By Erin Fuchs
Chattanooga Times Free Press
DALTON, Ga. — The Memorial Day shooting of a 16-year-old Dalton High School football star has driven home the realization that gangs at not just an Atlanta, New York or L.A. affair.
They can thrive in small U.S. towns like Dalton, Ga., and Cleveland, Tenn.
Gang leaders find no shortage of new recruits in small communities, statistics show. Gang activity surged in small cities between the 1970s and 1990s, according figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The National Youth Gang Center’s 2006 data analysis shows that gang violence in small towns and rural counties has leveled off since the 1990s, but it has by no means disappeared.
“From my experience, gangs are a growing problem,” said Matthew Ryerson, director of the Cleveland-based chapter of Safe Schools, Healthy Students, an anti-violence project.
“Small towns are not immune from the problems that big cities (have),” Mr. Ryerson added.
The National Youth Gang Center analyzed data from cities with populations of 50,000 or less. More than half of these small cities reported at least one gang, and nearly a quarter had between four and six gangs.
“I was here in the 1980s, and drive-by shootings, I had never heard of them,” said Officer Chris McDonald, spokesman for the Dalton police department.
Officer McDonald said that educating the public is the most important tool to stem the growth of gangs in Dalton.
“We need parents to get educated,” Officer McDonald said. “So when they see that notebook with gang symbols, they can say, ‘Are you in a gang?’”
Smaller communities like Dalton and Cleveland have been holding community forums to tell parents what kinds of gang signs to look for. Dalton has a second in a series of gang information forums set for June 26, from 6-8 p.m.
The Cleveland YMCA hosted a gang awareness forum in April this year attended by community members and law-enforcement officials.
An officer from the city’s police department went to the forum, even though Chief of Police Wes Snyder said that gangs aren’t an issue in the town.
“We’re quite fortunate up here,” Chief Snyder said. “I can’t see any real significant events that were, as they say, gang-related.”
But Bradley County Sheriff Tim Gobble said that there is evidence of gang presence in the Cleveland area.
“What we have seen is an increase in tagging, gang marking, or symbols in different parts of the county,” Sheriff Gobble said. “We have seen a number of our inmates with gang signs and tattoos and symbols.”
Sheriff Gobble said that local enforcement believed the gang MS-13 was involved with a homicide and burned body found last year in the Cherokee National Forest. He has requested funding for two detectives to gather information about gang activities in Bradley County.
“It’s something that we need to keep an eye on and not bury our heads in the sand over,” Sheriff Gobble said.
Dalton and Whitfield County, with Calhoun, Ga., and Gordon County, have stepped up their efforts to curb gang violence through the Conasauga Safe Streets Task Force, comprised of local and state police detectives and the FBI.
It was the effort of the Task Force that led to the arrests of five suspects in the shooting of Dalton athlete Andre Johnson, said police spokesman Officer McDonald. At least one suspect is connected with the local gang Tiny Winos.
“Any time an incident like this occurs, you’ve got six officers that can do nothing but work on it,” Officer McDonald said.
Police have only recently begun to record signs of gang activity, according to Kermit McManus, Conasauga Circuit District Attorney.
Both Georgia and Tennessee have laws criminalizing gang activity. Police need to cooperate more with district attorneys so that they can prosecute these gang-related offenses separately, said Mr. McManus.
“One of the hopes is that the Andre Johnson situation that occurred has created a lot of conversation in the community and within the law enforcement community,” Mr. McManus said, “and hopefully will be a catalyst for better efforts on our parts.”
Many advocates and law-enforcement officials say that admitting gangs exist in rural communities is the first step to wiping them out.
“We’ve been lulled into a sense of security,” said Mr. Ryerson, the anti-violence educator in Cleveland, Tenn. “So we don’t talk to our kids about the temptations of gangs and the dangers of gangs, and we really leave ourselves open to that possibility.”
He added, “When you’re in a small town, you want to believe you live in Mayberry.”