Getting younger every year

Gang pressures begin in elementary school

By JILLIAN JONES
Register Staff Writer

They get younger every year.

Around third grade, they try on the look: hand signs and bandanas. A belt with its notches just so. On their low-slung backpacks, Roman numerals etched in Sharpie are code for their claim, their color, their gang.

By 12, the little guy has a gun. He transports drugs. In high school, he’s in it for life.

“Everything’s getting younger,” said Dee McFarland, Principal at Napa Junction Elementary School.

Where once it started in middle school, children now are experimenting with gangs as early as third or fourth grade, she said. In middle school, what once was a doodle in a notebook now is a gun or a stash of marijuana, said Ken Chapman, school resource officer with the Napa Police Department.

Redwood Middle School Principal Mike Pearson can pull open his filing cabinet and reach in for a stack of papers documenting students’ gang affiliations. At Silverado Middle School, presentations warn 12-year-olds on the dangers of gang life.

By the time they reach high school, about 1 percent of Napa’s students are true gang members, according to Chapman, and even more are involved peripherally.

Napa High School Dean of Students Al Bahn said 20 students at his school were identified as gang members in the 2006-07 school year, and were expelled for misconduct. Another 80 to 90 students were placed on a no red, no blue dress code because of suspected gang affiliations.

Campus map

At Napa High, Norteños hang out near the back end of campus, across Marin Street from the gym.

Sureño territory is separated from Norteños by the cafeteria, closer to the quad.

In a semicircle, the fringe kids sit on the perimeter as the first line of defense. Most of the girls in the gang sit on the outside of the huddle.

As Chapman offered a tour of Napa High earlier this year, the campus leader of one gang stood deep within a circle of members, speaking in a deep, commanding voice.

“You see how they flock to him?” Chapman pointed out.

Chapman said the demographics differ at Vintage High School, where roughly 1,000 students hail from American Canyon. In addition to Norteño and Sureño, Vintage also has some Bloods and Crips, as well as members of an Asian gang known as AZB 126, Chapman said.

Still, said Dan Risley, school resource officer at Vintage High, gangs at Vintage are for the most part Norteño and Sureño.

School officials point out that it is not illegal just to be in a gang. Known gang members must follow certain rules on campus — such as the “color contract” dress code that forbids them from wearing red or blue. But unless they are clearly a danger to fellow students, they can neither be expelled nor arrested just for belonging to a gang.

Besides, school officials say, by knowing where the gangs hang out and by knowing the key players, school resource officers can try to keep gang activity under control. They can build relationships with students and develop a mutual understanding that school is off-limits for gang activity.

“We make sure they keep it off campus,” Bahn said. But Bahn acknowledged that once school is out, the kids are no longer under his control.

“Even if I could pretend to stop it, they’re going to do it on the weekends anyway,” Chapman said. “That’s the shame. That’s the part I don’t have the key to.”

Inevitably, though, gang activity in the community translates to gang activity at school, Pearson said.

“What’s happening out in the public generally has some correlation with some things on campus,” he said.

“This is where the kids all congregate, the school,” Pearson said. “Outside, they stay away from each other’s areas. Put them here, they’re all here. It creates tension.”

Pearson remembers the days when school resource officers were stationed at almost every school. Today, Redwood’s school resource officer is responsible for almost 3,000 students between two schools — a typical assignment for SROs in Napa.

Bahn and others look back fondly on programs implemented in the ’90s to keep kids out of trouble. They look around today, and while some programs are still in place, they’re nothing like they used to be.

“As things calm down, people begin to forget about some of those issues of gang violence. Priorities become lessened,” said Gene Piscia, retired director of Community Resources in Napa.

Pearson likens the results to graffiti. “You eliminate that preventative measure. … Slowly but surely it comes back,” he said.

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