Jorge Contreras planted himself on the hard asphalt of a North Napa parking lot one evening in early March. About the only thing keeping the 20-year-old, self-proclaimed gang member warm that chilly night was the heat generated by the running engine of a police car parked next to him.

As Napa Police officer Jeff Hansen searched Contreras’ car, Contreras and three of his fellow gang members were doing what they were told to do; stay put. After Hansen finished with the car, the boys, ages 15 to 20, submitted to a search — tattooed hands dug deep into sweatshirt pockets while they waited for the whole thing to be over.

“I try to do better for myself, but I can’t get out,” said Contreras.

Contreras and his buddies are the new generation of Napa gangsters, one that’s getting younger by the year.

Contreras, a native of Salinas, said he’s been a Sureño gang member since his early teens. When he moved to Napa, he brought his loyalty with him and assimilated into a local Sureño clique. Lifting his shirt to expose a scar from a bullet, Contreras recounted the beginning of his gang ways.

“(In Salinas), everyone I was growing up with, they was gang members,” he said. “Before I knew it, I was in it, too. I was living it, everyone was. My uncle, my cousins, everyone around me was gang members. And I just joined.”

So after Contreras took a bullet to the stomach after a confrontation with Norteños, his parents left Salinas for Napa.

“My parents moved here to better my life, but I started meeting the same people,” he said.

Before long, he was more deeply involved than before, he said in a soft voice as he hung his head low.

“I’m at a point where I want to straighten my life,” said Contreras. “If I’m telling you this, it’s not because I’m proud of it.”

But for Contreras, the possibility of getting out — of breaking the cycle — seems dim. He said he can’t say for sure what might happen if he tried to leave the gang, “but I don’t want to figure it out.”

DA targets gangs

Contreras is not alone; More than 700 individuals throughout the county are registered in CalGang, the state database that chronicles gang members down to the tattoos they sport, cars they drive and the names of their associates.

As gang membership has become more prevalent among younger teens, the focus of gang prevention programs has shifted to middle schools and even elementary schools.

“They are trying to get ahead of us,” said Napa County District Attorney Gary Lieberstein.

“We heard at one point, when we were reaching out to the eighth grade, that they are starting to recruit in the fourth and fifth grade.

“You’ve got a new generation of kids — 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds — who are totally committed to the gang way of life, and those kids were not even in kindergarten the last time when we had a lot of attention paid (to gangs). Some of the kids aren’t that afraid ... they have the total gang mentality, which is, ‘We know something, we aren’t telling you.’”

About once a month, Lieberstein works directly with eighth-graders through a Peer Court program conducted at public and private middle schools throughout Napa. Lieberstein visits with the students and talks about the dangers of gangs.

“I know I’m looking at gang members at some times,” he said. “When I ask kids ‘How many people think there are gangs in Napa County?’ virtually every hand goes up. I ask them if there are gangs in their school, and virtually every hand goes up. We talk about wanna-bes, and I’ll get them to engage me in what that is. There is no difference between a wannabe and a gang member, they are equally dangerous because bullets don’t know the difference, they don’t care. I talk to the kids about gang enhancements — a school fight can turn into a felony and they can potentially go to camp as a juvenile or go to prison as an adult.”

The District Attorney’s office handles an average of approximately 115 to 125 gang cases a year, both adult and juvenile  — including gang members accused of violating their probation.

Shaping the next generation

On Thursday afternoon in late March at New Technology High School, several teenagers and preteens dutifully follow the instructions of their soccer coach and run laps around the field skirting Main Street. The boys, all members of a soccer team, are all that remains of a program known as CLARO (Challenging Latinos to Access Resources and Opportunities).

In 2006, Nuestra Esperanza, the agency which CLARO belonged to, closed its doors. Coach Claudio Fuentes however, wouldn’t let the program die; he continues CLARO by volunteering his time to coach young Latinos and mentor them.

“It’s an after-school program, a soccer-support group that’s based on the philosophy of CLARO,” he said. “We are doing gang prevention and cultural awareness. They come, they show up and we have a little group discussion and we play some soccer. Then we sit down again and talk about principles and values of our own culture.”

Along with the law enforcement community programs such as the Napa County Sheriff’s Activities League, and groups such as On the Move, Fuentes’ CLARO is  part of an anti-gang coalition that aims to halt future generations of gang members from coming up in the first place.

“Since the peer pressure is everywhere to join gangs, they feel intimidated at school,” Fuentes said. “A lot of kids feel the need to feel protected. They don’t have a strong support system at home ... (their parents) work all day to meet their needs. Kids don’t have the supervision. These are kids that are influenced (by gangs).”

Law enforcement professionals agree that stopping gangs requires effort from all quarters.

“People have to accept the fact gang violence is not just a law enforcement problem,” said Napa County Sheriff Koford. “It’s something that impacts the entire community and in order to keep it under control, we have to address it as a community problem.”

“The public needs to be aware that this is a problem that is not going to disappear,” Lieberstein said. “There are just too many of them and not enough of us. My biggest concern or fear, I don’t want a stray bullet hitting an unintended target, meaning a non-gang member, for the public to suddenly wake up and say ‘My God what’s going on? How can we help?’ If you remember back in 1998 that’s what it took to wake the community up.”