Police: Inter-gang battles rising

Gang activity escalating; incidents are less random and more violent

Terry Hankins Jason Lechleiter, gang-enforcement officer for the Petaluma Police Department, conducts a search. Zoom Photo

(Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on local gangs. This story will discuss police efforts to deal with gang crimes. Next week’s article will focus on preventive and corrective efforts by community organizations and groups.)

While isolated cases of gang members attacking residents wearing red in Petaluma have grabbed local, regional and even national headlines, gang crimes in the city generally have drifted away from attacks on innocent victims and toward inter-gang wars and more violent incidents, said Jason Lechleiter, the only full-time gang-enforcement officer for the Petaluma Police Department.

“Petaluma has gone through a change,” he said. “We’ve been seeing more of an increase in gang-on-gang crimes during the past two years, and definitely are finding more violent incidents.”

“Gang-vs.-gang crimes are increasing,” confirmed Police Chief Steve Hood, who supervised a gang task force and violence-suppression unit while serving for 17 years as a corporal, detective, sergeant, lieutenant and SWAT commander for the Salinas Police Department.

This is partly because more norteño gang members have been coming to the city, which still has far more members of their rivals, the sureños. Norteños are mainly second- and third-generation Latino residents and identify with the color red. Sureños, which make up about 60 percent of the 3,000 gang members in Sonoma County, are mainly from Southern California and Mexico, and claim the color blue. La Primera and several other sureño subgroups exist in Petaluma.

Some of the recent crimes in Petaluma have involved current or former residents of Santa Rosa, where the police department has beefed up its gang-enforcement unit. During a presentation to the Petaluma City Council on July 2, Hood emphasized that Santa Rosa gang activity isn’t moving exclusively and directly to Petaluma, and added that if large-scale displacement occurs, his department “will send a clear message” that illegal gang activity won’t be tolerated in Petaluma.

Lechleiter agreed with this assessment, saying, “We are seeing more gang members from outside the area, so the tide has turned from gang activity basically involving Petaluma gang members. But gang members from other cities aren’t targeting Petaluma, in particular.”

Some of these outside gang members are high-profile leaders in the gang community, and Petaluma police have arrested several of them, from Santa Rosa, Stockton and other cities.

“We’ve been effective in arresting a lot of the key players, or most active gang members, and they’re being prosecuted and sentenced,” Lechleiter said.

Dealing with a hardened, older gang veteran can be quite different than coping with a younger, less experienced member.

“Any time we deal with someone who is older and who has been entrenched in the gang lifestyle, we face more of a challenge because they’re street smart. They’ve received plenty of street training on how to avoid law enforcement personnel,” Lechleiter said.

Arrests of these key members have helped to boost the police department’s gang-crime statistics this year. Police reported 94 gang-related incidents from Jan. 1 to Aug. 21, resulting in 48 arrests and the accumulation of 50 field interview cards for cases in which a report was written but no citation was issued. Forty-two of the 94 incidents involved minor vandalism or graffiti.

In comparison, in 2006 police recorded 115 gang-related incidents, 121 arrests and 75 FIs. Forty-two of the incidents were minor vandalism or graffiti. In 2005, police reported 63 incidents, 33 arrests and 130 FIs. As in 2006, 42 of the incidents involved minor vandalism or graffiti.

Frequently during the past three years, Petaluma police personnel have cautioned against interpreting an increase in gang incidents and arrests as a rise in gang activity. They have asserted that while this may be one factor, often a more important cause is accelerated law-enforcement efforts.

“But lately, the incidents and arrests mainly have been due to more crimes occurring, rather than to us being proactive,” Lechleiter said.

Generally, police calls for service have steadily increased, and this has had an impact on the whole department, including gang enforcement.

“Officers now are pretty much streamlined: They have less discretionary time,” Hood said.

Around 60 documented gang members live in Petaluma, and range in age from about 12 to 25.

Beside Lechleiter, the Petaluma Police Department has 10 part-time gang-enforcement officers. During the school year, two school resource officers help with gang enforcement, among other things. Officer Danny Miller serves at Casa Grande High School and Kenilworth Junior High, while Officer Ed Esponda works at Petaluma High School and Petaluma Junior High School. They also serve the continuation schools, and Drug Abuse Resistance Education Officer Bill Baseman assists at these and the four other schools.

All of the other officers in the department receive gang training and updates, and Lechleiter says that there isn’t a huge difference in gang-enforcement skills between them and the gang-enforcement officers.

“But there would be a gap if our department wasn’t focus-ed on keeping them informed and prepared,” he said.

Sgt. Jim Stephenson, supervisor of the police department’s street crimes and gang-enforcement unit, previously has said that despite intensified law-enforcement efforts, gang crime could get out of control in Petaluma.

“It’s not out of hand, but we’re dealing with difficult staffing issues,” Lechleiter said.

Some help should be on the way, now that a departmental hiring freeze has been lifted. One newly hired officer graduated from the Public Safety Training Center in Windsor on Friday, so the department now has 77 officers.

“We hope to hire six more officers by the end of the year, and I would like one of these to be a full-time gang officer,” Hood said. “We’re working diligently to fill the spots.”

Generally, officers begin working as a regular member of the department about a year after they are interviewed. After two months of background processing, the officer spends five months at the training center and five months in field training.

A legislative effort designed to boost police staffing — a quarter-cent sales tax increase — was proposed by City Councilmembers Keith Canevaro and Mike O’Brien last year, but it never was formally considered.

“There were some preliminary discussions, but it never got much further than that. It did come up at the city’s last budget meeting, though,” Hood said.

Gang crime continues to take place throughout the city, and has no definite time pattern in terms of seasons, months, days of the week or times of day, Lechleiter said.

“That is what’s so difficult about dealing with it — it doesn’t seem to have a pattern,” he said.

But one area that has become more manageable is the Lakeville Resort Apartments, once a hotbed of gang activity.

“We’ve absolutely seen a huge difference, because of a collaboration between police and the managers there,” Lechleiter said.

(Contact Dan Johnson at dan.johnson@arguscourier.com)