December 8, 2007, was shaping up to be a typical Saturday for Ricardo Gonzalez, but it turned out to be anything but average for the 19-year-old Napan.

That evening, Gonzalez was to attend a quinceañera, a birthday party that signals a girl’s coming of age in the Latino cultures. He decided not to go at the last minute, according to his mother, Rosa Vargas.

The party drew members of the girl’s family, friends and also a gang element that would cross paths with Gonzalez later in the evening. After the party, Vargas said that a group of Sureño gang members came to her Riverside-area home, and her son left with them. It would be the last time that Vargas would see him alive.

The gangsters drove to a Collier Boulevard Apartment complex, known in gang circles as Barrio Laurel South, to confront rival gang members. Gonzalez was shot in the head. A day later he died at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

His death did more than shatter his family — Gonzalez’s only daughter would be born less than a week after his death — it tore open old wounds in a community that had not seen a gang death since 1998.

State of affairs

The gang problem in Napa may have disappeared from view, but law enforcement officials say it never really went away.

“We went through that period where we weren’t having that many problems. Now we have a new generation of kids coming up,” said Gary James, a veteran gang investigator who works for the Napa County District Attorney’s Office.

Napa Police officers Jeff Hansen and Pete Jerich are on the front lines of the battle against gang crimes in Napa. It’s a conflict that goes largely unnoticed by those outside of law enforcement and those living the gang life.

“Last summer we had stabbing call after stabbing call after stabbing call,” said Hansen. “There were eight stabbings last summer, and it all culminated in the homicide on Dec. 8.”

Last week, three individuals were stabbed during gang-related brawls. The three men —ages, 17, 18 and 19 — received non-life-threatening injuries and are the latest victims of Napa’s warring gangs.

James said today’s gang members are more tech savvy, using text messages and social networking Internet sites such as MySpace to communicate with each other, organize themselves and in some cases plan crimes.

“They are using their resources,” James said. “I get called out to a crime scene. All 20 of them have cell phones and all 20 of them are text messaging somebody about what’s going on.”

Teens who were toddlers when Napa’s first gang homicide occurred 10 years ago are discovering the gang lifestyle; funding for organizations such as Nuestra Esperanza and its CLARO (Challenging Latinos to Access Resources and Opportunities) program have dwindled, and the police department has scaled back it’s four-man gang unit to two officers. At the beginning of July, the department temporarily reassigned two community resource officers to the gang unit to help patrol the streets for the summer.

CLARO taught young Latinos about their history and culture, emphasized positive ways to spend time and kept them out of gangs.

“It really spoke to what they needed,” said Felix Bedolla, founder of Nuestra Esperanza, which sponsored CLARO. “They were looking for a place to belong. They found themselves between two cultures and didn’t feel like there was anywhere that was embracing them. They were newcomers here (and) they started growing away from their own Latino culture ... and the gangs were there. Along comes CLARO and it gives them exactly what they’ve been getting from gangs, but in a positive way. They had facilitators that spoke their language and who understood the culture.”

Funding problems forced Nuestra to close its doors in 2006. But Claudio Fuentes, who ran the CLARO program, continues to coach a CLARO soccer team.

“The need has always been here and I felt that I couldn’t just walk away from it,” Fuentes said. “The need remains and has gotten bigger and I didn’t have the heart to say, ‘Well the money is gone and we are no longer an agency, so let’s all go.’”

The decline of Nuestra Esperanza is just one example of what’s happened to anti-gang agencies within the last 10 years.

“When we had that uprising with the drive-by shooting of Michael Arreguin, the public was outraged,” Napa County Sheriff Doug Koford said. “They did not want gang activity in Napa County. We all came together and programs were put in place to combat the gang violence problem. Gang violence decreased over the past decade and the community didn’t really think much about it. Funding for many of the programs went away. Now we’ve had this latest uprising in gang violence and we are dealing with a much younger set of gang members.”

“When four guys were in the unit, they kept it (the gang problem) quiet,” said Napa Police officer Russ Davis, who spent many years riding along with Jerich until he was recently re-assigned. “So quiet they’re like, ‘Hey, do we really need four guys?’”

“It comes down to money,” said Hansen. “Grants are great, but the money runs out. There needs to be a long-term solution. Squeaky wheel, right?”

Squeaking wheels

Napa was bustling with gang activity on the night of the Gonzalez murder, but the trouble might have originated weeks earlier.

On Nov. 23, a young gang member named Steven Barrios went to Laurel Street with a bunch of Norteño comrades to avenge a previous beating of his brother, according to police.

Barrios and his friends smashed car windows and began yelling gang slurs at apartment residents. Then the bullets began flying. An unknown person in a pick-up truck shot at Barrios, injuring his right wrist.

On the following day, Norteños returned to the neighborhood and shot at a group of men who were sitting in front of Taco Loco Market, hitting one in the leg, according to police.

Police said that set the stage for the confrontation that would take Gonzalez’ life.

Ten years earlier, the Arreguin shooting was also the culmination of an escalating series of clashes.

At the time of the Arreguin killing, Napa did not have the resources to address its gang problem.

But in 2001, the county acquired a three-year gang violence suppression grant of $1.5 million. The funds were fanned out to various law enforcement agencies: Napa County Probation Department hired a full-time gang probation officer, the Napa County District Attorney’s Office brought on prosecutor Doug Pharr and investigator Gary James,  Napa Police Department instituted a four-officer gang unit and also created a network of school resource officers, and organizations that helped ease the gang problem such as Nuestra Esperanza received a portion of the funds.

Through the years, the state funding dipped to $331,000 for fiscal years 2003-04 and 2004-05. Then in 2005, the county acquired another three-year gang grant of $392,500, a year, which expires this year.

“We can’t rely on grant funding forever,” said Napa County District Attorney Gary Lieberstein, whose office is the one that applied for and received the anti-gang funds. “We’ve been very fortunate and I think it’s helped us in a big way, starting the Gang Violence Prevention Council after the Arreguin killing. We will be applying again.”

Today, the Napa Police Department’s school resource officer program boasts three members who combine to cover the high schools and middle schools in the city.

In response to the Gonzalez murder last year, the city applied for a grant of $200,000 or more through the state to increase police and school resource officers. The state denied the request, according to Napa Police Chief Melton, who noted that larger cities with more violence compete for the grants. This year, he said, the Napa Police Department will have to make do with the resources that they have.

Bet Melton said the responsibility for addressing Napa’s gang troubles does not fall only on the shoulders of police officers.

“It’s not just a law enforcement problem,” said Melton. “What is happening effects the entire community. And we have to come together to get it under control. We need to get Neighborhood Watch involved, nonprofit agencies, the churches and others working together to stop the gang violence.”

Register staff writers Marsha Dorgan and Jillian Jones contributed to this report.