'Gang culture' is a warning signal

Community agencies, churches, schools have roles helping parents keep kids out of gangs.

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO

Date published: 5/25/2006

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO Youth gangs are a statewide, national and even international problem--but one that needs to be addressed at the community level.

Law enforcement officials alone can't eradicate gangs, said Robert Kipper, executive director of Richmond's Gang Reduction and Intervention Program, or GRIP, which is run through the Virginia attorney general's office.

"You are not going to arrest yourself out of this problem," Kipper said at a Virginia Family Strengthening Conference workshop yesterday at the Bragg Hill Family Life Center in Fredericksburg.

Richmond is one of four cities piloting the U.S. Department of Justice-funded program, along with Miami, Los Angeles and Milwaukee, Kipper said.

The program has four components to address youth gangs:

Prevention, or engaging youth in school, church, sports and community activities.

Intervention, or targeting youth who exhibit warning signs, such as withdrawal from family, school and activities.

Suppression, or enforcing existing laws and penalties.

Re-entry, or helping connect ex-offenders with jobs and other necessities upon release.

Police officers are trained to lead GRIP lessons for students from kindergarten through high school. The lessons vary from simple discussions on the importance of rules to the way the Code of Virginia in section 18.2-46.1 defines gangs: a formal or informal group of at least three people, which has a primary goal of committing crimes and an identifiable name or symbol.

The presence of gangs themselves are only part of the problem, Kipper said.

So-called "gang culture," such as certain slang words, tattoos and style of dress is a problem among today's youth.

"Everybody that wears a do-rag is not a gang member, but everybody that wears a do-rag wants to be identified with gang culture," Kipper said.

Signs of gang culture led to charges against five James Monroe High School football players who were at a CD release party at a Spotsylvania motel in February where a 16-year-old Spotsylvania youth was slain. They were charged with participating in a street gang and attempted malicious wounding in connection with the stabbing of Courtland High School junior Baron Braswell II.

The gang charges were dismissed and four JM students were convicted of misdemeanor assault. Spotsylvania Juvenile Judge Joseph J. Ellis handed down community service sentences and a warning against gang imitation.

"You have played a dangerous game," Ellis told the defendants at their May 1 trial, "posturing and posing as something you clearly are not."

Follow us on

Date published: 5/25/2006