by Nick Madigan, The New York Times
GARDEN GROVE, Calif., -- In the virtual world, brawny heroes stalk and destroy their cyber enemies in a cacophony of explosions and gunfire, their every move choreographed by youths who spend hours playing the dark, violent games in cafes and arcades equipped with dozens of computer terminals.
But here the carnage on the screens has moved into the real world, the police say, with gang members descending on some cafes to exact vengeance for offenses that usually originate elsewhere.
On Dec. 30, Phuong Huu Ly, 20, died after he was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver in the parking lot outside the PC Cafe, one of more than 20 cybercafes that have opened in the last three years in this Orange County city of 174,000 south of Los Angeles. Jim Hoang Nguyen, 21, who was on probation for a 1999 house burglary in Fountain Valley, was arrested and charged with murder. Mr. Nguyen is thought to be a gang member, the police said.
Eight youths, some girls and all high school students, were arrested after three young men were attacked with baseball bats, hammers and wrenches on Nov. 3 at the same location. In December, a man was stabbed in the arm at the I-Net PC Cafe.
But it was the murder of Mr. Ly that brought the confluence of gangs and computer games — once the province of harmless nerds — to a dangerous level.
“That was a wake-up call,” said Bruce A. Broadwater, 60, who has been the mayor of Garden Grove for eight years. “We suddenly thought, What’s going on here? Are these cafes places where hoodlums hang out, like pool halls in the old days?”
On Tuesday, the City Council plans to consider restrictions on the cybercafes. Among the suggestions are a moratorium on permits to open more cafes. Some cafes stay open until 4 a.m, but the proposed rules would have them close at midnight. Guards and closed-circuit surveillance cameras would also be required at the cafes. No more than one computer would be allowed for every 20 square feet of floor space, Mr. Broadwater said. Some cafes have as many as 60 or 70 terminals so close together that they violate fire codes, he said.
“I’ve gone and looked at a few of these places, and I’ve seen very little wrong with them,” Mr. Broadwater said. But just because their patrons are honing their computer skills “doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in school,” he said.
Today, perhaps because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, several of the cafes were very busy at midday.
“Nine of 10 people here are playing video games,” said a man who was spending a few hours at Net2Net, a cyberjoint on Garden Grove Boulevard. The man, who like more than a third of the population here is of Vietnamese ancestry, was playing Counterstrike, a particularly violent game, with 20 other players on other terminals at Net2Net and other locations.
Nearby, Don Le, 14, was playing so intently that he did not look away from the computer screen while speaking with a visitor about the violence, which he said he had heard about but not seen.
“The owners keep it under control,” Mr. Le said. “The places I’ve been in are quite safe.”
A co-owner of Net2Net, who would not give his name, said he planned to attend the City Council meeting on Tuesday to discuss security improvements. “We’re going to support whatever the city wants to do to protect our customers from these kinds of accidents,” he said. “We’ve already spent $800 to buy four cameras and a monitor, and we’re looking into hiring a security guard.”
Detective Peter Vi, who specializes in investigating gangs, said most problems with youths in the area began in the schools. “It’ll start with a personal problem, and then someone will break someone else’s window and he’ll call in a friend who’s a gang member,” Detective Vi said. “Then it’ll become a beating, and it’ll evolve to gang on gang.”
Most gangs are Vietnamese, he said, although there are many Koreans and Hispanics in the area, which includes the enclave of Little Saigon in Westminster.
“There are at least a dozen Vietnamese gangs in Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana,” said Detective Vi, who is investigating four serious fights at cybercafes, not counting the killing of Mr. Ly.
In December at a business called Netzone, several gang members fired from their car at a group of young men who had been playing on computers.
“The gangs go look in these places because they know, hopefully, that their enemy is going to be there,” Detective Vi said.
The trouble at cybercafes is not confined to Garden Grove. On Nov. 2 in Kearny Mesa, near San Diego, a boy, 17, was stabbed in the chest in a fight over a computer game in an arcade. On Oct. 17, 2000, Hung Ly, 18, was stabbed to death and Andrew Vu, 18, and Quan To, 21, were hurt in a fight between rival gangs at the Gameworks video arcade in Santa Ana.
At the PC Cafe, where Phuong Huu Ly was stabbed, the manager, Eric Cho, 28, said some customers played on computers from opening time at 11 a.m. until 2 a.m., paying a $15 fee instead of the usual $2 an hour.
“If they ditch school, there’s no place else to go,” Mr. Cho said. “Most of the kids are nice kids. They just play games. They don’t cause trouble.”