nwasianweekly.com
Oct. 14, 2006

Photo by Carol N. Vu

Lt. Eric Sano, of the Seattle police’s gang unit, said most gangs are formed for two reasons: drugs or protection from other gangs.

By Dana Wu
For the Northwest Asian Weekly

Gang activity in Asian communities throughout Seattle is on the rise again.

“We are seeing a lot more gangs evolving from new immigrant communities moving into the Seattle-Greater Puget Sound area,” said Lt. Eric Sano of the Seattle Police Department’s gang unit.

Although currently there is no mechanism used to track the actual numbers of gang members in the area, Sano said that the numbers are increasing. “Suffice it to say, it’s more than people would think,” he said.

Increased graffiti, or “tagging,” and more frequent drive-by shootings and violence are strong indicators that gangs are on the rise, according to Alan Sugiyama, executive director of the Center for Career Alternatives (CCA) in Seattle.

“The gangs are marking their territory, just like animals,” he said. “We didn’t see a lot of that graffiti before.”

Sano said the Seattle area’s Asian gangs are located mostly where Asian immigrant families have settled — in South Seattle, the Rainier Valley, Beacon Hill and Skyway — but gangs can also be found in North Seattle, in the suburbs and farther south in Tacoma.

Sugiyama believes the gang problem is “cyclical” and directly related to the declining funding for gang prevention and the lack of attention paid to gang activity.

According to Sugiyama, who grew up in South Seattle in the 1950s, gangs have risen and fallen repeatedly in the city’s history. Gang activity spiked in the ’70s with the influx of Asian immigrants to the area, some of whom brought gang connections from established gangs in their native countries. The gang scene lulled in the ’80s, then saw a huge increase again in the ’90s.

The resurgence spurred increased awareness and prevention programs. However, as soon as the gang problem began to recede, funding for prevention efforts was cut, allowing for a new increase to begin.

“It’s important to get the word out that there is an increase (in gang activity). It has gone up, it’s gone down … and now it’s on an upswing,” said Sugiyama, whose nonprofit agency has helped several former gang members return to school and obtain jobs.

Police support for gang protection has also dramatically decreased since the 1990s.

“I was in the old gang unit back in the late ’90s, when (it) was comprised of 22 detectives, four sergeants, a lieutenant and a captain,” said Sano. “Today, the gang squad is made up of one sergeant and six detectives.”

So why do young people join gangs in the first place? Sano said most gangs are formed for two main reasons: drugs or economics, and protection from other gangs.

“Kids today are seeing that you can make good money dealing drugs,” he said. “Money, of course, equates to power and prestige for these kids.”
With drug sales comes violence, as different gangs try to establish their territory.

“Most of our Southend shootings are gang-related,” said Sano. He listed off gang-related shootings from the last few months, including a house on South Delappe Place and a homicide on 14th Avenue South.

Sano said that many of the newer immigrant youths get sucked into the gang lifestyle when they feel they need to band together to protect themselves from existing gang members.

Most of today’s gangs are not organized with an established hierarchy like the Chinese tongs and triads or the Japanese boryokudan (yakuza). Instead, they have a loose organization with one or two main players. Language and culture connect the majority of gang members.

“Kids get involved mainly through family members or friends that are in gangs,” said Sano. “They could all be from the same neighborhood or they go to the same school — or they could all go to church together!”

Although they may not be as rigidly organized as the Asian gangs of the past, today’s Asian gangs are engaged in more dangerous activities.

“Martial arts were hot in the ’70s — that was the Bruce Lee era — so people got beat up, but they really didn’t get killed,” said Sugiyama. “But the ’90s were way different. It was all about guns. That is a big difference.”

Sano said that most youths involved in
gang activity are in their mid-teens, from 15 to 18 years old. However, police are noticing an increased number of younger gang members.

“I’ve run into a child that was 12 years old, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a semi-automatic handgun,” said Sano.

Gang members usually stay involved until they are either killed or sent to prison. However, Sugiyama noted, gang members still have a chance to break the cycle.

“(Gang members) still have that opportunity to get out,” he said. “But in order to get out, (they) have to be doing something else. It’s hard to be a gangster if you’ve got other stuff to do.”

He stresses offering positive alternatives to gang activity. CCA, for example, offers GED and high school re-entry programs, as well as SAT preparation courses, to get young people headed in the right direction.

“Programs have to be developed so that they can see a future ahead of them,” Sugiyama said. “If they think they’re not going to be able to get into college, then why (would they) study?”

Furthermore, to eliminate the need to bond together via gangs, he believes that youths need to find a sense of community in other groups, such as sports teams or other extracurricular activities.

“If a kid is a member of the football team, for example, he doesn’t have to belong to a gang, because they already belong to a group,” he said. “(In such a group,) there’s also a caring adult involved — a coach, a teacher or a parent.”

In addition to opportunities and activities for youth, involvement and awareness on the parents’ behalf are crucial to gang prevention.

“You can come from a poor family or you can come from a rich family, but if your parents are not engaged, it’s a breeding ground for kids to do negative things,” Sugiyama believes. “A lot of parents just simply need to know that these things are coming up and they need to watch their kids a little better.”

Despite the increase in gang activity, Asian communities have not been actively expressing concern or taking measures to stop it.

“The Asian Pacific Islander community, for the most part, is still a passive one,” according to Sano. He explained that, in particular, first-generation immigrant families with two limited-English-speaking parents who both work 12 to 16 hours a day “simply do not have the tools to be able to deal with gang activity effectively.”

However, families and communities directly affected by gangs are not the only ones who should pay attention to the gang issue.

“This is a societal problem,” said Sano. “Think about it: What kind of future does this city or country have when our kids, those who will be adults in the next 10 to 20 years, have no education or job skills, and all they know is violence?”

In the end, prevention is the most important approach to battling gang activity.

“By the time (the police) get involved, it’s too late,” said Sano. “We have to resort to suppression, through law enforcement and long stays in the state correctional facilities.”

Sugiyama agrees. “If we’ve learned anything from the past, it is to be aggressive now, and not wait until people are getting killed.”

Dana Wu can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

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