Story and Photos By AMANDA PRESLEY
In the heart of downtown Columbia (SC) on a sunny May afternoon, a 21-year-old man with a baby face opens the screen door of a diner and sits at a table near the back. You might have passed this kid, who we’ll call John, on the way to pay your tax bill at the Richland County Administration Building about a block away. Or maybe you met his eye on the sidewalks of Five Points as you rushed to make a lunch appointment. You might have noted his slow swagger, or admired the yellow-and-gray striped shirt he wore. You might have shared a polite smile.
But if you had slowed to look closer at John, you might have spotted the red bandanna tucked in his front jeans pocket. And if you had really examined him, you might have traced the outline of a 9 mm pistol stashed in his pants.
As one of about 300 members of the Blood Gangster Killers, a local sect of the national Bloods gang, John symbolizes the growing gang menace in the Midlands. The threat first started creeping into the area about seven years ago, according to A.V. Strong, director of Operation Gang Out, a community intervention program.
Today about 50 gangs are operating in local communities, according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. They go by names such as United Blood Nation, Cross Bridge Gangsters, Insane Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, Black Gangster Disciples and the Latin Kings, among others.
Beyond numbers and names, the threat has come to the forefront with a rash of gang-related violence in the past couple years and a media frenzy over recent incidents, such as the murder in March of a Bloods member in north Columbia.
Of course, Columbia isn’t alone in facing a gang problem. More than 24,500 gangs — with more than 770,000 members — were operating nationwide in 2000, according to a February 2002 report by the Justice Department’s National Youth Gang Center.
Yet while gangs aren’t unique to South Carolina or the streets of Columbia, the issue has left local law-enforcement agencies scrambling to address the problem. In 2001, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott created a two-person unit to investigate gang-related activity. The Columbia Police Department recently announced a similar program.
The police are trying to determine how to approach the gang problem, how to prevent children from joining the groups and even how to define the term “gang.” Meanwhile, local gang members continue to wage war against each other, and in the midst of the battle, an increasing number of local kids are being recruited to fight. “This thing is getting so big we need to not worry about jurisdictions,” Strong says.
For Midlands residents, the spread of gangs from places like South Central Los Angeles might come as a surprise that challenges idyllic perceptions of life in a sleepy Southern burg.
Surveying the Battlefield
Inside the diner on Harden Street, a waitress hands a plate of collard greens and fried fish to a man dressed in a business suit. At the next table John leans his elbows on the plastic tablecloth and talks with Strong about how, at age 15, the Bloods became his “other family” after his father died of a stroke.
“After that, I went my own way,” he says. “I was like, ‘fuck it’.”
Six years later, John is somewhere in the middle of the gang’s hierarchy. He says he is a five-star general in the gang, a title with which law enforcement is unfamiliar. Whatever his position, John says he’s moved past the petty crimes most lower-level gang members must perform: His duty this week is to shoot a rival gang member, ostensibly in retaliation for robbing one of the Bloods’ leaders.
John says it’s the fourth time he’s been ordered to shoot someone, though he says none of the previous shootings resulted in murder. However, he couldn’t question an order to commit murder, either, John says. “It’s like listening to your dad,” he says. “You’ve got to do it.”
When asked how he will feel when shooting his victim, John shrugs and looks up. “I’m going to feel regular,” he says. “I’m going to be me. Fuck it.”
Just days before John’s visit to the diner, about 100 officers and community leaders gather inside the sparkling brick S.C. Department of Archives and History building across town to hear what Lott and one of his investigators have to say about gangs.
At the S.C. Child Law Office Conference, Lott takes the wooden stage first, smiling. He waves off a woman offering a microphone and speaks directly to the audience. “We’ve got some people who want to bury their heads in the sand and say we don’t have gangs here in South Carolina,” Lott says. “[But] regardless of whether it’s the Lowcountry, the Upstate or the Midlands, we’ve got gangs in South Carolina.”
Lott’s assertion strikes at the heart of a debate among law enforcement agencies and gang experts about how serious local gangs are. The debate has played out predominantly between the Sheriff’s Department, which says gangs are a primary source of Midlands-area crime, and the Columbia Police Department, which considers gangs an offshoot of juvenile delinquency.
One of the main points of disagreement between the agencies is how to define “gangs.” For the city’s part, a gang is a group whose members meet solely for the purpose of committing crimes. Reading that definition aloud, Police Department Capt. Steve Conley says, “I don’t know how many in Columbia meet that definition.”
Conley, chief of investigations for the department, asserts that most gang members in the Midlands don’t mesh with the national trend. For one, local gangsters are younger than those in most other cities, he says. The majority are still in school, and their gangs consist mostly of their neighborhood friends rather than a strict, established hierarchy, he says. For these reasons, Conley says he thinks that most juvenile crimes committed by groups aren’t really gang-related or even planned in great detail. “It’s more a crime of opportunity,” he says.
The Sheriff’s Department has adopted a much broader definition of gangs, including any group of at least three people that is identified with signs or symbols and is related to criminal activity. This definition finds Lott attributing more and more crimes to gangs, such as a spike in armed robberies this year. In turn, Lott has initiated a high-profile education campaign about gangs, including sending Investigator James Richardson, one of the county’s two full-time gang deputies, across the state each week to speak at meetings like the Child Law Conference.
Richardson is a charismatic, straight-talking officer with a dry wit and a habit of tugging at the collar of his starched blue uniform. The conference is being held on a Thursday, and Richardson already has given four presentations earlier in the week. He has two more scheduled for the weekend.
While running a PowerPoint presentation illustrating gang history and social structure, Richardson employs wry humor to work the crowd. As a gang’s secret alphabet flashes on the screen, he deadpans, “These are the same knuckleheads that will fail every class in school, and I mean including lunch and P.E.” Later, Richardson asks a gray-haired man in the audience to recite how, to most school kids, the clothing label Adidas used to stand for “All Day I Dream About Sex.” Today, it means “Another Day I Did Another Slob,” Richardson says, referring to a derogatory term for a Bloods member.
The audience’s laughter dies down.
Richardon goes on to detail signs that teachers and community leaders can use to identify gang activity. He explains that most gangs use a “book of words” resembling an orientation manual to inform new members about the gang’s history, leadership structure and symbols. The books often describe the meaning of gang graffiti, which Richardson says the groups use to mark their territory. For example, Chicago-based Folk Nation uses a six-pointed star, a three- to five-pointed crown with the points facing down, or a billiards eight ball.
Gangs also hold regular meetings and oftentimes require weekly dues, as would a civic club, Richardson says. “These kids aren’t stupid,” he tells the audience. “They are capable of learning — the drive is just not there to learn the right things.”
Following the presentation, Richardson sips a cup of coffee at a nearby Waffle House. He starts the conversation by saying he doesn’t want any personal information about him in this story. He doesn’t want his picture taken. Even the license plate of his truck is untraceable, he explains, as a means of protecting his investigations and the more than 100 gang informants working for the Sheriff’s Department.
The precautions aren’t because Richardson sees all gang members as dangerous, he says. “They’re generally good when they’re alone,” he says. “It’s when you have a group that there’s a problem.”
As groups, local gangs have been responsible for several headline-making crimes in recent years, Richardson says. Some examples include the 2001 murder of a Benedict College student, which at least one witness said stemmed from a dispute between a Crips member and a Bloods member; the August 2001 murder and robbery near USC of a federal prosecutor from Illinois; the March 29 murder in north Columbia of known Bloods member James “BayBay” Williams by a Crips member; and the May 23 robbery of Palmetto Firearms on Broad River Road, which spurred the arrest of at least three Crips members. The Palmetto Firearms case also prompted two more arrests after Crips members broke into Providence Hospital and assaulted a witness in the case.
Gang activity also is cited in numerous less-publicized incidents, such as a shooting at Irmo High School in May in which no one was harmed. A witness to the incident said the shooter, a 16-year-old girl, was a known Bloods member, according to a Lexington County Sheriff’s Department report.
Richardson’s assertions about gang threats also are bolstered by federal estimates of gang activity in South Carolina. A December 2001 study released by the U.S. Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center points to gangs as a major factor in the state’s drug trade. “Gang activity and its associated violence are concentrated in several areas of South Carolina,” the report says. “The Charleston, Columbia and Greenville areas have the largest number of gangs in the state, and most are involved in drug distribution.”
Robert Walker, a gang expert and former officer with the Drug Enforcement Agency who lives in Columbia, says drugs are a primary reason for the rise of gangs. “On occasion, gangs in certain areas like Chicago will target an area to establish a gang for the purpose of distributing narcotics,” Walker says. Other times, gang members move to new cities with their families and want to start their own group, he says. Or neighborhood kids start emulating “gangsta” rap artists or gang-themed movies.
But no matter how innocuous the reason for a gang’s formation, Walker says law enforcement should take all gangs seriously. “If you just continue to deny the fact that gangs are there, then you allow the gangs to establish a power source,” he says, “and you’re not doing any good to the community whatsoever.”
Capt. Conley of Columbia says he agrees that the public should be vigilant about reporting gang activity and other crime. “Everybody always needs to be on guard,” he says. But Conley also says he worries that people might use the gang threat to stereotype children.
“People are quick to say that ‘some kid came by and keyed my car, and he was wearing a blue baseball cap, so it must be gang-related,’” Conley says. “There are a lot of youths who are involved in criminal activity, but I am somewhat hesitant to label anyone who commits criminal activity as a gang [member].”
Despite such hesitancy by Conley, the Columbia Police Department suddenly has started to focus on gangs. In May the department formed a two-person gang unit similar to Richland County’s. The city also proclaimed a new “zero-tolerance policy” against graffiti, truancy and vandalism, as well as weapons, curfew and noise violations.
Strong of Gang Out says it’s about time that city officials start acknowledging the gang problem. “Ain’t nobody laid a hand on Columbia and blessed Columbia to where we don’t have the same problems as the rest of the country,” says Strong, a former Columbia police officer. “Is death real? Is a drive-by shooting real? South Carolina is today where L.A. was 20 years ago.”
Prisoners of War
Strong should know. Besides being a former cop, Strong also is a former gang member from California who’s seen at least 10 relatives die from gang-related incidents. Today, he works to save Midlands youth like 15-year-old Ronkon (not his real name) from the clutch of gangs.
Ronkon is sitting inside Gang Out’s temporary headquarters on Fort Jackson Boulevard, waiting to attend his third gang intervention meeting. The shy teenager barely makes eye contact when he talks about joining Folk Nation at age 12, and the words come out in a nervous jumble. He has faced nearly every setback that could prompt a child to seek the refuge of a gang: a father he last saw when he was 3 years old, a brother who was killed by a Bloods member, and a lack of things to do with his time.
Ronkon says part of the reason he joined a gang is that most of his neighbors were joining. “In my neighborhood, we didn’t have a basketball court,” Ronkon says. “The only thing we could do is walk around.”
Ronkon endured a 60-second assault by six gang members to gain entry into Folk Nation to avenge the murder of his brother, who was not a gang member. Though he hasn’t killed anyone — yet, he says — he has shot at people.
When asked what his late brother would think about Ronkon’s gang affiliation, Ronkon pauses. “Knowing him, he would probably tell me to try to get out of it,” the soft-spoken kid says. “But now he can’t say nothing.”
Most experts point to a need for recognition or a sense of belonging as the main forces behind gang membership. Walker, the local expert, says children of single parents or parents who work excessively might look elsewhere for a sense of family. “There’s just no family support and the kids are by themselves too often,” he says. “The kid gets totally involved in the gang scene and the next thing you know, mom can’t control him.”
Strong says he receives about 300 calls a week from Midlands parents who suspect their children might be gang members — and the calls aren’t just about low-income black kids. “It doesn’t matter how much money you make,” Strong says. “It doesn’t matter how much you go to church or what color you are, this problem is affecting everybody.”
In fact, whites in general and women in particular are the two fastest growing segments of gang membership, and many of them live in middle- to upper-class neighborhoods, investigator Richardson says. “People just don’t want to admit it,” he says. “We think that because of demographics, that they can’t be a gang member.”
Back at the Gang Out office, Strong sits in a circle with about a dozen parents of gang members who talk about the shock of discovering their children’s violent streaks. One mother recounts reporting her son to the police after she discovered he attempted to rob a fast-food restaurant with fellow gang members. Another mother says her son was forcibly beaten into joining a gang in a high school restroom. Yet another mother, who works two jobs and must take time off from work to come to these meetings, says she wants to place her child in foster care because of his repeated violent threats.
Strong encourages the parents to offer each other support, and he gives them advice for helping their children get out of gangs. He says the first thing adults need to do is something that most law enforcement officers and politicians don’t do: listen to the gang members. “It’s very important that we as a community come together and talk to these kids,” Strong says. “I don’t agree with their philosophy, but we need to listen to them to see what we can change.”
Strong says that some ways to get children out of gangs is to help them find jobs or become more involved in school or extracurricular activities. “We’ve got to help our kids dream, because so many kids have lost their dreams,” he says. “Our young people are in need of some guidance.”
Walker says it’s not easy to get out of a gang. Most gangs will beat a member severely for trying to leave, he says, and in larger cities they might even kill a member.
Yet Walker agrees with Strong that the best way to get out could be as simple as getting a job. He explains that if a child has to work during evenings and weekends, he has a plausible excuse to not participate in many gang activities. “Then they can just gradually creep away,” he says. The other, more severe option is for children to move to another state and never speak of their time in a gang, Walker says. Either way, it’s feasible, he says. “There is a lot of talk about not being able to get out, but there’s a lot of people walking around today that are successful [at it].”
And some of those people, like Strong, are going back to gangs to try to rescue other members. The odds of successfully getting out are better than even, he says, adding that Gang Out has more luck convincing lower-level members to quit than hardcore “lifers,” most of whom Strong says are probably beyond saving. “There is a group that probably needs to be incarcerated,” he says. “But there’s a lot we can save.”
One gang member Strong refuses to give up on is John, the 21-year-old Bloods member. Sitting across from John at the diner, Strong asks the young man about gang life and how it might impact John’s son, who is 3. Strong paints a scenario of rival gang members shooting up John’s house, or riddling his son with bullets at a movie theater or shopping mall. Yet through it all, John remains unfazed.
“I’ve gotten too far in to get out,” he says, shrugging.
Ultimately, this young man could represent the fate of a growing number of Midlands youth who have fallen so far through the cracks they no longer see a life without violence or drug dealing as an option. And while the powers that be rush to make up for lost time by trying to define gangs, establish whose problem the kids are and determine which children can be saved, the war between gangs like the Bloods, Crips and Folk Nation will wage on, and kids like John and Ronkon will continue being called to battle.
For John, it appears he’s already admitted defeat. “I’m in it till death,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “You can slow me down, but you can’t make me drop my colors.” Minutes later, the baby-faced gangster stands and walks out the screened door of the diner, returning to the streets of Columbia.