Anderson SC, AKA gangland:

Oct 26, 2009, 11:07 AM

ANDERSON — Randall Brown remembered the first time he encountered a father and son from the same gang.

“We had confiscated the son’s colors when he came through the door,” he said. “Later that night, as he was leaving, his dad showed up wearing the colors and told the boy in no uncertain terms he was to get his colors back.

“That experience was eye-opening even for me, and I work with kids in gangs on a regular basis.”

As gangs bridge age gaps that astound even people like Brown, founder and director of Anderson Fusion Warehouse, reports of their activities continue to sprout, like multi-colored weeds, across the county.

On Sept. 24, Jocastarius Timpson was sentenced to at least 17 years in prison for his role in several armed robberies in Anderson County over a six-week period in 2008. Prosecutors said Timpson is a member of the Bloods, one of the most visible gangs in the county.

On Aug. 29 at a Pendleton High School football game, sheriff’s deputies in plain clothes arrested and charged three men, who investigators said are gang members, with carrying or displaying guns in a public place.

On July 12 near Belton, one of the men later charged in Pendleton, Kendrick McDowell, was hit in the head and arm during a nightclub shooting that left an innocent bystander, Charles Sullivan, fighting for his life with a bullet in his brain.

Also wounded in the shooting was Jesse Oliver III, the man many law enforcement officials believe founded one of the largest criminal street gangs in the county, the Brick City Boys.

On March 20 in Anderson, Terrell Merriweather was shot to death in the front yard of a home on Dickens Avenue, less than one mile from the county courthouse square.

The man charged with his death, Jarvis Shontavious Jones, is a suspected gang member.

And that’s just this year.

“In 2002, nine gang-related crimes were reported in Anderson County,” said Deputy Mark Gregory with the Anderson County Gang Task Force. “By 2005, we documented 32. In 2007, the number jumped to 54.”

For Randall Brown, the news of gang-related activity is “never surprising. What is surprising is how fast it is growing, and how few people really realize it.”

Currently, there are between 300 and 400 known gang members in Anderson County, Mark Gregory said. “But, for every one member we know about, there are at least two more we probably don’t know about,” he said. “Also, there are at least 25 gangs now documented as being in the county.”

Gangs known to be operating in the county include the Bloods, Crips, Folk Nation, Brick City Boys, Black Mafia and Insane Disciples. The Insane Disciples are a set, or support group, for the Folk Nation.

Statistics are not yet available for 2008 or 2009, Gregory said. “But it won’t be surprising if the numbers keep trending up.”

The Gang Task Force is made up of three full-time investigators, including Gregory. It was formed in February by Anderson Police Chief Martin Brown and Sheriff John Skipper. It is a joint operation between the city and county and is funded by both departments.

“Our job,” Gregory said, “is to assist city and county criminal investigators. Our purpose is to identify and address the links between crimes and gang activity.”

Guns, Drugs, Gangs

“There are three criminal activities that usually go hand in hand,” Gregory said. “Guns, drugs and gangs. You can have gun and drug crimes without gangs ... but you cannot have gang crimes without, at least, guns and drugs.”

Those elements pose a formidable threat to the community, he said.

“Regardless of which gang it is, they are not wannabes. Some are more organized than others, but that does not reduce the threat.”

That is why, Gregory said, gang-related crimes are not always reported as such. “We investigate based on the crime, which means a shooting or drug bust may not be made public as being gang-related.”

The challenge for law enforcement is in how nimble criminal gangs can be.

With an ability to adapt, improvise and reincarnate themselves in the form of gangs-within-gangs, Gregory said, they can shift tactics, change the way they communicate and even adjust their physical identifiers as needed.

“Once upon a time, gang members wore colors to identify themselves,” Gregory said. “But even that continues to change. Once you find out what they’re doing to identify themselves, they change. They’ll even start wearing rubber bands in a certain way, if that’s what it takes.”

Pulling out a photo of a gang member, Gregory points to several physical characteristics, including a red bandanna tucked in a rear pants pocket. The most prominent characteristic, however, is the man’s tattoos.

“For a gang member, tattoos tell a story,” he said. “Like the gang graffiti people might see on walls or street signs, the tattoos on a gang member’s body send a message about who they are, what gang they are in and, in some cases, what crimes they have committed.”

Tony Avendorph, a criminal investigator with more than 40 years of experience investigating gangs in Chicago and the Maryland suburbs, recently spent three days with the Anderson County Gang Task Force.

Avendorph, president of T.A. Associates, a law enforcement training and consulting service, rode around Anderson with members of the task force who briefed him on what gangs are operating and where.

Stopping in front of an abandoned, graffiti-crossed home near the intersection of K Street and Medina Street, Avendorph got out of the car and described what the convoluted signs and symbols meant.

“You see one color painted over the other color? You’ve got Bloods coming in here and tagging over Crips,” Avendorph said. “What that means is both gangs are marking their territory by over-writing one another’s graffiti.”

That is important, Avendorph said, “because tagging escalates into other activities that are a lot more dangerous than painting the side of a house. They’re not just doing this stuff to tell people they’re here, they’re communicating with one another, too.”

Growing, building,

expanding

“One of our most dangerous criminal street gangs was started, we believe, by a 16-year-old Anderson high school student about four years ago,” Gregory said. “Now there are more than 200 members in it.”

Sgt. Jeff Mosher with the Task Force said the gang “now has ties to several other states. They are a full-fledged criminal organization, and they started right here.”

Mosher pointed to a gang-related shooting at Applebee’s on Clemson Boulevard four years ago as indicative of how dangerous, and widespread, gang activity has become.

Two T.L. Hanna High School students were among the five people arrested and charged in the shooting that left one woman injured. Investigators said the shooting was the result of mounting tension between two gangs — the East Brick, or E-Brick, and the Southside gangs.

“When the Applebee’s shooting happened, a lot of people took notice because it happened on a Friday night, on Clemson Boulevard, at a crowded restaurant,” he said. “People began to ask questions.”

Asking questions, Avendorph said, is one thing a community must do on a continuing basis.

“In 40 years of doing this, I can say there ain’t gonna ever be a catch-all solution for gangs. But I do know one thing — a community that denies, for whatever reason, that gangs are a part of their reality gives them a lot of leeway.”

Avendorph also spoke about another disturbing trend, the relationship between gangs and terrorism.

“These gangs aren’t stupid,” he said. “They know they can work together with terrorists to get what they want to one another’s benefit. And because these bangers know our laws as good or better than we do, they make a perfect host for terrorist cells.”

A 2007 report written by G.I. Wilson, a criminal justice professor and retired Marine Corps colonel, and John P. Sullivan of the Los Angeles Police Department said, “Traditional criminal activities like drug trafficking, robbery and smuggling are rapidly becoming the main source of terrorism funding.”

The report links the activities of several American gangs and foreign groups, including certain Islamic terrorist groups, with the El Rukns of Chicago and the Japanese yakuza.

The report says that while the role of gangs in terrorist-level violence is undisputed, “some of these facts remind us of how pitifully little we have done about the gang problem; and of how scant the answers are to major gang questions like ‘How many gang members are there in America?’”

“Based on my training so far,” Gregory said, “There certainly could be a link between gangs and terrorists on the national scale. Here in Anderson, such a link hasn’t been made.”

Gregory said, “At this time, it’s still unknown how many actual gang members are in Anderson County. The creation of the Task Force puts us on the right track to answer these questions, but it will take time.

“And while we are investigating answers to those questions, the problem we face is that the kids get older, and the gang influence continues.”

Like the street, schools are not immune

Gregory said gangs are in local high schools. He then paused and said, “...not just our high schools, or even our middle schools. We’re starting to see kids affiliating with gangs in elementary schools. I’ve presented gang information to the faculty of two local elementary schools. These young children probably aren’t active members, but they’re already identifying with a certain gang.”

Amy Bradshaw, director of the Anderson County Department of Juvenile Justice, said gangs are “absolutely” in our schools.

“Kids who do not have a strong family structure tell us they are taken care of in the gang. They have a place, a group, they can fill their need to belong.”

“Unity, family, gang. Those three ideas play a very large part in the spirit of a gang,” said Sgt. Mike Clardy, the third member of the Gang Task Force.

“The only problem is, when they get in, it’s very hard to get out,” said Bradshaw. “They have initiation practices to get in, and they have initiation practices to get out. And the getting-out part is dangerous, and designed to discourage them from leaving.

“It’s a statewide problem,” she said. “They ebb and flow, but they’re always here.”

http://www.independentmail.com/news/2009/oct/25/task-force-says-gangs-anderson-are-real/

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

Anderson SC, AKA gangland:

Which raises a question we really need to answer.

Whihc is worse? Anderson or Columbia?***

Greeleyville***

TigerBoard POTD