By Sarah Hutchins
The Virginian-Pilot
SUFFOLK, Va. — In a windowless room of the Police Department’s 1st Precinct, the walls tell the story of a four-year war on gangs.
Near the door, a color-coded map outlines downtown gang territories. A whiteboard bears the names of people the Neighborhood Enforcement Team — a gang unit formed in 2007 — have recently arrested. On another part of the board, someone has scrawled a list of eight gangs the team has investigated.
From 2007 through November, police officers brought more than 900 criminal charges against more than 350 gang members.
Crime has dropped since the first of two gang units formed, Maj. Stephanie Burch said. Homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults — the biggest street crimes, Burch said — are all down through October of this year. The results, according to City Councilman Charles D. Parr Sr., “speak for themselves.”
Inside the gang unit, however, one word can characterize the systematic elimination of gangs. It’s a word jotted next to three gangs on the office whiteboard:
“Smoked.”
Sgt. T.A. Smith ticked off gang names one night last month as he cruised through neighborhoods known for high crime and a gang presence: Holladay Death Chamber, Five Money Mafia, ABM, Lake Kennedy Posse, Cypress Manor Posse, the Lloyd Street Gang, the G-Shyne Gang. He could have kept going.
The Bounty Hunter Bloods, a national group tied to murders, robberies, shootings and drug dealing in three cities, have called Suffolk home. Federal authorities arrested several of their members earlier this year.
The Williamstown Gang was the violent catalyst that got city officials seriously thinking about gangs, Smith said as he patrolled with two other officers.
“The Williamstown Gang,” Officer Tommy Cain said from the back seat, “they were doing what you typically think of gangs doing: drive-by shootings, that kind of stuff.”
In 2005, a 14-year-old girl was killed when the leader of the gang tried to seek revenge on a rival, the South Suffolk Gangsters. The drive-by shooting caused city leaders to pay more attention to its gang problem.
“Our commonwealth’s attorney was willing to do those kinds of cases, and the judges were willing to hear them,” said Burch, who oversees both of the Police Department’s Neighborhood Enforcement Teams. “Everything fell into place.”
Now the two teams — one for downtown, one for the northern end of the city — are identifying dozens of gang members every year and sending a message to the criminal groups still on the streets: We’re watching.
“There’s your boy, Langston,” Smith said to Officer T. Langston as the team patrolled an apartment complex previously home to two gangs. The group of boys standing by the complex’s playground stared at the officers as they cruised by, and then separated.
In another gang neighborhood, Cypress Manor, Smith slowed the police car to watch three men talking in a courtyard.
“That guy just shoved something in his pocket,” one of the officers said. They all piled out of the car.
Every year gang prosecutors from the commonwealth’s attorney’s office and police officers from the Neighborhood Enforcement Teams talk to middle and high school students about the consequences of joining gangs, said Commonwealth’s Attorney Phil Ferguson.
Their message is simple, said Jim Wiser, one of the office’s gang prosecutors: Join a gang and “you’re going to end up in prison, in the hospital or in the morgue.”
Most Suffolk gang members are in their late teens or early 20s, Smith said. However, the majority of the gang cases Ferguson’s team handles involves juveniles.
Earlier this year, police arrested six juveniles suspected of being in the Lloyd Street Gang. The group’s history included vandalism, shoplifting, assaults on police officers and assaults by mob. The gang’s youngest member was 11, Smith said.
Wiser said one way they measure success is the decreasing severity of charges gang members are facing.
“In beginning, we were dealing with much more serious offenses,” Wiser said. “Now we’re getting them for initiating members. That’s a pretty good situation to be in.”
Ferguson said his office’s four designated gang prosecutors — as many as Norfolk has — are constantly talking to police about the evidence needed to bring gang participation charges.
The felony charge is another weapon in the city’s war on gangs. It allows prosecutors to increase the consequences of a crime that would normally be a misdemeanor, Wiser said.
But it’s not easy to charge someone with gang participation, Ferguson said. Virginia gang statutes are “highly technical,” he said. Safeguards are built in to keep police from infringing on citizens’ rights, he said.
Smith, who leads the downtown Neighborhood Enforcement Team, explained: “Just because there are five guys on the corner doesn’t mean we can bring gang charges.”
Back in the 1st Precinct, Smith, Cain and Langston surveyed drugs and cash they seized from two men they stopped to talk with at Cypress Manor Apartments — home to the Cypress Manor Posse.
The arrest hadn’t gone smoothly. One of the two tried to break away. Dozens of people hanging out at the apartment complex gathered to see Smith and Cain push the man to the ground.
“All of this for a couple bags of weed,” Smith said. “Unbelievable.”
But with every arrest comes the chance to ask questions, to coax information about neighborhoods, gangs or crimes out of people who could help them close a case.
On patrol, gang unit officers look for any reason to stop their car and talk to someone. Broken tail lights, walking the wrong way down the street and sitting in front of a vacant house can be enough.
If they can find a reason to search someone, Smith said, they will.
Community leaders and city officials agree the methods are working.
“We don’t need gangs in the city,” said the Rev. Henry G. Baker, a former Nansemond-Suffolk NAACP president. “The approach by the police has to be more aggressive than some people would like, I’m sure.”
Smith said talking to people — on the streets or in the precinct — is crucial to the success of the gang unit. Most investigations start with a single crime, he said. If a gang connection is identified, the unit will look into other criminal activity or additional gang members. It’s how they’ve been able to bring hundreds of charges.
In the Neighborhood Enforcement Team office, Cain snapped photos of the marijuana — a little more than half an ounce — and $50 in cash from Cypress Manor. Langston added new names to the list of recent arrests. Then the team brought in the man who tried to resist arrest for questioning.
“Are you a member of a gang?” Smith asked him.
“No, sir,” he said.
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