Pubdate: Sun, 23 Oct 2005
Source: Blade, The (Toledo, OH)
Copyright: 2005 The Blade
Contact:  http://www.toledoblade.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/48
Author: Robin Erb

TOLEDO GANG UNIT'S FOCUS SHIFTS TOWARD CRIME SUPPRESSION

They call this "babysitting" - these critical hours just after 
Toledo's schools close for the day and teenagers, pumped with energy 
and hype, spill into the streets.

It is here that veteran Toledo police Officers Mickey Mitchell and 
Robert "Scooby" Furr know that tensions routinely have a potential to spike.

It's where a passing insult earlier in the day may be answered with a 
fist, or where simmering gang tensions might boil over.

It's also part of the reason that the Toledo Police Department 
earlier this year reworked the way it battles gangs in Toledo - 
moving its focus from intelligence gathering by plain-clothes 
detectives to immediate crackdown by uniform officers assigned to the 
new Gangs/Crime Suppression Unit.

Now four uniformed officers and a sergeant, routinely assisted by an 
agent from the Toledo office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 
Firearms, and Explosives, have replaced Toledo's 15-year-old Gang 
Task Force. The group sometimes responds to regular calls while also 
trying to collect gang information.

The change may not be final.

The Toledo Police Patrolman's Association has filed a grievance over 
the changes, arguing that the new structure has stripped the unit of 
its investigative powers and crippled its ability to identify the 
city's gang leaders and their movements.

"I think we've taken a step back in dealing with gangs," says Gregg 
Harris, president of the patrolman's association. "I think 
dismantling the gang unit is equivalent with taking the officers out 
of the schools. You've got something that works, why mess with it?

Uniformed officers have replaced the detectives who would talk to 
informants, decipher gang graffiti, sort turf lines, and identify 
leaders. In its absence, they contend, the rioting in North Toledo 
Oct. 15 was an inevitable eruption as gangs make their comebacks.

Mr. Harris is caught in the middle because the TPPA represents both 
members of the old unit and the new unit. The union grieved the 
change based on contract violations, he says.

Chief Mike Navarre looks at it another way.

Certainly, gangs exist, he says. They've left their graffiti, there's 
plenty of crime, and neighbors are concerned.

"I'm not going to sweep it under the rug," he says. "We have gang 
problems here."

In fact, in the days before members of the National Socialist 
Movement came to town, word on the street was that gangs had a 
reached a temporary truce and were to come out in force as a united 
front to neo-Nazis who announced they were showing support for a 
white resident fighting black gangs.

But the chief last week cited part of a three-page intelligence 
report his department compiled on gangs in July: "It appears Toledo 
no longer has the type of random violence usually associated with 
traditional gangs, [that is], subjects being attacked because they 
are on another gang's turf or wearing the wrong colors.

"Conversely, members from different gangs have been observed 
socializing with each other at bars and other gathering places 
without incident."

Gangsters Or Just A Gang

The problem, he and other officers said, is distinguishing a group of 
unruly youths from criminal gangs.

The most criminalized gangs no longer routinely fly their colors - 
wearing the tell-tale reds and blues that marked Bloods from Crips, 
for example - as they once did. And many well-known leaders of the 
1990s are in prison or dead.

After more than a decade and a half in Toledo, the chief said gang 
turf has mostly been established and members are more focused on 
selling drugs or other criminal activity than making a show of 
bravado to rivals or insisting on drive-by shootings that used to 
mark a member's initiation.

North Toledo residents last week echoed the chief's words.

Residents told The Blade they are concerned about large gatherings of 
youths on the streets or at abandoned houses, the spray paint that 
adorns many abandoned homes, and the drugs that filter onto their streets.

But to characterize North Toledo residents as terrorized is an 
exaggeration amplified by the mob mentality of Oct. 15, when rioters 
threw rocks, trashed vehicles, and burned a bar.

In all, 114 adults and juveniles were arrested Saturday in the North 
Toledo rioting. Twenty-three more were arrested last week, including 
19 juveniles, charged with the arson of a bar and other looting.

While some may have been gang members, most were just angry or caught 
up in the frenzy, residents said.

"Occasionally, there'll be a bunch of girls and boys, but that's just 
adolescence," said Stan Sherwood, a longtime resident, who carries a 
cane for protection when he walks with his dog.

"[But] I have never been antagonized when I walk. And who is to say 
they're gang members?"

Officer Furr calls it deciphering "gangs from knuckleheads."

A Fight Averted

Officers Furr and Mitchell - both of whom went to school in North 
Toledo - are circling Woodward High School this afternoon, eyes 
darting in alleys and passing cars. Two groups of teens have 
clustered on a grassy yard outside Woodward. Hands flicking at each 
other, they're obviously squabbling.

The officers' sedan accelerates, now bumping along the grass and dirt.

"What the problem is?" Officer Furr barks. Several kids shrug. "Move 
on," the officer says. The kids reluctantly shuffle away.

Were they gang members or bored teens?

It's tough to say, and there are other calls waiting. A suspicious 
truck has caught the eye of one of the afternoon units, and the 
sergeant wants the pair to check out a couple of suspicious males in 
the central city. Officers Furr and Mitchell also are monitoring the 
home of a wanted felon.

Though the officers make it routine to quiz suspects about gang 
activity, gathering intelligence is a tedious process, slowed by 
constitutional protections to privacy, says Officer Furr, as the 
police sedan rolls past a couple of teenage boys hunched over on some steps.

They're motionless as the officers pass, but their eyes follow the sedan.

"Do we run up on them and find out what they're doing?" Officer Furr 
said. "It's that constitutional rights line that we can't cross."

The crew turns toward East Toledo. A father has pummeled his 
daughter, they are told. She has black eyes, and he's on foot.

A Teenager, 53 Rocks

There.

Just over there. Around the house. Male in a white sweatshirt, crouched.

Officers Mitchell and Furr are out of their car, and in a fluid few 
seconds, Officer Mitchell has the 19-year-old man spread-eagled 
against a neighbor's wall.

Officer Furr is poking into the dirt, searching through filthy papers 
and bottles and wrappers where the man had stooped.

"It's in here somewhere. Didn't you see him crouch down?" he asks.

Because gang membership is more subtle these days and permeates drug 
activity and other street crimes, it only makes sense they do routine 
patrols, they say.

"It's all related," says Sgt. Bill Wauford, who oversees the unit.

But critics complain the new group is driven by arrests. And Officers 
Mitchell and Furr acknowledge they're not collecting details on 
membership nor can they decipher the gang graffiti they pass on their patrols.

But drugs are the lifeline of gangs. And it's the drugs and the 
street crime that they cause that send fear through residents, they say.

Right now, in fact, Officer Furr isn't giving up on his search in the 
dirt. He kicks a brick aside, stoops, and grins.

"Got it, Mick!" he calls, holding a plastic bag with 53 tiny pebbles 
in it. If it is crack cocaine, the officers have taken about $1,000 
worth of drugs off the streets. Markies Turner, 19, is loaded into a 
patrol car for the ride downtown. He's charged with two felonies.

Officer Mitchell notes that the suspect had only a couple of $20 bills on him.

"So somebody else here is holding the money," he says, his eyes 
scanning the nearby houses.

In a little over an hour, they'll arrest a 60-year-old man leaving a 
suspected dope house, placing another rock into an evidence bag in 
their trunk. He too will go to jail tonight.

Officer Furr shrugs: "I don't care what they say.   We get this 
stuff, we're getting to the gangs."
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