Gang activity is on the rise.
Less than two weeks ago outside Southcenter Mall, a gang confrontation resulted in gunfire and a multi-agency police response. A day later, a few miles down the road in Maple Valley, a 19-year-old man and 16-year-old girl were injured in a gang-related shooting on the Lake Wilderness Trail.
Closer to home, 20-year-old Earl Cobb was sentenced Nov. 30 for shooting and killing Chezaray Bacchus, 17, in 2008 at an Arby’s Restaurant in downtown Kent.
Enough is enough.
Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna drove that point home Jan. 5 at the ShoWare Center as the keynote speaker of the Kent Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon. Engaging and articulate, McKenna touched on a variety of topics, including reducing the exposure to state taxpayers to lawsuits brought on against the state of Washington, along with more ardent policing of the Internet.
McKenna’s big push for 2011 and the hot-button topic of the day, however, remained gang activity in the Northwest.
“Every week now in the Seattle area we’re hearing about another gang-involved shooting,” said McKenna, a Bellevue resident and father of four. “We can’t sit by and let this happen to our state.”
It’s a problem that has become noticeably worse during the past five years. In fact, according to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment, there are more than 2,093 gangs and 36,650 active members in the Northwest region, which includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
“I am here to tell you, they’re not mostly in Wyoming, Idaho or Montana,” McKenna said. “They’re in Oregon and they’re in Washington state. And it’s not a problem that’s limited to any particular group or community. This not a Hispanic problem, it’s not a Southeast Asian problem, it’s not a Native American problem.
“The fact is, gang violence is equal opportunity. It involves gangs from every ethnic community you can imagine.”
With that in mind, McKenna anticipates making three proposals to the state legislature in 2011, which includes:
1. Prevention and intervention, which will focus on addressing the issue with youngsters. One of the primary ways to keep youngsters off the streets and out of gangs is by offering them after-school activities, McKenna noted. “There are not nearly enough YMCAs, boys and girls clubs and other programs available. We don’t have middle-school sports in most communities, we don’t have enough resources in schools,” he said. “We need to have them.”
2. Provide civil tools that people of communities can use to protect themselves. Specifically, by allowing community members to take out a protection order to protect infested neighborhoods against gang activity. It’s a strategy that originated in Fresno, Calif. and has enjoyed considerable success in Arizona and Minnesota as well. In addition to protection orders, McKenna also pointed out that “gang headquarters” need to be viewed the same as “drug houses.”
“We need a statute that allows property being used by gangs as their headquarters, their base, to be taken away from them,” he said. “We already do this for drug houses. We need to do this for gang houses as well.”
3. Criminal provisions aimed at adult leaders of street gangs, which will focus on more stringent laws and longer jail sentences for gang members.
In light of the economic downturn of recent years, however, finding the funding to make such proposals come to fruition remains complicated.
“An argument could be made that, ‘Oh, gosh, we don’t have money for that right now,'” McKenna said. “Really? Well, do we have the money to incarcerate (gang members) later on? Do we have the money in our hospitals to treat the drive-by shooting victims? Do we have the money to deal with the grieving relatives who are in need of social services? No.
“It’s a classic example of pay now or pay later.”
So where will the money come from?
“It isn’t easy,” he said. “You start by prioritizing that you’re freeing up as much money as you can for the most important problem.”
And for McKenna, that problem is gang activity.
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