'Clique' gangs vex prosecutors, youth workers

Enrique 'Chacho' Estrada glanced into the crowd, looking for the kid with the bullet in his leg.

The young man had come to the prior week's meeting of Jóvenes, the anti-gang group Estrada leads on St. Paul's West Side, but he'd refused to seek help for the wound and didn't come back.

"My fingers are still crossed because we need to get that brother some help, convince him to go to the hospital," Estrada said.

There wasn't much more time to think about that young man. Thirty others were gathering in front of Estrada that day to seek his guidance as they struggled to leave or steer clear of gang life.

Gang-related prosecutions are up in Ramsey County, with some of the cases stemming from a string of recent violent incidents in St. Paul. Law enforcement officials and nonprofits say they're trying to prevent gang violence before it starts but that the changing nature of gangs is making it more challenging.

Gangs are increasingly splintered into smaller crews running a few blocks. Even the phrase "gang-related shooting" doesn't necessarily mean what it used to. Estrada says a lot of the gangs are smaller, loosely organized groups of neighborhood kids.

"Gangs are different. They're not gangs no more. They're cliques," said Brian Lira, a former member of the Latin Kings who works with Estrada at Neighborhood House, the nonprofit community group on the West Side.

The cliques are sometimes just small subsets of more established gangs. They don't have familiar names like Bloods or Crips. The cliques go by names like HAM Crazy, Gutter Block Goons or Hit Squad.

Lira said the shooting that wounded the young man who came to the meeting may not have had anything to do with a specific gang rivalry.

"It's just the West Side with the East Side. That's what it is," said Lira, 21, who said he got sucked into gang life at 14 despite a supportive family. "If you're here on the West Side and they think you belong to a clique or a side, they'll just shoot at you."

The violence isn't always confined to East Side or West Side neighborhoods, nor are the victims always known or suspected gang members.

Ramsey County prosecutors say in January, members of the Gutter Block Goons started a brawl in a downtown skyway. According to a criminal complaint, one of the men struck a bystander, knocked him down and then stomped on the man's arm, breaking it.

Prosecutors say the same young men were also involved in a melee the day before at a downtown light rail station. The Ramsey County Attorney's Office recently charged seven men in connection with the incidents.

"The vast majority of the gang-related crimes that come to my office, it's really involving just senseless violence," said Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.

Crimes committed to benefit a gang carry longer prison sentences, but it doesn't seem to deter the violence. Too often, he said, feuding gang members fire guns recklessly in crowded, public areas.

Last month, Choi's office charged five suspected gang members allegedly involved in filming a video used to taunt members of a rival gang. Still pictures taken from the video show young men pointing hand guns at the camera.

According to the criminal complaint, four of the five men were members of Hit Squad. Members of that gang are feuding with members of HAM Crazy, prosecutors say.

The conflict has yet to rise to the level of bloodshed between four Minneapolis-based gangs, which has left nearly half a dozen dead and several others wounded. But like the Minneapolis feud, gang members in St. Paul produce videos meant to provoke and threaten rivals and post them on social media sites.

Online taunts often fuel violent clashes — and they leave a trail for investigators that helps build stronger cases, Choi said.

Data from the Ramsey County Attorney's Office show the number of gang cases charged in the county has increased from 14 in 2010 to 58 in 2014. In the first quarter of 2015, the county charged 29 adult and juvenile gang-related cases. During the same period in 2014, the county charged 17 cases.

Before Choi took over as county attorney in 2011, the number of gang-related charges had dipped sharply. Choi believes that's due to the disbanding of the Metro Gang Strike Force in 2009. In the last year of the strike force, Ramsey County charged 50 gang-related cases.

The unit initiated more than 1,000 investigations and made more than 600 arrests throughout the state in 2008. A state investigation, however, substantiated allegations of improper conduct and shoddy investigations. The strike force was replaced by the FBI Safe Streets Task force.

The St. Paul Police Department also has its own gang and gun unit that makes arrests but also focuses on intervention. Officers often work directly with school teachers, students and principals, said Jimmy Yang, an officer who works in the unit.

"We are a resource for them and they're also a resource for us, when it comes to identifying which kids are going toward the delinquent route or they're involved with some type of gang activities," he said.

Yang says officers also participate in programs like those offered by Neighborhood House.

Jóvenes offers the chance to learn life skills, take part in field trips and go on college tours. But Estrada says one of the most crucial aspects of his program is the interaction between officers and the young men. Each summer, 80 young people from the program get on a boat and go fishing with 40 police officers.

Estrada says the experience helps these young men and the cops feel comfortable around each other.

"When this officers comes out into the street and he sees this group of kids that he may think, or label as gang members, he's going to be a little bit scared," Estrada said. "But when he walks into that group of young men and he sees two or three of them that he's been fishing with, that kind of tenseness goes down a little bit."

Leaving a gang is not easy. Lira says it took him a few years to gradually pull himself away from the friends he made in the Latin Kings and make new friends at Neighborhood House.

Estrada and other mentors helped him realize that gang life wasn't much of a future, he said. Lira also acknowledged some close calls helped him step away.

"A whole bunch of stuff happened. Got shot at a few times," he recalled. "I didn't get shot, but I just got grazed in the leg," he said, pointing at the scar.

Lira is a college student now studying auto body repair. He wants to someday own an auto body shop and create an apprentice program within the shop for young men who need a productive alternative to gang life.

He says he also wants to set an example for his two younger brothers, ages 14 and 9.

"I try to tell them, life ain't what it seems. Life can turn around easy and just kick you right in the butt," he said. "I try to tell them that and tell them just to focus on school and graduate from high school and just go on the right path instead of taking the wrong turns that I did."