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ure is small compared tc the actual number
of youths here, who, for lack of official
papers, stay out of the mainstream.
David Spillers, a lieutenant in the
Gainesville police department and head offi
cer of the gang task force there, said he’s
seen it all before. In fact, he and Barron
agreed that the Sur 13 activity here filtered
in mostly from Gainesville.
In a period of four years, Spillers said hCo
seen his area go from a few delinquents
spray painting stop signs to 14 to 15 sepa
rate gangs engaging in drive-by shootings.
“Athirst they trickle in,” Spillers said.
“You start with a couple kids, then three or
four members and the next thing you know
you have a gang 30 to 40 strong.”
Trtfe gang unit was formed by a joint effort
of the city of Gainesville and Hall Ounty
when, Spillers said, “we came to have way
more murders in our community than we
cared to have.”
Today, the unit has eight full-time officers,
who are assisted by one FBI agent, iwo ATF
agents and three agents from the
Department of Immigration and
Naturalization Services.
Spijlers said he doesn’t foresee a reduc
tion in the Hispanic gang presence in his
area.
Hall County’s Hispanic population is
around 30,000, probably about three times
the number here. Spillers is quick to offer
the reason for the immigration: Hispanics
are attracted to both Athens-Clarke and Hall
counties by labor-intensive industry such as
poultry plants.
Bariron said he thinks there’s more to it
than that. When a gang forms in a communi
ty like Athens, he said, it does so knowing
the local police have little knowledge of
either gangs or Hispanics. Gangs are instant
ly at an advantage as their movements and
identity are hidden within the fold of cultural
misunderstandings between police and the
Hispanic community.
SLIPPERY CATEGORIES
In the middle of a recent ride-along with a
reporter, Barron was called back to the sta
tion. Walking out of the building, his usually
confident air was off slightly, tinged by a ner
vous apprehension.
With his heavily tattooed forearms and
stocky frame, Barron is a man who, as a rule,
speaks with a boisterous, frank spirit. But his
voice was a little lower as he stepped back
into the car.
“Look, until they are convicted as a gang
member, I can’t cadi them a gang member,”
Barron said. “We haven’t convicted Los
Primos as a gang, so we have to call them a
group.”
The legal aspects of officially identifying
and convicting gangs is tricky. Although he
denied the trip to his lieutenant’s office con
cerned the legal particulars of the term
“gang,” after spending a couple hours desig
nating Los Primos as such, Barron spent the
next 30 to 45 minutes trying to distance him
self from the word.
Many who work with area youth don’t
bother splitting legal hairs.
“When you tour the neighborhoods and
see what’s going on, the presence of a gang
is evident," said Paul Dominguez, executive
director of the Boys and Girls Club of
Athens. “With more and more Hispanics
coming into the community this is the sort
of thing that seems to follow.”
Barron said his hope rests on “The Street
Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act” — a
piece of legislation put into law by the
Georgia Legislature this year. The act, which
became effective April 1, treats street gangs
more like organized crime than did past law,
and provides for quicker prosecution and
seizure of gang property, as well as tighter
bond regulations and strict sentences for
those attempting to intimidate witnesses in
gang-related trials.
Gerald Brown, chief assistant district
attorney for Athens-Clarke County, said the
biggest problem his office has had has been
getting testimony from the community to
prosecute alleged gang members.
“We are hearing about gang member
ship,” Brown said, “but at this point we’re
trying to prosecute the aggravated assaults
as aggravated assaults” because nobody will
stand up in court and link it to gang activity.
Barron said the communication between
himself and the D.A.’s office is often lacking.
When info r med that the charges against
an alleged ex-leader of Los Primos, Juventino
Hernandez, had been transferred to state
court and that the sentence handed down
was 40 hours of community service, Barron
couldn’t believe it. Hernandez was charged
with aggravated assault and trespassing for
the beating of an employee of Mexicali Grill
during working hours. When contacted, the
victim had no comment on either the inci
dent or Los Primos.
“I thought he was in the Atlanta peniten
tiary,” Barron said. “I wonder if Ako knows.
Man, when he finds out he’s going to be
pissed — we worked so hard to get that guy,
and for what? He just gets off."
At their house this past Saturday, the
members of Los Primos were passing around
a letter from a member currently doing time
in prisen. The correspondence was
addressed to Hernandez, whose residence
was a street in Athens.
The tracking of the members isn’t easy to
begin with. Even though he knows who the
members are, they switch cars often, Barron
said. “A lot of them don’t do anything in the
open — they stay in what I like to call the
‘underground.’"
Not everyone in the community is certain
Los Primos is something to be worried
about. Manuel Robledo, owner of Los
Compadres Hispanic Grocery, said the mem
bers of the group are “just a bunch of kids"
who need somebody to talk to them.
“They don’t bother us, so we don’t got
nothing against them," Robledo said, adding
that Los Primos spray painted on the walls
of his business only once. After he painted
over the gang’s name and symbols, they
never came back, he said.
Margaret Bell, head of Catholic Social
Services, disagrees w.th Robledo’s diagno
sis. Last October she received an unexpect
ed phone call. It seems, she said, that at
some point CSS, a local service organization
tor Hispanics, unknowingly helped a couple
of members of Los Primos.
The caller said he was from Atlanta and
was affiliated wi»h Sur 13, Bell said. “He
asked if there was anything we needed," she
recalled “He said we had helped some of his
people and he just wanted to reciprocate.”
After politely declining, Bel! got off the
phone and, a few days later, sought out ACC
Police Chiei Jack Lumpkin. But she found lit
tle solace in the conversation.
“He told me he had problems that had
been on the books for a 100 years and he
wasn’t about to take on anything new at this
point," Bell said. “When he told me that, 1
thought, ‘If you don’t want to nip it in the
bud, you’ll have to deal with it if it becomes
more like Los Angeies.’"
When contacted at his home Sunday,
Lumpkin said he had no comment on
Hispanic gangs in Athens.
Bel! admits the situation isn’t an easy one
to handle. “It’s a problem,” he said. “But it’s
not a problem you can put your finger on
immediately — kind of like a sore that fes
ters." (Tom Lasseter)
“They don’t bother us, so we don’t got nothing
against them. ”
— Manuel Robledo, owner of Super Mercado Los Compadres
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