Source: The Toronto Star (Canada) Pubdate: 20 Nov 1998 Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Contact: Page B1 Author: Michelle Shephard, Toronto Star Education Reporter GANGS GROWING, POLICE WARN U.S. influence creeping in as groups start to choose sides Toronto will have a massive crime problem in the next few years if the growing violence and organization by youth gangs go on much longer, police say. ``If something isn't done and youths carry along the same lines they will become involved in larger gangs, more powerful gangs . . . and it will be a massive problem,'' said Staff Sergeant Chuck Perry yesterday in a presentation to the Toronto Police Services Board. Jane Finch Killers could have up to 100 members Reacting to recent school attacks and the media attention surrounding youth gangs, Perry described to board members Toronto's 19 most dangerous gangs and where they've marked their territory. The gangs include the New Born Crips in North York, with 70 known members who are heavily armed and involved in drug crimes and street robberies. Perry said the gang identified as the Jane Finch Killers could have as many as 100 members, while the Gilder Boys in Scarborough have at least 30 members, prefer machetes as their weapons and are involved in extortions, car thefts and assaults. Search rules delayed They recruit and gather at schools. Police say 80 gangs are operating in Toronto with 2,000 youths involved at various levels. Perry did not include the Tuxedo Boys in his most-dangerous list, although street crime detectives believe they are responsible for two vicious machete attacks on students this year. Perry also didn't mention the Silver Boys, whose members went through the courts charged with machete attacks on two teenagers last year. Toronto has always had youth gangs, but Perry said this year teenagers have begun aligning themselves with the Bloods and the Crips - ruthless rival American gangs. ``Kids here have imitated what's happening (in the U.S.) where they see the information, they see what's happening on TV, they see the movies,'' Perry said. Information from Toronto police intelligence obtained by The Star lists which gangs are on the Blood or Crip side. Police sources said the trend of choosing sides began eight months ago - starting in northwest Toronto and moving toward Scarborough. The Bloods and Crips originally began in the late 1960s. A group of black Americans in southeast Los Angeles started to gain a reputation for brutality for terrorizing neighbourhoods. They called themselves the Crips. Farther west, in Compton, Calif., others began to retaliate, and called themselves the Bloods. By the late 1980s these gangs - identified by blue bandanas or clothing for Crips and red for Bloods - were responsible for drive-by shootings and vicious gang wars. ``A lot of this was a social problem that has now become a police problem,'' Perry said about Toronto's rising youth violence. He said Toronto's gang problems aren't yet at American levels, ``but it can be frightening.'' Police identify gangs as either ``scavenger,'' ``territorial'' or ``organized,'' with organized gangs as the most dangerous. Most gangs here are still at the scavenger stage, Perry said. That involves fluid memberships, frequent leader changes and spontaneous criminal acts. Last month, The Star ran a three-part series on gangs that focused mainly on students and their perceptions of violence. In a survey of 1,019 students, only 10 per cent said they would report violence to school authorities. The majority of teenagers interviewed said school officials and police weren't aware of most of the gang violence, since gang victims are too scared to tell for fear of retribution. Hundreds of E-mails and phone calls poured into The Star following the series, most of them describing unreported incidents of school or gang violence. Asked yesterday by a member of the police board about The Star series, Perry replied: ``It's poor journalism, poor methodology, it's fake, it's wrong.'' Asked later what he found fake or wrong about the series, he said he objected to publishing results from student surveys from 29 schools across Greater Toronto. He said most students would not tell the truth. ``You were asking kids in that survey questions that were so open-ended. If you ask a kid if they know a gang member, of course they're going to say yes.'' More than half of students who responded to the survey said gangs were present in their schools. No new police strategies were announced yesterday to combat gang violence. But Perry said police are monitoring gang activity and trying to strengthen police-school liaisons. - --- Checked-by: Mike Gogulski