By Damien Cave, The New York Times
IRVINGTON, N.J., -- Keith McCrarey was a shy 17-year-old mama’s boy who stood an inch shorter than Michael Jordan and weighed 270 pounds.
“He never wanted to fight,” said his mother, Kathy McCrarey, in an interview at her home on one of this township’s best-kept streets. “He ignored that side of life because he didn’t want any part of it.”
But still, the violence intruded. This spring, Mr. McCrarey, who was also known as Biggz, came home with black eyes and a bruised head. Then, on July 13, a day before he was scheduled to visit recruiters at North Carolina State University, he was killed outside a convenience store three blocks from his home.
For those who knew him, here in this 2.8-square-mile community of 60,000 bordering Newark, Mr. McCrarey’s murder was both shocking and common. The police tallied his death as the 18th of 20 homicides this year. He also became one of seven teenagers killed this year; the second high school student on his street to die by gunfire this summer; and, according to neighbors, the third victim shot outside the convenience store at Lyons Avenue and Lincoln Place since 2002.
Gangs, many say, are to blame for the violence. But community leaders, police officers and local teenagers also admit that Irvington is not dealing with a typical gang situation, in which leaders dictate initiation rites, hierarchies and money-making schemes. Irvington also has to deal with groups of youths who operate outside that structure.
Some Crips and Bloods are mixing and clashing with a growing number of young men who claim a gang affiliation but act on their own to gain the attention of elder, more established gangsters.
On Thursday night, Irvington’s police director, Michael Damiano, the state attorney general, Peter C. Harvey, and the state police held a town meeting, where they laid out law enforcement’s latest response, including after-school programs and an attempt to identify, register and track gang members with a database. In an interview, Mr. Damiano said that competition for turf and the drug trade was what pushed the number of homicides to 30 last year from 9 in 1998, and 20 so far in 2004. “We arrest people every day, and when we do that, there are others looking to take control,” he said.
Residents have started to mobilize as well. Last Saturday, more than 400 people marched through the city with 20 coffins covered in blue and red, colors that represent the Crips and Bloods, respectively. “We wanted to make the community think about what these gangs mean,” said Mayor Wayne Smith, who spoke at the event.
But can marches and databases make a difference? Residents are skeptical. They describe the township as a battlefield where sixth graders carry guns, and they say many male residents are affiliated with gangs and trying to recruit others.
Young men in Irvington say that the gang presence is nearly impossible to avoid. At Irvington High School, there were three cliques, said Nhemie Theodore, 17, a friend and neighbor of Keith McCrarey’s who is now at the University of Minnesota on a football scholarship.
“Either you were a gang member or an athlete, or you were a geek,” he said. “And most people were gang members.”
The police and Irvington school officials deny that gangs have become that pervasive. “Most kids are not involved,” said Walter Fields, a spokesman for the Irvington School District. “There is not a high degree of gang activity in Irvington High School.”
But according to ministers, parents and teenagers, a constant weight of peer pressure on Irvington’s young men: the gangs recruit heavily, and they do not look kindly on those who are not interested.
Tawana Bethea, who lives a block from the high school, said her son, Ronald Bethea, refused to become a Crip two years ago when he was 15 and also had objected when a gang member picked on a middle-school student. Soon, she said, gangs of more than a dozen teenagers would chase him nearly every day.
“He was threatened with machetes,” she said. “People would jump out of the car with guns.”
Ms. Bethea, 37, quit her job to walk him home from school, even though it was just a block away. Then she enrolled him in a night-school program to get him away from the high school. He graduated in June and found a job in Bloomfield. Shortly after that, on Aug. 7, he was fatally shot in an Irvington parking lot as he was on his way home from a party.
“He was just looking forward to being 18 and getting an apartment to move in with his girlfriend,” she said.
When pressed, Ms. Bethea admitted that her son was not entirely without gang connections. Ronald had cousins who were in a gang. When he was with them, she said, their enemies might have assumed he was also in the gang.
Such ties, through family or childhood, are common here. Many people say that gang members, real or aspiring, have become too commonplace to avoid. Mr. Theodore, for example, said that he and Mr. McCrarey occasionally hung out with old friends who had recently started labeling themselves as Crips.
“When we were younger, we were friends with these guys,” he explained. “We can’t just turn our back on them.”
Police and Irvington school officials say they are still struggling to handle Irvington’s mix of hard-core gangsters, those who want to be like them and some who just tag along. An extra 50 officers have been added to the 187-member municipal police force, and they have been active in clearing corners of loiterers and investigating murders.
Arrests have nearly doubled since July 2003, but the murder rate has not dropped, and robberies, auto thefts and violent crimes are down by only 5 percent.
Police concede that Phase 2, the creation of the database of gang members, may not be a slam-dunk either.
The database categories are still being developed, in conjunction with the Police Institute at Rutgers University in Newark, Mr. Damiano said. The program does not yet differentiate between hard-core gang members and those who emulate them, but Mike Wagers, the Police Institute’s executive director, said that researchers were aware of the issue.
The Rev. Ron Christian, pastor of the Christian Love Baptist Church, where Ronnie Bethea and Mr. McCrarey were members, said that spiritual leaders were ready to step in. He is convinced that Irvington is on the verge of a turnaround.
“The whole community has rallied to identify this as our problem,” he said. “It’s starting to awaken.”