Gangs on rise in LV

Jace Radke

Sunday, Oct. 31, 1999 | 9:59 a.m.

When gang violence spilled over onto the Clark High School campus with the shooting of two teenagers on Oct. 11, parents, teachers and students were surprised.

They shouldn't have been.

Street gang memberships are growing just as fast as the rest of Las Vegas with a record 6,886 gang members identified in the city this year by the Metro Police Gang Detail.

That's an increase of 654 gang members from last year and nearly 40 percent more than the 4,263 gang members police identified in 1995.

"Between 4,000 and 6,000 people are moving here a month, and we see the gang population grow right with that," gang detail Sgt. Don Sutton said.

Drive-by shootings also are on the rise while gang-related deaths are on pace with last year's numbers, according to police statistics.

As of Oct. 1, there have been 293 drive-by shootings this year compared to 196 last year, Sutton said, pointing out that the increase in drive-bys is still well short of the high-water mark of 527 reported in 1995.

In 1998 there were 22 gang-related deaths, and with two months to go this year there have been 20.

Most of those fatalities have involved gang members preying on each other, Sutton said.

"The randomness is what makes it scary," he said. "Sophisticated isn't the word to describe these guys. They fight over turf or a girl and generally just commit acts of random stupidity against each other."

The Clark High School attack was fueled by a split between members of a single gang. Maynor Villanueva, the 18-year-old accused of two counts of attempted murder in the incident, has told attorneys that the reason for the shooting was to show that his side of the divided gang deserved the same type of respect as the other.

Villanueva and his alleged accomplice, 14-year-old Tony Tejada, are also charged with attempted murder in the Oct. 2 shooting of a boy and a girl, both aged 16. Police say that attack also was the result of the gang split.

"It can go along for a few weeks and it will be quiet, and then boom -- there is a big blow up," Metro Lt. Jim Owens said of Las Vegas gang activity. "It's all about respect, and if a group feels another group has disrespected them, we get a fight."

School Police Officer Calvin Walker, a member of the Clark County School District's gang advisory team, said the Clark incident was just a matter of someone seeing an opening and taking it.

"Most gang crimes are opportunity related," Walker said. "The incident at Clark could have happened anywhere in town, but the opportunity just happened to be there."

Six days after the Clark shootings, the opportunity was in North Las Vegas.

On Oct. 17 a 19-year-old man and woman were shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire between rival gangs at a party, according to North Las Vegas Police.

The woman who was killed was outside the party at 800 Glendale Ave., and the man that died was a passenger in the rival gang's car, police said.

"There were probably about 100 people at that party, and we've probably interviewed about 24 so far," North Las Vegas Deputy Chief Timothy Ryan said. "We have no suspects at this point."

Besides the nearly 7,000 gang members identified in Las Vegas, Metro also has recorded contacts with 2,958 associates, people that are involved with gangs but are not full-fledged members.

Police had contact with 2,580 associates last year and just 1,623 in 1995. In all Metro has identified 201 gangs in Las Vegas this year, up from 179 last year and 146 in 1995.

"The numbers of actual gang contacts is a little deceiving because we may stop someone on the weekend who claims 82nd Street Hoover Crips from California," Owens said. "That guy is probably just here for the weekend, so not every gang we identify is active here.

"As far as the active hard-core gangs that do the shooting and cause the problems (in Las Vegas), there are probably about 30."

Metro statistics also show 4,444 Hispanics, 3,372 black, 1,504 white, and 512 Asian gang members and associates in Las Vegas.

"In the last couple of years we've seen the Hispanic gangs become a little more violent for whatever reason," Owens said. "Each culture has different gangs with different sets.

"For example, the white gangs are usually either white supremacists or pattern themselves after the black and Hispanic gangs."

Owens adds that most gang violence is focused on other gangs of the same race.

"It's usually black on black, white on white or Hispanic on Hispanic crimes," Owens said. "There isn't too much crossover."

The alliances are constantly evolving and many Las Vegas groups formed as offshoots from well-known gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, Walker said.

"Most of the old gangs in Las Vegas have faded out and been replaced with newer groups over the years," Walker said. "We make it a point to know who the gang members are and they know us, and because of that most of the time they watch themselves at school. It's where all their friends are, and they don't want to get kicked out."

Knowing gang members and their monikers is a crucial part of policing them, Owens said.

"We have two six-man enforcement teams whose whole mission is go out every night and investigate these groups and keep them looking over their shoulder," Owens said. "They (gang members) don't go by Dave Smith, instead they may be known as Droopy, so it's important for us to know who Droopy is."

Traditionally low-income areas with high-density apartment housing have been gang havens, and that remains true in Las Vegas, Owens said. Walker adds that the advisory team and school police try to crack down at high schools with high gang activity, like Cheyenne, Cimarron-Memorial, Rancho and Mojave.

State Sen. Valerie Wiener, who has written two books on gangs and is chairwoman of a state commission created to ward off school violence, says the gang problem is everyone's problem.

"There is no immunity to gang violence," Wiener said. "There is no community that can lock its doors and be safe from the influence of gangs."

In her interviews with former and active gang members for her books, Wiener says that gangs frequently can serve as a family structure for those in dysfunctional families.

That fits the story of Randy Smith, a 26-year-old Las Vegas gang member who was sentenced to prison Wednesday for second-degree murder in a March 1998 shooting.

At his sentencing, Deputy Special Public Defender Dayvid Figler told District Judge Kathy Hardcastle that Smith was "born and trapped" into a world of gangs and drugs "that is very different from what you or I can understand.

"It's hard to understand the gangs are their mother and father," Figler said.

Hardcastle was not moved by the argument, sentencing Smith to the maximum sentence of 10 years to life for second-degree murder. Smith has already spent six years in prison and time in juvenile facilities.

He has been arrested 19 times in his life beginning when he was 13 years old, a year after he was initiated into a North Las Vegas gang, Figler said.

Smith's path to prison is the kind of story Wiener has heard many times before, and the kind of failure she says will require every segment of society to prevent.

"It's a problem that will take all of the community's resources to combat," Wiener said. "It needs to be a joint effort between, parents, the faith community, schools, business, police and the lawmakers."

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