Cover Story: Girls in the gang

Sugar and spice and everything nice; that’s what girls are made of. So says the old nursery rhyme. But not anymore.
As evidenced by the recent gang-related homicide in a Norcross park where two 16-year-old girls are accused of pulling the triggers, many of the traditional ideas of what girls are made are fading faster into history than Betty Crocker’s Easy-Bake Oven. And it’s happening close to home.
Increasingly, girls are proving they can do the same things as boys — play Little League baseball, kick field goals on the football team, compete in high school wrestling — while a generation of women have grown up pursuing lifestyles and forging identities beyond homemaker and mom.
“Females’ roles in American Society have changed,” says Doug Bachtel, a sociologist and demographer at the University of Georgia. “A female’s role in American society is no longer solely wife and mother. It’s now politician, career military, CEO — and gang member.”
Hasia Sauceda of Duluth and Janeth Christina Olarte of Gainesville, both 16, are charged with shooting Robin Rainey, 17, and Mechelle Marie Torres, 18, on Oct. 30 at the Pinckneyville Park Soccer Complex in Norcross. Torres died of gunshot wounds to the head, but Torres survived and was able to dial 911. All four girls reportedly were involved with the gang known as Vatos Locos, Spanish for “crazy homeboys.”
Three young male gang members, including Rainey’s boyfriend, also are charged in the murder and two more young women were being sought at presstime in connection with the crime, according to police.
As this incident seems to confirm, law-enforcement experts say girls are moving from mere supporting and accomplice roles within gangs — driving getaway cars, hiding weapons, committing burglaries and selling drugs — to the front lines of violent activity. “They are just as violent and active as the guys,” says officer C.C. Long with Gwinnett’s Crime Prevention Unit.
Gini Sikes, a New York writer who hung out with street gangs across the country, describes the trend in her 1998 book 8-Ball Chicks: A Year in the Violent World of Girl Gangsters.
In beginning her research, she came across FBI statistics showing that women accounted for only 12 to 15 percent of all homicides, a rate that had not changed for three decades. Not very eye-catching. But a Los Angeles County deputy told her if she wanted to examine a female population that was experiencing an escalation in violence, she should look at teenage girls in gangs.
“One of the first girls I met revealed to me that she committed her first crimes dressed as boy,” Sikes writes. “Girls, she told me, were just as violent and criminal as boys, they were just smarter about it and ‘more sneaky.’”
Still, they’re getting caught. From 1994-1998, arrests of juvenile females increased more than males percentage-wise in most offense categories, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
It is well established that girls can boil your pet rabbit on the stove and are capable of dastardly acts of violence not generally associated with femininity. Still, in a world that has more career and lifestyle options than ever for young women, what allure does gang life hold for girls?
“Girls join gangs for the same reasons guys do,” says Marco Silva, a former gang member who is an investigator with Gwinnett County Police’s gang unit. “They want to belong to something, be a part of something because they lack respect from their homes.”
It’s a network, a security blanket, a surrogate family, a place to wield power and influence and feel a connection with something and, as odd as it sounds, it’s a place to receive love. “We protect each other. We help each other when someone’s in trouble,” Monica, a 15-year-old San Francisco gangbanger, told CNN in August 1998. “We go help them.”
“Help” often comes in the form of violence.
Reportedly, Rainey and Torres went willingly with Vatos Locos members to Pinckneyville Park Oct. 30 because they thought they were going to receive “a beat-in” — a form of harsh corporal punishment for hanging out with rival gang members, but also a form of acceptance back into the fold. Gang leaders had another, more lethal, idea, police said.
Torres’ slaying represents a new phenomenon in metro Atlanta — girl on girl violence, with deadly results.
“Two girls shot two other girls. Why are we looking at this as different” from other gang violence? asks Silva. “It’s still a kid shooting a kid.”
Georgia State University sociologist Lesley Williams Reid doesn’t buy the notion that young women suddenly are becoming more violent within gang structures. “A murder like this is extremely, extremely rare,” she says.
According to Reid, 111 homicides were committed by women under the age of 18 in 1998, compared to 1,318 committed by men in the same age group. That breaks down to a rate of one homicide per 100,000 female juveniles. “This is not an issue of female gang members being on par with male gang members. It is not an issue of young women becoming equal predators as young men.”
However, she notes, as girl gang members are more likely to tote guns these days, more homicides will result.
Even though there are documented examples of girl gangsters committing violence, Reid says girls have glass ceilings within gangs. “Gangs are still very gender-stratified and are mostly led by males. Females have to negotiate dual gender roles.”
Because of the unusual nature of the Norcross shooting, it has garnered plenty of attention from the media, the public and law enforcement. In response, Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter and investigators from Gwinnett and surrounding metro communities, the GBI and the Federal Gang Task Force agreed to meet and discuss the case and the possibility of linking other crimes to Vatos Locos. Authorities are trying to link Roswell carjackings, at least one Atlanta homicide and drive-by shootings in DeKalb to the gang.
“I think it’s an outstanding move,” says Silva of the inter-agency collaboration.
Silva thinks this tragedy also should serve as a wake-up call to local residents, politicians, community leaders and law-enforcement officials that gang violence is a reality of American life, no matter where you live.
Fiction: Gangs are only an inner city problem. Fact: Gangs sprout up in urban, suburban and rural areas.
Gwinnett County is no exception. “It’s unfortunate that it took a homicide of a young girl, but now people are opening their eyes,” Silva says.
Gwinnett police have identified and keep tabs on more than 1,000 known gang members, roughly 6 percent of whom are female, Silva says. Nationally, statistics show the number of girls connected with gang activity has increased from about 3 percent to as much as 15 percent in the last decade, Silva says.
Walter J. Marchant Jr., a gang expert and master instructor at the Georgia Police Academy in Forsyth, describes the Norcross shootings as unusual for metro Atlanta and Georgia, but not surprising.
“Over the last 10 years, the population for females involved with gangs has increased greater than males,” Marchant says.
UGA’s Bachtel agrees: “This thing is rather new to Georgia,” he says. “But we’ve got women in the military trained as killers, so it should be of no shock that young women are killing each other in gangs. This is just a natural progression of events.”
While female roles in American society — and street gangs — have changed, so have the classic American suburbs, Bachtel says. The suburbs as we once knew them — the quiet, Pleasantville-like communities on the outskirts of major cities — don’t really exist in this age.
“‘Suburb’ is not a definition that holds up anymore,” Bachtel says. “It used to be the land of traditional single-family units, higher income families, higher education level, but that description just doesn’t fit the bill anymore. You have rapidly growing areas with one strip mall after another. It’s kind of like a strip mall with alleys.”
And in this new environment, gangs operate and often thrive.
Urban gangs that began in large cities like New York, Chicago and L.A. often migrate to smaller cities, rural areas and suburban areas where there are untapped drug markets, higher profit potential, less competition and less overall gang-awareness.
But Gwinnett authorities are well aware of gang activity. Police Chief Bill Dean reinstated the force’s gang unit shortly after assuming leadership in 1998.
On Oct. 31, police raided a duplex at 713 Still Lake Drive, a cul-de-sac off Old Snellvile Highway near Lawrenceville, arresting 10 alleged members of Vatos Locos in connection with the previous day’s shootings at Pinckneyville Park. Witnesses say the duplex was a center of activity, with young people always coming and going, drinking, partying and playing loud music into the wee hours, but some neighbors have expressed shock that gang activity was happening in their back yards.
“People don’t want to admit that they have gangs in their communities,” Marchant says.
Communities that deny gang presence do themselves a disservice, police say. “Just because you feel there are no gangs in your neighborhood, that doesn’t mean the gangs are somebody else’s problems,” Silva says. “Gangs are everybody’s problems.”
Over the past weekend, for example, three people were injured in two separate drive-by shootings in Lilburn and Norcross. In the second case, more than 50 rounds were fired from a passing car at a trailer home occupied by five people, said police, who have not determined if the two drive-by shootings are gang-related.
When suburban youth adopt gang characteristics in the way they dress or speak, it is frequently dismissed as “wannabe behavior,” something they picked up from movies, TV or gangsta rap videos.
“Who’s a wannabe?” asks Marchant. “Is a guy with a gun and a mask a wannabe bank robber?”
Recognizing the outward signs of gang involvement — clothing, speech, hand signs, graffiti — is key to gang-related crime prevention, he contends.
Officer Long educates the community about gangs with an hour-long Gang Awareness Program developed from a three- to four-day course taught at the state police academy. Upon request, he meets with community groups, civic organizations and churches. “People are very interested because they don’t know a whole lot,” he says.
While midnight basketball programs and other types of activities designed to keep boys off the streets and out of gangs are commonplace, authorities interviewed for this story could not recall similar diversionary tactics specifically geared toward girls.
“Yes, I think it would be beneficial,” says Long. “But I don’t know what those programs would be.”
How to reach teenage girls is a complex sociological, psychological issue with no solid answers. With the breakdown of the traditional family structure, maybe there needs to be more community-based outreach to teenage girls, Silva says. “It’s a good question: Where are we starting to miss with our girls now? We can try to show them all the wrongs,” he says. “Maybe we need to influence them more.”
As with youth of any gender, he says, that process starts with convincing girls that gangs are not a productive way of life. And they are not easy for members to get out of — alive.
“They make you believe there is nothing else,” says Silva, once a member of Chicago’s Latin Kings. “But they’re not going to be there when you get in trouble.”
Silva says he is somewhat perplexed that girls choose gang life when Gwinnett offers so many alternatives, including school-based extra-curricular activities and a myriad of athletic and social activities and programs. “The Parks and Recreation Department offer everything,” Silva says.
Ironically, Torres was gunned down at one of the county’s newest facilities, a place designed for sports and leisure activities and a supposed haven from a culture of violence.
Groups of 10 or more in Gwinnett interested in Officer Long’s gang awareness presentation may call 770-623-2610.