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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Voices of Violence: A brief history of street gangs in Anchorage
by Casey Grove and Leyla Santiago
Monday, November 16, 2009
Editor’s note: This is the first part in a multi-part series, starting with two TV stories, followed by online-exclusive content through the week.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- As cocaine and crack abuse surged in the 1980s, so too did the number of gangs and gang members in what some Alaskans began to refer to as “Los Anchorage.”
And as the violence associated with street-level narcotics sales began to increase, there was hesitation among law enforcement officials to apply the “gang” label to the new type of crimes they were seeing.
Street gang members from the Lower 48 moved north in greater numbers in the late 1980s to escape trouble and to make money, the police say.
“We started seeing tagging for example, or graffiti, and then there were a lot of fights and some of them started to involve weapons,” former Anchorage Police Chief Walter Monegan said.
Police say gangs were growing in numbers, and the drug money was rolling in.
“Drug trafficking is a very lucrative business and where you can sell a kilo in the Lower 48 for $15,000, you can get triple that in Alaska,” U.S. District Attorney Frank Russo said.
The violence spilled into public view, and police had to crack down on what was increasingly being identified -- if not in public, at least in law enforcement circles -- as gang-related crime.
“Well, of course, that strikes fear in people,” said Anchorage defense attorney Rex Butler.
“We initiated a gang unit, that's what it was called at the time,” Acting Anchorage Police Chief Steve Smith said. “Over the years it kind of morphed into what we now know as a Safe Streets Task Force.”
“We hit it, we hit it hard and we tamped it down,” APD Lt. Tony Henry said.
Public awareness was also kept on the down low as officials painted gang members in Anchorage as wannabes.
But the Anchorage Police Department’s gang intelligence officer, Scott Lofthouse, who teaches the history of gang violence at the Anchorage Citizens' Police Academy, says the wannabe concept doesn’t address the real problem: street violence.
“Who's more dangerous? The established gang member that's already got the street rep, or the kid that wants the credibility?” Lofthouse asked the class during a recent nighttime session. “Whether they would survive on the streets of L.A. or the streets of Chicago or not, they're emulating the same activity.”
Additionally, police trying to stem the increasing drive-by shootings and drug dealing did not want to give them that credibility.
Previous administrations in the late ’80s and early ’90s didn't acknowledge the gangs publicly, because they feared glorifying them.
“Fifteen years ago, there was a real reluctance to use the term ‘gang’ for a variety of reasons,” Prosecutor James Fayette said. “One of them is, it's really difficult to discuss gang crime without somebody saying ‘Wait a minute, you're doing racial profiling,' because so many gangs do have, are drawn on racial lines.”
Walt Monegan was a spokesperson for the Anchorage Police Department before becoming the chief, and, eventually, the commissioner of the state Department of Public Safety.
“We were actually prohibited from using the words, ‘drive-by shooting,’” Monegan said.
“The mantra from the administration at that time was, ‘We don't have gangs, therefore we don't have drive-by shootings. Do not put gangs or drive-by shootings in your police report,’” Lofthouse said.
Lofthouse teaches the history of gang violence at the Anchorage Citizens' Police Academy.
Instead of using the term “drive-by shooting,” Lofthouse says, “It was the launching of a projectile from a moving platform. That was drive-by shooting.”
Rick Mystrom was mayor from 1994 to 2000, and he denies ever suppressing the term “gang.”
“We talked about it every day my first year in office, and by the second year in office we weren't talking about it nearly as much, and by my third year in office it wasn't even an issue,” Mystrom said.
When asked if he meant it wasn’t an issue in public, he responded:
“No. Well it probably was in speeches, because I was giving a lot of speeches about what we were doing, and I'm sure I mentioned it in speeches,” Mystrom said.
Mystrom says the previous administration couldn't afford to focus on gangs.
“The previous mayor had his hands full dealing with the economic downturn, but Mayor (Tom) Fink was exactly the right mayor to have during that time,” Mystrom said. “The economy was going downhill, people were losing their homes, people were moving out of Anchorage.”
Mystrom started dealing with gang crime during his term through community policing and programs like Graffiti Busters.
And crime dropped.
“We were winning that war,” he said.
But the entire country would soon shift its focus to another war.
“After 9/11, ‘terrorism’ became the watch word and the big mantra for the federal agencies, and so the task force went away and that let the gangs start to feel like there was nobody watching them and it started to flare up,” Lofthouse said.
“Our staffing levels were ebbing quite a bit,” Acting Chief Smith said.
By 2003, gang-related crime was back on the rise, and the courthouse was slammed.
“There was a time period we got from the (district attorneys) that we basically were told that if APD had ceased in making any more felony arrests and giving them to the court, it would take about eight years to clear the backlog on that,” Monegan, the former chief, said.
Sen. Mark Begich says there are still problems in the prosecution of gang-related cases.
“The state court system was failing, still is failing,” Begich said. “Sixty-seven percent of people that go into the court systems in the state repeat their offenses, so I felt the gang leadership knew the revolving door of the state court system.”
Essentially, the city was back where it started.
And the graffiti, the drugs, the shootings, the victims -- the voice of the ongoing violence -- was loud and clear.
Today, there are certain people who commit a felony per day, Fayette, the prosecutor, says.
That’s why a special team has taken on the task of targeting the highest-risk offenders, those with outstanding warrants, and getting the violent ones off the streets.
On Tuesday, we’ll take a look at the impacts of recent gang-related crimes, including talking to the mother of Desirae Douglas, who was fatally shot at a party in September. We’ll also see firsthand what law enforcement is doing to combat the problem.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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