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FAMILIES Gangsta Chic: The Look That Kills?

A tattoo, a line from a song, a certain look or gesture: Any of these could mark your kid as a potential target of gang violence. Learn the warning signs that could save your child’s life.
By Eric Celeste |

“People in the suburbs, they can’t go to the ghetto, so they like to hear about what’s gain’on. … Everybody wants to be down.”

-Dr. Dre, on why kids listen to gangsta rap

THE DEATH THREATS SPRAY-PAINTED LAST year on the convenience store just off Coit Road south of Sam’s Wholesale were all too familiar to Dan Korem. The Richardson father of three spent years documenting how thoroughly enmeshed gangs are in the suburban fabric, culminating in his 1995 book, Suburban Gangs-The Affluent Rebels. The year before, he’d seen “187”- the California penal code number for the death penalty, a gang warning of an impending hit-scrawled on the side of the local IRS office. And his son, the starting center for his football team, was sucker-punched by a gangster-type while waiting for the school bus.

Korem was photographing graffiti literature-the spray-painted braying between rivals Latin Kings and Crips-when two kids approached him.

“You a cop?” one asked.

“No, a writer.”

“You want to know what this is about?”

“Sure.”

“Look behind you.”Korem eyed the neighborhood ’s popular family entertainment complex across the street that houses a miniature golf course and video-game arcade. “We’re lighting over who can sell drugs there.”

Unfortunately for suburban parents, Korem’s anecdote is not an unusual one. In Richardson, as well as Piano and Carrollton and Hurst and nearly every Dallas-area neighborhood, the odds that their children could cross paths with gang members are ever-increasing. While it is an overstatement to say Irving is as dangerous as Gaston Avenue, a walk to the store or a jaunt to the arcade to play Streetfighter II still puts kids at risk.

“Could something happen, like you [a stu-dent] be the accidental target of a drive-by? ” Korem says. “Absolutely. … If I was a young man, I wouldn’t walk along Coit wearing baggy shorts, or have an earring in my ear, or have a decisive, colorful edge to my clothing. Even if you don’t get hit, you make the gang members think you are someone they should recruit.”

And now, say authorities and gang experts, the danger to children, particularly junior-high age students, is more acute than ever. Because as the suburban youth subculture has celebrated the trappings of gang fashion-hip-hop clothing and gangsta rap music, for instance-the gangs they emulate have proliferated, adding dangerous weeds to the Bermuda grass of suburbia.

Growing up in an environment beset with indiscriminate gang violence is harrowing enough. But to style-conscious students, it makes it even tougher that dressing in monochromatic garb, cranking up the volume on popular music, or wearing a sporting team’s logo could be a fatal mistake. “When your kids dress the part with certain sports jerseys or colors,” says a gang task force detective, “or they act the gangster part in manner or music, they run the risk of being assaulted. It’s that simple.”

Since the late ’80s, suburbanites have been unable to assume, as Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham once wryly noted, that their “blessedness is a property of the right address.” A two-year study concluded in 1994 by the Center for Research on Crime and Social Control at the University of California put the number of U.S. cities where gangs operate at more than 1,100, shattering the conventional wisdom that gangs were to be found only in about 200 large American cities.

Despite overwhelming statistical and anecdotal evidence, though, many continue to ignore the surrounding violence. “The biggest majority of parents don’t see this as a problem,” says Lt. Dan Easley, a 21 -year Hurst police officer who heads up the Northeast Gang Task Force. Just over a year ago, assault ranked third among juvenile offenses in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford area. Now it ranks second, just below vandalism but ahead of theft. “It’s hard for parents to believe their kid is involved with or seriously threatened by gangs. The higher the income, the more denial you see.”

This disavowal is at least partly caused by the ambiguity of the term “gang.” Most people, led by sensationalized media reporting and even some law-enforcement assumptions, have generally thought of modern gangs as organized, drug-selling cartels with a defined, illegal agenda carried out by a well-operated, violent organization. Even the U.S. Department of Justice has defined gangs as hierarchical organizations “of some duration…characterized by turf concerns, symbols, special dress, and colors.” It also mentions that the gangs that concern officers often have a history of drug dealing. Any other youthful “cliques” have been considered “wannabes.”

“That’s all we have here in Coppell,” says police chief David Miller. “A lot of wannabes. In junior high and high school, like kids at other schools, they just want to be someone they’re not.”

But that philosophy should offer little relief to parents. The reality, experts say, is that gangs are not defined by organization so much as they are by a mind-set. “The whole ’wannabe’ term is pretty meaningless,” says Cheryl Maxson, the director of the Center for Crime and Social Control at USC. “Gangs are not strongly cohesive or disciplined. That’s why the data are pretty consistent that drug involvement is in fact overwhelmingly non-gang, because of the organization needed for large-scale drug selling, “

A testament to the Iaxness of gang organization is the average tenure of a gang member-about one year. “But that’s exactly why kids with this gang mentality are so dangerous,” Maxson says. “The chaos, the spontaneous eruptions you see from these undisciplined groups, is more likely to lead to violence. Someone looks at someone the wrong way, and suddenly there’s a shooting. The availability of guns like you have in Texas is a much better indicator of danger than a noticeable structure to the gang.”

“Gangs have become more of an attitude than a defined group, ” says Heidi Reilly, a seventh-grade teacher in Mesquite. “For example, there’s this particular girl-a smart, bright, beautiful girl-who continually flashed gang signs during the school pictures. It’s wild insubordination, and it’s everywhere. They just dress to shock-dark black lipstick, big sweatshirts over men’s pants, with canvas tennis shoes. Once they put on the clothes, they put on the attitude.”

Ramon Jacquez, the gang prevention coordinator for the Citizens Crime Commission of Tarrant County, stresses that wannabes “pose as much a threat to hurt or kill as gang members from hardened inner-city groups.” Or, as one teacher in an on-line discussion forum put it, “If I find a hard-core gang member, I am much more likely to talk with them than I am a wannabe gang member. A wannabe is more likely to pull out a gun and whack you. Because they want to prove themselves-they want to be gang members so bad.”

“The kids today, they think it’s the vogue thing, to be down with a gang,” says Terry Adams, an officer with the Farmers Branch Gang Task Force. “They like the popular rap groups, and even though they’re not gangsters, they like to dress like the rappers. Unfortunately, gang members often dress the same way.”

The variety of gang colors and fashion could make a purchase decision at The Gap something that requires police participation. For example, kids in northeast Dallas County should eschew a look with a heavy emphasis on the shade lime green, lest they offend or, more likely, be mistaken for a member of the Lime Street Crips. Oakland Raiders gear is passe. Members of the FSU (Fuck Shit Up) gang, for example, took to wearing Florida State University (FSU) attire. In some schools, even the color of your shoelaces could cause you to unintentionally offend, or “dis” (disrespect), a gang member if he or she recognized it as the signature of a rival gang. Which is to say nothing of the apparel concerns of the Love Field Players, the Northeast Stoners, the Rolling 30 Crips, or the 5×2 Hoovas.

That is why many school districts like Coppell have gone to stricter dress codes. While civil libertarians deplore what they see as infringements on the Constitutional rights of 13-year-olds, clothing regulations nevertheless have gone a long way toward helping kids avoid getting caught in a gang’s crosshairs.

“In the Long Beach [California] school district,” notes Dr. Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, citing a notorious gangsta town popularized by rapper Snoop Doggie Dogg, among others, “they mandated a very strict dress code. Then the number of fights and assaults decreased 34 percent. The number of incidents involving firearms went down by 50 percent. And there was a sharp increase in attendance, because the kids weren’t so concerned about getting involved with gangs and colors. Plus, it made spotting non-students that much easier.

“The clothing was reflecting the extent to which kids were involved with gangs,” Stephens says. “If the kids wore the wrong color, it was dangerous. It’s that way in many districts.”

“There’s no doubt the gang style has become fashionable,” says Lt. Easley of the Northeast Gang Task Force. “There are things you can look for that a lot of kids do, like graffiti on the school books, wearing the same-colored clothing day in and day out, tattoos. A lot of kids do that stuff, but there are still some things that leave no doubt. In the Mid-Cities, the 5×2 Hoovas [“five-by-deuce” Hoovas, a Crips gang named after Hoover Street in California] have black, Hispanic, and white members who all cut slashes in their eye-brows-five in one eyebrow, two in the other. “

Some gangs, though, have gone the other direction-instead of cutting or tattooing themselves to achieve distinction, they’ve adopted a sedate, fashionable look to avoid detection, making it harder for non-gang kids to distinguish themselves from the gang-bangers. For example, the Midnight Dreamers, a Dallas gang that also operates in Carrollton and other Northwest Dallas suburbs, has adopted the preppie look. “They wear Guess shirts, Guess jeans,” says Terry Adams. “They dress real nice.”

“The youth subculture of music and fashion has a definite impact on the types of gangs that kids will form. Its influence in the gang world is not going away,” says Dan Korem, whose book contains a chapter analyzing the ways in which gang life influences the youth subculture.

“The first skinhead in Europe was a Warsaw kid who idolized Bob Marley,” Korem says. “But the school made him cut his dreadlocks, so he adopted the shaved head look he saw on MTV, and said, ’Okay, I’ll be a skinhead.’

“This is why you have to think about what you’re wearing and the music you’re listening to. It’s important to these kids. It defines them. That’s why I and my kids don’t wear bandannas when we go camping. … These days, it’s too easy to be the target of a drive-by. “

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