright.

"Police have to be vigilant about the city’s gang presence," he said. "Do I think Reynoldsburg has a huge gang problem? I just think it’s riffraff drifting into the city."

On a recent afternoon, Robert McMillian Jr. stood across from Whitehall-Yearling High School. Classes had just let out. Nearby, a couple of boys wore long blue Tshirts over their low-rider jeans.

They call themselves members of the Crips street gang.

Another wore a red hooded sweatshirt over his red shirt, a self-described member of the Bloods.
McMillian wore all black, showing his allegiance to the Folk Nation.
No one was primed for a fight, despite the mix of gangs. They were just bantering and making gang signs with their hands.

"We don’t fight unless we have to," said McMillian, 18. "I’m one of those people who’s calm until someone messes with me, my family or my homeboys."

mferenchik@dispatch.com
ademartini@dispatch.com