Pubdate: Sun, 30 May 1999 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Page: 1 Copyright: 1999 Houston Chronicle Contact: http://www.chron.com/ Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html Author: Armando Villafranca EX-GANG MEMBER ON NEW PATH, BUT THE POLICE ARE STILL WATCHING Haunted By The Life HIS BROTHER committed suicide on New Year's Eve; his father was shot to death a week later. But Gerado "Chuco" Balles could not grieve in peace. The day after the second incident, which occurred while Balles' father was confronting the father of a teen-ager he blamed for his son's death, a Houston police officer pulled up to his home with a stern warning. He assured Balles, in front of family and friends, that he'd be sent to jail if there was any further bloodshed -- regardless of whether he was involved. Such hardball tactics are not uncommon for Houston's anti-gang task force. Officers keep close tabs on gang members, tracking them in a computer database. They often try to intimidate them after gang-related shootings as a way to curb retaliatory violence. The problem is, by all accounts, Chuco Balles is no longer affiliated with any gang. On one hand, the case illustrates how difficult it can be to leave one's past behind. The savage beating that Balles took three years ago when he decided to go straight could not erase the huge tattoo on his back; it still proclaims allegiance to the Crip Cartel. When he landed a job at Wal- Mart, he asked to work off the floor so the dozens of other tattoos that cover his arms and leer over his shirt collar wouldn't frighten shoppers. But the case also raises questions about whether the police have been slow to react to a steep, sustained decline in juvenile gang crime. Houston's gang problem is much less acute than in 1994, when the city was compelled to form the task force. And while authorities cite a decline in gang-related crime of perhaps 50 percent as evidence of success, critics argue that the force is fighting a war at a level no longer warranted. Charles Rotramel, director of the Youth Advocates gang intervention program, charges that task force officers harass young Hispanics, including many not in gangs. He says the police log their names in the database to inflate gang activity statistics. Consequently, he says, an entire generation of Hispanic youths is growing up to hate police. "The message that the kids need to get is that they belong to society, that they are valuable contributors," Rotramel said in an interview. "The message that they get from these zero-tolerance approaches and from total suppression is, `I don't care if you say you're gonna change. We don't believe you. You're never gonna change. You're always going to be worthless. You're always going to be a criminal. You're always going to be nothing. We don't want you to be a part of society. In fact, we want to lock you up. We think that's where you're going to end up anyway.' " - ----- IN THE EYES OF his neighbors in Lindale Park, a community of World War II-era brick homes whose residents include a state representative and a top police official, Balles -- stocky build, close-cropped haircut and 37 tattoos -- evoked a hellish image of gang life on their street. On nights when Crip Cartel members came over to party, Balles' neighbors turned off lights and withdrew to rear rooms. Neighbor Betty Davis remembers that on the night the Houston Rockets won the NBA championship in 1995, the house was brimming with perhaps 90 gang members. She remembers that a female driver unknowingly turned onto the street and was met by taunting kids. Davis said the woman was so terrified she shifted into reverse and didn't stop until she was several blocks away. Finally, after a drive-by shooting in front of Balles' house in January 1996, his neighbors took action. In a letter to residents, the neighborhood association wrote, "We are living in a war zone. We have a `gang house' in Lindale Park and once again, we must rise to the cause." Residents went before the City Council 10 days after the shooting, seeking an abatement, in which the city condemns a property for habitual criminal activity. The action would have effectively evicted Balles and his girlfriend's family from the house. "We're not only afraid of the deterioration and depreciation of our neighborhood, but also worried for our lives," said Davis. But Balles attended the meeting as well. His girlfriend's brother was there, too, apologizing to their neighbors and assuring them that the gang activity would cease. "I'm going to tell you from that day on there was nothing over there," Davis said. "It's such a dramatic change, it was like they moved out and somebody else moved in." The drive-by shooting, it seems, had affected Balles, too. On the night of Jan. 13, 1996, rival gang members stopped in front of Balles' home and fired a shotgun into a group. Juan Garcia, 18, was shot in the face and chest and an 11-year-old boy took a blast in the back. Both lived, but Balles said he remembers the 11-year-old crawling toward the front door when he picked him up and took him inside. "There he was lying down on our sofa asking if he was going to die," he said. "That's it. I couldn't see any more people get hurt and shot." Balles, now 22, gave up the gang life virtually on the spot. Today, he is raising a family and working with Rotramel to help troubled youths. Regardless, Houston's Police Gang Task Force continues to see Balles as a threat. The most recent confrontation came early this year in the wake of the suicide of his younger brother, Danny, who was still a gang member, A week after the suicide, Balles' father, Manuel, distraught over the death of his son, confronted the family of a teen he blamed for his son's death. Balles' father, who had been drinking, got into a fistfight with the youth's father. While the two fought, the teen-ager allegedly came out of the house and shot Manuel Balles. The police showed up at Balles' house the next day. "He came over here and told me if anything happened they were going to take me to jail with my friends until they found out what happened," Balles said. The officer reminded Balles that he was still in the gang database and would be arrested if there was any retaliation. "He said I put myself in that situation, that I'm still considered a gang member." The episode upset Rotramel, who was there when the officer arrived. He notes that four months have passed quietly, even though the suspect in the shooting death of Balles' father remains at large. "In my mind, Chuco is one of the shining examples in this city of what we want from young people who have had a troubled background," Rotramel said. "He's what we want to see, and what angers me about this situation is that's not recognized. The assumption is made that because he was once in a gang he will always be in a gang. That could not be more false." - ----- ROTRAMEL, WHO has worked with youth gang members for more than eight years, said the lifestyle no longer carries the allure it did for many of the city's Hispanic youth. He remembers four years ago seeing kids with some sort of gang affiliation everywhere in the city's east side and near north side. "You never see gang graffiti around here, very rarely. You never see kids hanging out on the street corners around here like you used to," Rotramel said. "Three blocks from here there used to be a gang house (where) any time of the day or night there'd be a whole bunch of kids hanging out: thugged out, muscle shirts, baggy Dickies, bandannas on their heads. "You never see that anymore." The Mayor's Anti-Gang Office, which began compiling such statistics in 1995, notes that gang-related crime has dropped by almost 50 percent since then. Rotramel said he believes the decline may be even greater. Regardless, Kim Ogg, director of the anti-gang office, said the war against gang activity is far from over. "I believe the city of Houston continues to have a significant gang problem based upon the statistics and the crimes or summaries of crimes that I review," she said. "We have a significant problem, no question about it. It's just, I think, that we're fortunate in that we began working very intently to prevent and suppress gang crime five years ago. "The intensity of the gang problem fluctuates from area to area," she added, "and I think when citizens tell us that they're seeing a lot of gang activity in an area, I think it's the city's responsibility to respond." Ogg said police have identified about 14,000 gang members in Harris County, which is small compared with, say, metropolitan Los Angeles, which has identified more than 160,000 gang members and logged 450 gang-related slayings in 1997. One Chicago-based gang is thought to have 30,000 members nationwide. Ogg agreed, somewhat, with Rotramel's assessment that gangs have lost some of their attraction, but she believes gangs still possess one strong incentive -- easy money. "It's still prevalent, and where five years ago the appeal of a gang to a young person might have been prestige, I think that may have faded," she said. "But what has not faded, and what I think has actually increased is the monetary appeal, the ability to make a quick profit." The task force was created five years ago with 60 officers. Today, it has 149 members. Police Sgt. Mike Craig, who commanded the Central Command gang unit from 1994 until earlier this month, recalled that gangs had completely taken over city parks in the city's near north side and that residents there clamored for relief. Initially, he said the task force's role was to identify gang members and implement a zero-tolerance approach where the problems were the worst. He said he remembers gang members, at first, boasting about their affiliations as if their numbers protected them from law enforcement. Today, he said, they deny their membership because of the hassles from police. Many of the remaining gang problems involve graffiti and truancy. "I don't think it is as bad as it used to be, but it's still a problem," Craig said. "In general, it's just not as blatant as it used to be." One argument for a call to re-examine the role of the gang task force came with the July 12 shooting death of Pedro Oregon Navarro. Six officers were fired for their role in the shooting. All six, including a sergeant, were members of the Southwest Command gang unit. One police official said privately that the officers should have "counted to 10" and then called in narcotics officers rather than taking the initiative themselves to act on a narcotics tip from a confidential informant who was also a gang member. Craig said the incident moved him to remind his officers of their roles as gang task force officers. "At least for me, as my responsibility for my squad, I'm a lot more restrictive because of what happened with the Oregon incident," he said. "We're not out there looking for narcotics. We're only out there looking for gangs and gang problems. We clarified our mission: Our basic mission is to deal with gang problems. I do not allow my guys to use confidential informants dealing with drugs; that's not our mission." Rotramel said the problem with the zero-tolerance approach is that officers are assigned to track a defined group -- known gang members - -- and that whether anyone identified as such has done anything wrong or wears a particular style or color of clothing, that person is treated as a criminal. "No matter what this group of people does, they're gonna have this police unit on top of them all the time, taking pictures of them, writing down who they are, who are their friends, what cars do they drive, where do they go when they drive in their cars, everything," he said. "It's that if you're in this group you're going to get treated as if you were already doing something wrong, no matter what. And that's the problem." - ----- GETTING A YOUNG person to abandon the gang life and stay out of it is a delicate process, Rotramel said, because most of these kids are filled with anger. The slightest setback can trigger their return. "It destroys everything that we've done," he said. "We may have worked years to get a person to a point where they make a decision like that to get out of a gang, and all it's going to take is one incident like that where they are put back into the gang file or they are treated as if they are a gang member still." Given Balles' background, his recent successes could seem fragile. Balles grew up in some of the most notorious subsidized apartments and housing complexes in Houston: Northtown Square Homes and Branch Village Apartments, known on the street as Trinity Garden. He has hard, bitter memories of his mother working at a Jack-in-the-Box to earn just enough to feed her four children and buy them cheap clothing. "We didn't have nothing when we were kids," Balles said. Three weeks after Balles' 12th birthday, his father was arrested for possession of cocaine and sent to the Harris County Jail. While his father was away, Balles left home and moved into a small room in the rear of a TV repair shop, where he was hired by the owner. When Manuel Balles violated probation in 1994, he began a four-year sentence at a Fort Stockton prison. There, he eventually joined the Texas Syndicate, a Hispanic prison gang. The only photograph Balles has of his father shows him in his white inmate clothing, staring defiantly at the camera from the prison library. The life lessons he taught were learned behind bars. "When he got drunk, to save us, he'd tell us how people get stabbed in there, how they raped people," Balles said. "He told us all of that so we wouldn't go there." By then, though, Balles had already thrown himself into the gang life. At 12, he joined a group of neighborhood boys who called themselves the Froggie Street Posse. The following year, his younger brother, Daniel, joined the Crazy Crips (later the Crip Cartel) and Balles joined soon after. "We weren't in it for the money. We used to have a lot of guns here, too," said Balles, adding that he and fellow gang members hung out, drank alcohol and used drugs. They also fiercely protected their turf, answering drive-by shootings with gunfire of their own. "A typical day would be getting drunk and high," Balles recalled, "waking up in the afternoon and going to Marshall (Junior High School) and Davis (High School) to look for fights with rival gang members." By 1996, he was a top lieutenant. Many of his fellow gang members would gather at his girlfriend's Lindale Park house, where he now lives, to party. They often made the street their own playground. All the while, Balles said, he feared he would become like his father. Even more, he feared going to jail because he had seen what it had done to his father. Finally, gang life began to wear on him. "I was tired of doing the same thing over and over, tired of going to jail. I used to go to jail all the time for nothing," Balles said. "I would be walking to school and I wouldn't even get to the school and cops would put me in jail for PI (public intoxication) or something." Still, it took the drive-by shooting that almost killed an 11-year-old to make him stop altogether. When he announced his intention to leave, the Crip Cartel leader told him he couldn't. But a determined Balles submitted himself to a beating by 13 gang members. They encircled him, breaking two ribs and beating him until he was nearly unconscious. He says one man stomped him so hard he left a bootprint on his forehead. Balles said the beating was probably necessary to make the psychological break from the gang. The answer he gives when asked if he will return to gang life is succinct: "I wouldn't." "I can't," he said. "It's not in my blood no more. I don't miss it. I don't ever think about going back. I think about the stuff I did all the time, all the bad things, all the people we hurt, a bunch of bad memories. I really don't want to have nothing to do with it. I'm the exact opposite of what they stand for." - ----- BALLES SAID HE STILL sees former gang associates, usually when he visits his grandmother in his old neighborhood, and they beckon him to join them for a beer. But these days, he waves and drives off. "I come home now and go to sleep to wake up to go to work," he said. "So I really don't have time to do anything except for my day off, which is Friday, and I like to spend that with my son." He added, "I don't want to have nothing to do with the cops." Yet Balles credits the gang task force with playing an important role in his departure from the gang. Before the task force was created, he said, he and gang members roamed wild in the near the north side. All that changed when gang task force officers began cracking down. No matter where Balles and fellow gang members hung out, the cops would show up soon after. The crackdown had other effects. One former Crip Cartel leader is in prison for manslaughter. One of Balles' cousins -- who was one of the gang members who beat him when he wanted out -- is serving 45 years in prison for a string of store robberies. He was 21 when he was sentenced. "I just don't want to get that reputation back," said Balles. But shaking the reputation can be harder than shaking the lifestyle. Rotramel worries that the police are making the transition difficult for Balles and many other Houstonians who have left the gang life behind. He likens the situation to a serious disease that broke out in the city and may have required radical methods to control its spread. "Well, it worked," he said. "The disease stopped spreading. We've eliminated the disease or we've gotten it down to a point where it's very manageable and yet we're still having those extreme measures in place, we still are quarantining people." - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry