STL Gangs Feature 3 Air: Wednesday 5:50 AM, 7:50 AM, 4:50 PM
08/20/08
allington
Host In: In St. Louis gangs are accounting for a growing percentage of violent crime.
In an effort to control the situation police are saturating specific neighborhoods, recovering weapons and rounding up suspected offenders.
By most accounts this approach only provides a temporary solution for the problems caused by lack of jobs, poor schools and crumbling infrastructure.
In the last of his three part series on gangs in St. Louis, KWMU’s Adam Allington takes a look at the city’s response to the gang epidemic.
[STLgangs3]
SOQ @ 6:31
Music out at 6:50
-please promo during the 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM hours-
Host Out: You can download copies of all three of Adam’s gang stories and view other St. Louis gang information at our website, K-W-M-U.org
Adam1: In parts of St. Louis you’ll see T-shirts and hats with the message "Stop Snitching".
The theme has also been delivered via hip hop for years…take for example the song “Snitch” by the rapper Lil Wayne.
:13
-Music-“Snitch” (down and under)
Adam2: Amy Fite is a lawyer with the St. Louis Circuit Attorneys office.
She says the no-snitching campaign has had a real effect on the amount of arrests made in St. Louis.
One homicide case she remembers occurred in broad daylight and had over 100 witnesses.
[Fite13] :22
“There was one person who testified at trial. And the 911 tapes, which were admitted into evidence, maybe 20-21 calls, and when they were asked repeatedly to leave their name or number…”no, no, are you kidding, I live here”, and that’s kind of the nature of prosecuting these types of cases.”
Adam3: And Fite says it’s not just the witnesses who don’t talk, many times even the victims would rather say nothing then cooperate with police.
[Fite9] :21
Obviously we’re prosecuting people who are gang members but a lot of the victims of violent crimes are also gonna be gang members or related to a gang in some way so…its an interesting position to be in because we’re talking to people…sometimes its based on what day it is, whether they’re the defendant or they’re the victim.
Adam4: A guy who calls himself “Wooty” is a member of a Rolling Sixty Crip set in north city. He says guys who go around shooting people eventually get their due, karma he says.
And if you know the right people, karma can be bought like anything else.
[Wooty2] :22
“It only takes a dude to throw five stacks to another man, its so hard out here everybody will jump for a dime. So, throwing five stacks at another man, like here here’s $5000, go kill him, its already high gas prices, people are loosing their houses, who wouldn’t do it. I can get my heat back on, lights back on…you want me to do what to him? Leave him living or kill him?
-music-
[Luss16] :06
“My mom and them always tell me I’m scared to change, and I’m kind of starting to believe it.
Adam5: Carl Luss was once a member of the Blood street gang.
Now he’s part of a special program through the St. Louis Police Department called “Gang CPR” which helps gang members disassociate from their criminal past.
He says it’s much harder than you’d think especially when the alternative is barely sustainable.
[Luss17] :30
“It aint got nothing to do with nobody calling me soft or a nerd or something, its just I’m so wrapped up in the lifestyle that I am in. See, me with a job I see a lot of people who struggle who got jobs; they got to wait 2 weeks to get a $250-300 check. That’s something I can’t wait on; I’m used to fast money. If a bill comes in, I don’t want to wait until I get paid on the 10th.
Adam6: Sam Moore is the Alderman of the 4th Ward in north city’s Ville neighborhood, one of the first Black communities west of the Mississippi.
He says all the law enforcement in the world won’t change the situation as long as young people see crime as the best way to provide for themselves.
[Moore1] :20
“The gangs aren’t doing it to the community, the community is doing it to the gangs because the community don’t provide for the young people that are in these so-called gangs. These are our kids, we need to provide jobs, educational training. Don’t talk about recreation because all of them don’t play basketball and don’t play football.”
Adam6: But for the moment, law enforcement seems to be the tool of choice for a city reeling from a spiking murder rate.
Last month, former St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa unveiled his “Homicide Deterrence Initiative”—a plan to saturate key neighborhoods and send a message to would-be criminals.
[Mokwa1] :15
“Every resource we have from crime suppression, intelligence, the gang unit, mobile reserve, traffic, overtime officers to do two things—stabilize the neighborhoods in those two areas of areas of the city and to surgically remove those people that need to be removed from the city because of their violent histories.”
Adam7: During the plans two week window the metro police department made 388 arrests and recovered 65 weapons. Two people were murdered, as were several others outside the target neighborhoods.
[Hayes22] :09
This is the JVL neighborhood, serious gang members live right here in this house. They are definitely what they call “riders”.
Adam8: Detective Elfonzo Hayes is a member of the gang unit of the St. Louis Police Department.
A “Rider”, is slang for a “killer”, someone who’s not afraid to take someone out.
We’re driving through the Jeff Vanderlou neighborhood just south of Natural Bridge Road.
Policing some of these gang neighborhoods Hayes says sometimes means resorting to tactics more akin to Baghdad than the American heartland.
[Hayes18] :15
“We’ll put on our vests we’ll put on everything, we’ll go out, and it will be a zero tolerance day, which means, say this particular block, whoever we see on the block, they go to jail…period.”
Adam9: While it seems extreme, Hayes says nearly 10 times out of 10 the people out standing on corners wearing gang colors aren’t just hanging out…they’re firing guns, selling drugs and generally terrorizing law-abiding citizens…the cops have to send a message
[Hayes19] :15
“They understand that, so we arrest them for a bench warrant, we arrest them for a peace disturbance, we arrest them for drinking in public, we’ll arrest them for any and everything we can to send a strong message, “the party’s over”.
Adam10: Amy Fite has tried her last gang case as an Assistant Circuit Attorney in St. Louis. She’s moving on to a new practice.
In the several years she’s worked gang cases, she seen some guys get out of gang life, going to prison is not fun, even if you are in a gang.
But, sadly she says that’s usually the exception.
[Fite11] :19
“What I’ve seen is, people go to prison and people get killed. And we’ll have a defendant today and then you might be filing a “nolly” for abatement by death because they got killed while they were on pre-trial release or somebody gets convicted, they get probation and then within six months they’re killed.”
Adam11: Police believe that there are around 80 gangs in the St. Louis area, nearly all which are African American with most of their victims also being African American.
However, Police have also detected Hispanic and Bosnian gangs operating in south city. Even harder to track they say are white supremacist gangs which they suspect are based in St. Louis and Madison Counties.
For KWMU, I’m Adam Allington.
[Fite12] :05
“If you’re selling drugs, you’re carrying a gun, and if you’re carrying a gun you’re willing to use it.”
[Fite7] :16
“A lot of people would consider that petty, but those same people are gonna be the ones who are going to go execute somebody because they came over on their set or they were moving in on where they sell dope or they looked at their girlfriend the wrong way.”
[Luss6] :16
“Gang and family is two different types of love. You’re family show you the love if something happens to you, they’re willing to go kill for you.”
[Fite5] :17
“You’re gonna see a lot of lack of cooperation when you have particularly the violent crimes because if I’m from one gang and you’re from the other and I shoot at you, you’re probably not going to tell the police that I’m who shot at you. Because you’re just going to come back and get me later or you’re buddy’s gonna come back and get me later.”