City successful in curbing gang-related activities

DAVID KATZ/Daily

A former gang member and his friend stand outside of Pinball Pete's on South University. Arcade managers enforce a dress code to eliminate gang-related clothing.

By Caitlin Nish

Daily Staff Reporter

Teenage patrons of Pinball Pete's arcade on South University Avenue say that it is not uncommon for a manager of the game hall to ask them to turn the brims of their baseball caps around.

When employees of Pinball Pete's tell patrons not to wear their hats cocked to one side, they are enforcing the arcade's dress code aimed at eliminating all gang-related clothing and paraphernalia from the arcade.

Pinball Pete's dress code is a reminder that affiliations with gangs or with gang membership exist in Ann Arbor, even if in minor proportions, as compared with the immense gang activity in six years ago.

Adele El-Ayoubi, an Ann Arbor Police Department crime prevention specialist, said the first step to fighting gang activity is publicly declaring that there is a problem.

"Back in 1994, we publicly came out and said we had a problem with gangs in the city," she said.

El-Ayoubi added that after the public declaration, the police department worked with local schools, neighborhood community watches and local businesses to stop all gang activity.

"We have very little activity now, but we still have some. It's very minimal," she said.

El-Ayoubi attributes the decrease to city-sponsored education on gangs and additional activities available for young people in Ann Arbor.

El-Ayoubi participates in the Gang Resistance, Education and Training program, which works with high-risk classes at the middle and high school levels to talk to students about gangs and the gang lifestyle.

"There is a lot of education in the community as a whole, starting from our own police department, stuff at all the schools, parents to (parent teacher organizations) on awareness and identification," El-Ayoubi said.

But even with the high success of these programs and others like it that combat gang activity in Washtenaw County and the surrounding areas, some high school students still say that gang affiliations are common.

"We're the Diag rats. Anything that goes on in Ann Arbor, we know about. There are gangs around," said one 16-year old Ann Arbor high school student, who requested that his name not be printed.

The student, who wears baggy jeans and clothes like those prohibited from Pinball Pete's, said he was at one time affiliated with a gang.

Steve Nawojcsyk, a juvenile justice consultant located out of Little Rock, Arkansas, said looks can be deceiving.

"I always tell people that it is very difficult to look at an individual and tell that, because of movies or TV, that they are in a gang. Baggy pants and bandannas are just what kids wear now."

Nawojcsyk added that Pinball Pete's dress code is an approach to curbing gang related behavior that is similar to those of many schools across the nation.

"A lot of schools try to institute a no-gang attire policy but it's so difficult to tell what is gang-related clothing," Nawojcsyk said. "The only way to do that is to make kids wear uniforms."

Considering that this approach is not feasible for stopping gang affiliation on city streets, El-Ayoubi said she meets with officers from other jurisdictions to discuss the appearance of trends and sort through written information confiscated from gangs.

"A lot of times, because gang members are not permanently situated, they tend to be transient from neighborhood to neighborhood. It's not uncommon to have gang members move from one area to another," El-Ayoubi said.

Gang specialists refer to these members as "transfers." Nawojcsyk said that transfers are one of the ways that gang culture spreads.

"The first way is recruitment. Hard-core gang members recruit kids to become gang members and drug dealers, these are synonymous. The second way is transfers. It's easy to take the kid out of the gang but hard to take the gang out of the kid," Nawojcsyk said.

Nawojcsyk's point can be illustrated by an 18-year old Ann Arbor resident who calls himself Shotgun.

Shotgun said he grew up in Detroit where he was part of a Los Angeles-based gang. Shotgun still bears a tattoo branding and scar that he received as a member of that gang.

"I was an innocent bystander. I was standing next to a house where there was a drive-by. I started to run because the crackheads next door started shooting. I got shot in my left wrist with a shotgun," he said.

Though he still has the physical reminders of the gang, he said he would not use his real name because he had left the gang and was planning to enter the army so that he could go to college.

Nawojcsyk said it is not totally uncommon for former gang members like Shotgun to attend college.

"Usually it goes dormant in college because they move away from their respective homes," he said.

But Nawojcsyk also said these students may still affiliate themselves with their gangs while at college even if they are not active members.

"There's still students who associate with gangs before they go there and still have a feeling that they are in the gang because the gang becomes like family. That feeling can be displaced by a fraternity or sorority or club or school," he said. "I'm not saying they're organized, but there are people who were involved in gangs in all walks of life now, be it in academia, the military or in work settings."

El-Ayoubi said some gangs go as far as sending their members to college.

"Some gangs will keep their members clean of all criminal activity and send them to college so that they would maintain ties and later put to use the knowledge they attained in college to help better their gang," she said.

She added that the little gang activity Ann Arbor does have may be a result of the Ann Arbor's diverse University atmosphere.

"Our gangs are very loosely knit. But because we are a college city, we attract people from all over the world. Our gangs are as diverse as our city, they cross all ethnic and racial backgrounds, socio-economics and gender," El-Ayoubi said.

Because of the strides taken in the past Ann Arbor isn't facing the problems that other cities are having with gangs. But El-Ayoubi added that this shouldn't make residents think that there is no problem.

"Never say never. If we close our eyes and are not aware, we won't see it coming," she said.