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2 years after husband's death, wife asks, why? The Tennessean (Nashville,... (Copy w/ Cite)
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Copyright 2010 The Tennessean
All Rights Reserved
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)
February 28, 2010 Sunday
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 232 words
HEADLINE: 2 years after husband's death, wife asks, why?
BYLINE: By, NEWS03, Brad Schrade
BODY:
By Brad Schrade
THE TENNESSEAN
MURFREESBORO - The blood is washed away, the shattered glass cleaned up, but life inside the small brick house on West Main Street here was rearranged forever two years ago.
That November night, Vice Lords gang members, out for revenge, sprayed more than a dozen bullets across the front of Margaret and Moss Dixon's house.
Moss Dixon, 66, sat on a love seat in the front room watching television. The room was a favorite gathering spot for the family's more than 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The former Veterans Administration nurse assistant, already disabled before the shooting, clung to life at a local hospital for two weeks. His family prayed for a recovery, but he died just days after Thanksgiving in 2007.
"Sometimes, I'm just dumbfounded," Margaret Dixon said recently during another holiday season without her husband of 39 years. "Then sometimes I think, 'Why?' "
The Vice Lords targeted Dixon's home after his grandson, Kevin Herrin, was involved in a deadly fight outside a club four days earlier, records allege.
Margaret Dixon, 63, said she doesn't know if her grandson was in a gang, but she's tired of the violence. Faith in God comforts her.
"I don't want to stay in victimhood. If I get over there too far I won't go forward," she said.
Nine members of the Vice Lords were indicted in October in connection with the slaying and other crimes.
LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2010
Gangs seep into the suburbs
Copyright 2010 The Tennessean
All Rights Reserved
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)
February 28, 2010 Sunday
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 1412 words
HEADLINE: Gangs seep into the suburbs
BYLINE: By, NEWS03, Brad Schrade and Chris Echegaray
BODY:
By Brad Schrade and Chris Echegaray
THE TENNESSEAN
Murder topped the agenda as the Traveling Vice Lords rolled into the O'Charley's parking lot.
The plan that February night was to meet a familiar drug dealer near Hickory Hollow Mall, drive him a few miles away and pump him full of bullets, according to federal prosecutors.
This was not the first night Traveling Vice Lords leader Roger Wayne Battle had met Brandon Harris, a member of the Mikey Cobras gang, in the parking lot to do drug deals. But this night, Harris' life was on the line because the Traveling Vice Lords thought he had been talking about the Vice Lords' connection to a previous crime.
This is how gangs conduct their business. They don't care who gets in the way. They don't care who gets hurt. And they don't care where - family restaurant, shopping district, residential neighborhood.
Gangs, once a threat confined to city streets, began expanding outward two decades ago. Now, suburban and rural communities are the center of a significant and growing gang problem, according to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment report.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation found that nearly all communities surrounding Nashville have gang activity, including the traditional suburbs of Nashville, such as those around Hickory Hollow Mall, and small towns in Williamson, Rutherford, Sumner and Wilson counties.
These smaller, residential communities offer fresh territory for selling drugs and that increases the gang's revenue.
"There's money out in the suburbs," said Mike Carlie, criminology and sociology professor at Missouri State University. "There are people in the suburbs that want drugs."
Suburban gangs run the gamut of sophistication.
Some, like the Vice Lords, are large, well-organized business enterprises with ties to notorious operations in other states. There are numerous sects of the Vice Lords, such as the Traveling Vice Lords that operate in Rutherford and Davidson counties. They trade in drugs, guns and murder.
Big gangs these days are more about controlling markets than controlling geographic turf, Carlie said.
Smaller, homegrown gangs, like the Lost Boyz in Columbia, are often unstructured hybrids engaged in car break-ins, burglaries and drugs. The Maury County gang is suspected in 300 car and home break-ins, including some in southern Williamson County.
Regardless of size, nearly every gang participates in some drug activity, but not on the same level. U.S. Attorney Ed Yarbrough estimates that as many as 20 percent of the drug cases his Middle Tennessee office handles are linked to gangs.
"What we're finding is they are pretty much everywhere," Yarbrough said. "These people have a lifestyle of crime. They are proud of it."
It is their violence that has most rattled longtime residents, bursting into Middle Tennessee with jarring gunfights or attacks that can happen seemingly anywhere.
Bursts of violence
"When you have a drive-by shooting at the Donelson Kmart you know things have changed," said Karen Ackerman, a 45-year-old mother of two who grew up in Middle Tennessee.
In January, a 17-year-old was shot outside a Kmart off Donelson Pike near Interstate 40 while riding with his buddies, who admitted to being in a gang, police said.
Ackerman used to feel comfortable in her community. Now she's alarmed and makes a point to be more aware of her surroundings when she goes out.
Felecia Janco was eating dinner with her husband on their wedding anniversary at the popular shopping mall Streets of Indian Lake in Hendersonville. Her 13-year-old son had been dropped off by his grandmother at another part of the mall and was to meet them after dinner. He texted her to say he had arrived.
Shortly after that, he was jumped and beaten in a breezeway by teens affiliated with the Hate Krew.
He has recovered physically, but his mother now carries a gun and chaperones her son nearly everywhere. She no longer feels it is safe to let him hang out at the mall by himself.
"I don't want anything to happen to him," said Janco, the director of nursing at Hendersonville Medical Center. "I am afraid for him. Parents need to know this is happening."
Last fall, in Murfreesboro, a couple were awakened when three gang members peppered their home with bullets just after 7 a.m. on a weekday morning. The gunmen, bandannas on their faces, shot the house by mistake. They thought a rival gang member lived there.
Lebanon Public Safety Commissioner Billy Weeks has seen violence erupt in his community, even in the center of a commercial district. He noted a gunbattle at the local outlet mall's parking lot last fall between opposing gangs. It was after the mall had closed.
The threat keeps Murfreesboro Police Detective James Abbott up at night.
"It worries me. What happens when a mother and two kids are in a Kroger parking lot and two of these groups see each other?" Abbott said. "They don't think, and they don't care. They just start shooting."
Police fight back
Some counties and towns have formed gang units to combat the new threat.
In Williamson County, police, city and school officials sprung into action after the violent death in 2008 of 16-year-old Centennial High School student and gang member Juan Castro.
Franklin police started weekend anti-gang patrols in which 28 officers flood the streets to conduct traffic stops, gather intelligence on gang members or associates and make arrests.
The city enacted a tougher ordinance to address a spike in graffiti, fining vandals for property damage and, if they are minors, holding their parents liable. Property owners also are required to remove graffiti from their property.
Centennial High School began a dress code that prohibits denim, cargo pants or shorts, bandannas and athletic wear. The school also trained staff how to recognize gang activity.
The impact is difficult to gauge. Some think a school dress code does little because gangs find ways to get around the rules.
"A baseball cap with the letters 'C' and 'R,' you think it's for the Colorado Rockies," said Tommy Vallejos, a former gang member and now a Clarksville pastor. "It stands for Crips Rule. It's the same with other colors and jerseys. They make it into their own."
Graffiti has lessened from when Consuelo Zaragoza opened Mi Pueblito on Liberty Pike three years ago, she said. She used to notice it more often on the gas station next door.
But the fear - and in Zaragoza's family - the grief is still there. Her 24-year-old niece Patricia Garcia, was in the car with the Centennial High School student and also was killed.
"You try to be careful, but fear does exist," she said. "We were robbed (at the store) and I don't think they were gang members. You have more fear after that - gangs or not."
Neighbor wants relief now
Strides are being made. In October, a federal grand jury issued a 64-count indictment against nine Vice Lord gang members, including Battle, who had arranged the O'Charley's meeting. And the growth of the Chicago-based Vice Lords in Tennessee will be the subject of a new report by the TBI for law enforcement agencies.
Relief can't come soon enough for Tiffany Armato.
She lives on Rural Hill Road in Antioch, a couple of houses from the Rice Road intersection. From her window, she can see a small farm that still has cows. But any sense of rural tranquility has long been lost.
Gang activity feels like it's gotten worse in the four years since she and her husband moved to the area. She used to work nearby at Hickory Hollow Mall and saw a gang fight. She sees the tagging and the young people dressed like gang members walking her street, and hears the loud, thumping music from cars driving by at night.
Someone tried to break in through the garage a few years ago. A decorative holiday bell is on her door year-round as a makeshift alarm system. During Christmas, presents are not placed under the tree early for fear they will attract thieves. And she no longer walks her Chihuahua through the neighborhood.
"Honestly, I don't want a bullet in my back," she said. "It's the worst road in America, to me."
It's not far from Armato's home that Brandon Harris spent his final moments.
Authorities believe he got in a car with the Vice Lords and rode about two miles from the O'Charley's to Rice Road near the intersection with Rural Hill Road.
Later that night, a passing motorist came upon Harris, the headlights striking the bullet-ridden body lying lifeless along the curb.
Brad Schrade can be reached at 615-259-8086 or bschrade@tennessean.com
The Gangs of Middle Tennessee, First of Three Parts
The Gangs of Middle Tennessee
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)
February 28, 2010 Sunday
HEADLINE: The Gangs of Middle Tennessee
First of Three Parts
Today: Suburbs
BYLINE:
STORY BY BRAD SCHRADE AND CHRIS ECHEGARAY * PHOTOS BY JOHN PARTIPILO
Brandon Simmons ran.
He ran past his neighbors' houses, past the grassy yards where he played as a little boy.
The 16-year-old football player at Whites Creek High School had dreams of sprinting down an NFL field someday, but on this night he was running for his life.
The bullets caught up with Brandon and sent him tumbling into a neighbor's bushes. He was dead.
"You lose your youngest son, you feel like your whole life has been taken away from you," said his mother, Kesha Simmons. "The killing has to stop. This gang stuff has to stop."
But it's not stopping. It's getting worse.
Overwhelmed police officers admit gangs have taken hold in all corners of Tennessee to sell drugs, steal and kill. What was once largely an urban crisis has spread to suburban and rural communities.
Middle Tennessee's gangs are no longer just graffiti-spraying juvenile delinquents.
They are armed and dangerous criminal enterprises that recruit young people with the allure of fast money, street status and a sense of belonging - even if the group they join may get them killed or sent to prison.
"People don't understand there are drive-by shootings going on in Murfreesboro," said Ed Yarbrough, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. "There are witness-elimination killings happening at (the) Hickory Hollow Mall (area). We've got this mindset that suburban areas don't have a gang problem, but we need to wake up to the fact that they do and drive them out."
As in Tennessee, gang activity has spiked nationwide.
Nearly 800,000 gang members and 27,000 gangs operate across the 50 states, a Justice Department survey shows. Some estimates have the figure at 2 million gang members.
While there are no statewide numbers, gangs are present in most of the state's 95 counties, including many communities in the Nashville area, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation report says. Police have identified 5,000 gang members in Davidson County. Murfreesboro estimates 400 to 500. Columbia has 200.
Gangs call themselves the Bloods, Gangster Disciples, Sur-13, Kurdish Pride and dozens of other names. Some are chapters of national brands. They recruit in schools and in parks. Girls are joining at increasing rates, and affiliation among whites is on the rise - shattering stereotypes that gangs attract only minorities and boys.
The percentage of Middle Tennessee's crimes caused by gangs is unknown; police don't track it consistently. But authorities say they see enough new activity to know it's on the rise.
"(Gangs) are at a crucial point evolving into increasingly organized hierarchies with educated leaders," TBI Director Mark Gwyn writes in the TBI report. "The amount of crime that stems from gangs, especially drug sales, is significant."
A gang meeting
In a smoke-filled apartment in Jackson, 10 gang members gathered for a meeting. A painting of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall above the leader. He called himself Crazy Joker and said he oversees the Sur-13 gang in Tennessee. Sur-13 is one of the nation's fastest-growing gangs and pledges allegiance to the Mexican Mafia, a Mexican-American criminal organization.
"We're in it to make money," said Crazy Joker, whose real name is Renaldo Garcia.
But on this night the gang met to talk about punishing one of its own.
A rival gang in Williamson County took a shot at a Sur-13 member during a drive-by shooting near the Cool Springs exit on Interstate 65. No one was injured. But a Sur-13 member violated gang rules by not coming to the aid of the fellow member. At stake was a possible beating - between 13 seconds and a minute long - for the errant gangster. The length of the beating depends upon the violation.
"We're here to talk about violations," Garcia said. "We're going to decide what happens to some of our vatos (men) who didn't help a homey."
Members listened and debated, handguns poking from their pants as they drank beer out of cans.
At one point, a gang member who had just been released from jail said he wanted to talk about how the gang could make some money. But Garcia kept the conversation focused and said it was important to follow the meeting agenda.
No decision was made about the punishment, no names were discussed and the meeting ended.
Garcia said he was initiated into gangs in middle school in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and stayed with them after moving to Tennessee with relatives during his late teens.
He's a careful person. Cell phone conversations are brief, and he makes sure he is never followed. "I don't even trust my shadow because when it gets dark, my shadow leaves me," he said.
Now 34, he says he calls the shots for his gang from Nashville to Memphis. Garcia's reach extends into Davidson, Robertson, Rutherford and Williamson counties, illustrating how gangs are difficult for police to contain.
"We're treading water," said Jackson gang unit Sgt. Christopher Wiser. "It's upsetting."
Other police departments wage similar wars, often partnering across jurisdictional lines.
In Wilson County, the sheriff's office teamed with Lebanon Police to form a gang response unit after a rash of gang shootings. Some of their best information comes from schoolkids who give tips about their classmates.
The sheriff was shocked to find high school students on Internet sites projecting a double lifestyle.
"When you start seeing students on MySpace with piles of money and automatic weapons and they are students in the schools, you're going, 'Wow. I thought he played football,' " Wilson County Sheriff Terry Ashe said.
"It's been an education for me," said Ashe, a 38-year lawman. "I thought I'd seen about everything."
Too often, gangs sweep up innocent victims in their violence.
Margaret Dixon lost her husband when the Vice Lords shot their house in Murfreesboro, targeting them because of their grandson. Moss Dixon, 66, was watching TV when he was hit. It was part of a three-month rampage in late 2007, set off after one of their leaders was killed. Kidnappings, murders and a raft of other serious crimes stained the landscape from Murfreesboro to Nashville.
The violence was so widespread that federal authorities helped local police end it. Nine Vice Lords members were indicted on 64 criminal counts.
"It could happen tomorrow again," said Detective James Abbott, Murfreesboro's chief gang detective. "You never know what's going to be that spark."
'It's business'
The economic boom of the 1990s triggered the expansion of gangs in Middle Tennessee. Families from large cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, moved here to work, and some of them brought along their troubled youth.
Michael Jordan was one of those transplants.
As a teenager, he had learned the drug business from the Gangster Disciples in Michigan, but came to Nashville wanting out of it. The Middle Tennessee drug market proved too tempting.
"A gram of cocaine in Detroit was $700," he said. "Here, it was $1,200."
Jordan paid truck drivers to shuttle cocaine to market, using the easy access of Tennessee's interstates. Some weeks, he said, he earned a heady $30,000 to $50,000. Now an associate pastor at a Baptist church, he was once near the top of the ladder in the gang organization.
Low-level gang members barely make pocket change, said Carter Smith, a gang expert and assistant professor in the criminal justice department at Middle Tennessee State University.
Compare the structure of a gang to a fast-food restaurant. The local manager doesn't make much, but the guy who owns three or four McDonald's can do pretty well.
"The bottom line is it's business," Smith said. "It's just a matter of what risk you're willing to take."
The risk takers came to Tennessee and stayed.
Jordan eventually went to prison for killing someone. After he got out, he started a speaking crusade against gangs. But the 36-year-old still understands why young people join.
"People are naturally born wanting to be a part of something," he said.
'Taken away'
Brandon Simmons' decision to be part of something stole him from the people who loved him. Since he was shot dead in his neighbor's bushes last spring, his mother, Kesha Simmons, has had to accept the fact that her son was mixed up in gangs. His killer is still on the loose.
"We had talked about gangs," Simmons said. "Brandon knew that was not part of me."
Yet, the Metro police gang unit had him listed in its database of known gang members or affiliates in the county. Police believe he may have been killed in retaliation for an armed robbery committed with his older cousin, Ernest Eugene Smith, a known gang member.
Months later, Smith was fatally shot outside his own home. Kesha Simmons knew the 20-year-old Smith was a gang member, but it was hard to keep Brandon from hanging around him.
Jesus Hernandez's parents knew something was wrong but could not save their son.
The younger Hernandez, now 19, slowly drifted away from church and would rarely sleep at home, said
Rosalba Hernandez, his mother.
"He just started to slip and we tried," she said. "We lost him, and he took the wrong path."
He was known as a hood hopper, a youngster bouncing from gang to gang. The phenomenon is somewhat common in Tennessee gangs, less so in larger cities where gang affiliations are as permanent as the tattoos that mark allegiances.
Hernandez settled with Mexicans Causing Panic, an ally of Sur-13. At a July Fourth party, Hernandez killed a rival gang member and wounded his girlfriend.
A judge sentenced Hernandez to 10 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in three years.
Passing through prison
Prison officials say 12 percent of inmates are confirmed gang members. If a young offender doesn't enter prison as a gang member, he may walk out as one. Prisons are insidious recruiting grounds.
"I wish I could say we could control it or stop it," former Correction Commissioner George Little said in an interview before leaving the post in December. "We manage it."
Cell phones also have made it easier for gangs to direct crime from behind bars. And there's always the mail.
Just last year, Jamal Shakir, a notorious gang leader awaiting sentencing in Davidson County jail, managed to plot a helicopter escape and discuss with other gang members plans to have three people murdered, all while behind bars.
His escape was foiled, and at least one letter directing crimes was intercepted by jail employees.
Unless Shakir's life sentence is overturned, he will never be released, but that's not the case for others, police said.
Gang members can be back on the street within a few years after committing serious crimes.
Police blame weak sentencing laws in Tennessee that allow offenders to be eligible for parole after serving only 30 percent of their time. Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas says most crime victims are targets of repeat offenders.
To curb that, the department has been routing many gang and felony gun possession cases to the federal system, where parole is not allowed.
When they do get out, Clemmie Greenlee will be there, doing what she can to keep them from going back to jail. The former drug addict, prostitute and gang member brings together young people in gangs to talk about their issues in weekly outreach meetings in East Nashville.
Her son, Roderiquez, 29, was a drug-dealing gang member who was gunned down on a Nashville street corner in 2003.
When she visits his grave in Greenwood Cemetery, the surrounding headstones bear witness to the other young people taken by a violent culture.
"There are no more graveyards full of grandmothers and granddaddies and great-grandmothers," Greenlee said. "These are graveyards full of babies now."
KEY FINDINGS
Gangs have gained a foothold in suburbs and rural communities, drawn there by a chance to expand their drug markets.
· Residents are increasingly rattled by violence between rival gangs.
· New gang crime has prompted smaller police departments to start gang units.
The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)
February 28, 2010 Sunday
HEADLINE: The Gangs of Middle Tennessee
First of Three Parts
Today: Suburbs
BYLINE:
STORY BY BRAD SCHRADE AND CHRIS ECHEGARAY * PHOTOS BY JOHN PARTIPILO
Brandon Simmons ran.
He ran past his neighbors' houses, past the grassy yards where he played as a little boy.
The 16-year-old football player at Whites Creek High School had dreams of sprinting down an NFL field someday, but on this night he was running for his life.
The bullets caught up with Brandon and sent him tumbling into a neighbor's bushes. He was dead.
"You lose your youngest son, you feel like your whole life has been taken away from you," said his mother, Kesha Simmons. "The killing has to stop. This gang stuff has to stop."
But it's not stopping. It's getting worse.
Overwhelmed police officers admit gangs have taken hold in all corners of Tennessee to sell drugs, steal and kill. What was once largely an urban crisis has spread to suburban and rural communities.
Middle Tennessee's gangs are no longer just graffiti-spraying juvenile delinquents.
They are armed and dangerous criminal enterprises that recruit young people with the allure of fast money, street status and a sense of belonging - even if the group they join may get them killed or sent to prison.
"People don't understand there are drive-by shootings going on in Murfreesboro," said Ed Yarbrough, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. "There are witness-elimination killings happening at (the) Hickory Hollow Mall (area). We've got this mindset that suburban areas don't have a gang problem, but we need to wake up to the fact that they do and drive them out."
As in Tennessee, gang activity has spiked nationwide.
Nearly 800,000 gang members and 27,000 gangs operate across the 50 states, a Justice Department survey shows. Some estimates have the figure at 2 million gang members.
While there are no statewide numbers, gangs are present in most of the state's 95 counties, including many communities in the Nashville area, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation report says. Police have identified 5,000 gang members in Davidson County. Murfreesboro estimates 400 to 500. Columbia has 200.
Gangs call themselves the Bloods, Gangster Disciples, Sur-13, Kurdish Pride and dozens of other names. Some are chapters of national brands. They recruit in schools and in parks. Girls are joining at increasing rates, and affiliation among whites is on the rise - shattering stereotypes that gangs attract only minorities and boys.
The percentage of Middle Tennessee's crimes caused by gangs is unknown; police don't track it consistently. But authorities say they see enough new activity to know it's on the rise.
"(Gangs) are at a crucial point evolving into increasingly organized hierarchies with educated leaders," TBI Director Mark Gwyn writes in the TBI report. "The amount of crime that stems from gangs, especially drug sales, is significant."
A gang meeting
In a smoke-filled apartment in Jackson, 10 gang members gathered for a meeting. A painting of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall above the leader. He called himself Crazy Joker and said he oversees the Sur-13 gang in Tennessee. Sur-13 is one of the nation's fastest-growing gangs and pledges allegiance to the Mexican Mafia, a Mexican-American criminal organization.
"We're in it to make money," said Crazy Joker, whose real name is Renaldo Garcia.
But on this night the gang met to talk about punishing one of its own.
A rival gang in Williamson County took a shot at a Sur-13 member during a drive-by shooting near the Cool Springs exit on Interstate 65. No one was injured. But a Sur-13 member violated gang rules by not coming to the aid of the fellow member. At stake was a possible beating - between 13 seconds and a minute long - for the errant gangster. The length of the beating depends upon the violation.
"We're here to talk about violations," Garcia said. "We're going to decide what happens to some of our vatos (men) who didn't help a homey."
Members listened and debated, handguns poking from their pants as they drank beer out of cans.
At one point, a gang member who had just been released from jail said he wanted to talk about how the gang could make some money. But Garcia kept the conversation focused and said it was important to follow the meeting agenda.
No decision was made about the punishment, no names were discussed and the meeting ended.
Garcia said he was initiated into gangs in middle school in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and stayed with them after moving to Tennessee with relatives during his late teens.
He's a careful person. Cell phone conversations are brief, and he makes sure he is never followed. "I don't even trust my shadow because when it gets dark, my shadow leaves me," he said.
Now 34, he says he calls the shots for his gang from Nashville to Memphis. Garcia's reach extends into Davidson, Robertson, Rutherford and Williamson counties, illustrating how gangs are difficult for police to contain.
"We're treading water," said Jackson gang unit Sgt. Christopher Wiser. "It's upsetting."
Other police departments wage similar wars, often partnering across jurisdictional lines.
In Wilson County, the sheriff's office teamed with Lebanon Police to form a gang response unit after a rash of gang shootings. Some of their best information comes from schoolkids who give tips about their classmates.
The sheriff was shocked to find high school students on Internet sites projecting a double lifestyle.
"When you start seeing students on MySpace with piles of money and automatic weapons and they are students in the schools, you're going, 'Wow. I thought he played football,' " Wilson County Sheriff Terry Ashe said.
"It's been an education for me," said Ashe, a 38-year lawman. "I thought I'd seen about everything."
Too often, gangs sweep up innocent victims in their violence.
Margaret Dixon lost her husband when the Vice Lords shot their house in Murfreesboro, targeting them because of their grandson. Moss Dixon, 66, was watching TV when he was hit. It was part of a three-month rampage in late 2007, set off after one of their leaders was killed. Kidnappings, murders and a raft of other serious crimes stained the landscape from Murfreesboro to Nashville.
The violence was so widespread that federal authorities helped local police end it. Nine Vice Lords members were indicted on 64 criminal counts.
"It could happen tomorrow again," said Detective James Abbott, Murfreesboro's chief gang detective. "You never know what's going to be that spark."
'It's business'
The economic boom of the 1990s triggered the expansion of gangs in Middle Tennessee. Families from large cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, moved here to work, and some of them brought along their troubled youth.
Michael Jordan was one of those transplants.
As a teenager, he had learned the drug business from the Gangster Disciples in Michigan, but came to Nashville wanting out of it. The Middle Tennessee drug market proved too tempting.
"A gram of cocaine in Detroit was $700," he said. "Here, it was $1,200."
Jordan paid truck drivers to shuttle cocaine to market, using the easy access of Tennessee's interstates. Some weeks, he said, he earned a heady $30,000 to $50,000. Now an associate pastor at a Baptist church, he was once near the top of the ladder in the gang organization.
Low-level gang members barely make pocket change, said Carter Smith, a gang expert and assistant professor in the criminal justice department at Middle Tennessee State University.
Compare the structure of a gang to a fast-food restaurant. The local manager doesn't make much, but the guy who owns three or four McDonald's can do pretty well.
"The bottom line is it's business," Smith said. "It's just a matter of what risk you're willing to take."
The risk takers came to Tennessee and stayed.
Jordan eventually went to prison for killing someone. After he got out, he started a speaking crusade against gangs. But the 36-year-old still understands why young people join.
"People are naturally born wanting to be a part of something," he said.
'Taken away'
Brandon Simmons' decision to be part of something stole him from the people who loved him. Since he was shot dead in his neighbor's bushes last spring, his mother, Kesha Simmons, has had to accept the fact that her son was mixed up in gangs. His killer is still on the loose.
"We had talked about gangs," Simmons said. "Brandon knew that was not part of me."
Yet, the Metro police gang unit had him listed in its database of known gang members or affiliates in the county. Police believe he may have been killed in retaliation for an armed robbery committed with his older cousin, Ernest Eugene Smith, a known gang member.
Months later, Smith was fatally shot outside his own home. Kesha Simmons knew the 20-year-old Smith was a gang member, but it was hard to keep Brandon from hanging around him.
Jesus Hernandez's parents knew something was wrong but could not save their son.
The younger Hernandez, now 19, slowly drifted away from church and would rarely sleep at home, said
Rosalba Hernandez, his mother.
"He just started to slip and we tried," she said. "We lost him, and he took the wrong path."
He was known as a hood hopper, a youngster bouncing from gang to gang. The phenomenon is somewhat common in Tennessee gangs, less so in larger cities where gang affiliations are as permanent as the tattoos that mark allegiances.
Hernandez settled with Mexicans Causing Panic, an ally of Sur-13. At a July Fourth party, Hernandez killed a rival gang member and wounded his girlfriend.
A judge sentenced Hernandez to 10 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in three years.
Passing through prison
Prison officials say 12 percent of inmates are confirmed gang members. If a young offender doesn't enter prison as a gang member, he may walk out as one. Prisons are insidious recruiting grounds.
"I wish I could say we could control it or stop it," former Correction Commissioner George Little said in an interview before leaving the post in December. "We manage it."
Cell phones also have made it easier for gangs to direct crime from behind bars. And there's always the mail.
Just last year, Jamal Shakir, a notorious gang leader awaiting sentencing in Davidson County jail, managed to plot a helicopter escape and discuss with other gang members plans to have three people murdered, all while behind bars.
His escape was foiled, and at least one letter directing crimes was intercepted by jail employees.
Unless Shakir's life sentence is overturned, he will never be released, but that's not the case for others, police said.
Gang members can be back on the street within a few years after committing serious crimes.
Police blame weak sentencing laws in Tennessee that allow offenders to be eligible for parole after serving only 30 percent of their time. Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas says most crime victims are targets of repeat offenders.
To curb that, the department has been routing many gang and felony gun possession cases to the federal system, where parole is not allowed.
When they do get out, Clemmie Greenlee will be there, doing what she can to keep them from going back to jail. The former drug addict, prostitute and gang member brings together young people in gangs to talk about their issues in weekly outreach meetings in East Nashville.
Her son, Roderiquez, 29, was a drug-dealing gang member who was gunned down on a Nashville street corner in 2003.
When she visits his grave in Greenwood Cemetery, the surrounding headstones bear witness to the other young people taken by a violent culture.
"There are no more graveyards full of grandmothers and granddaddies and great-grandmothers," Greenlee said. "These are graveyards full of babies now."
KEY FINDINGS
Gangs have gained a foothold in suburbs and rural communities, drawn there by a chance to expand their drug markets.
· Residents are increasingly rattled by violence between rival gangs.
· New gang crime has prompted smaller police departments to start gang units.
Daytime shootout in congested area shows gangs' audacity
The Tennessean
LENGTH: 894 words
By Brad Schrade and Anne Paine
THE TENNESSEAN
A lunch-hour shootout between rival gang members and a police officer Tuesday near Swett's Restaurant left two men wounded, sent bystanders ducking for cover and served as a violent reminder of Middle Tennessee's growing gang problem.
The incident in a popular commercial district at Clifton Avenue and 28th Avenue in North Nashville sent stray bullets flying. One hit a storefront window of a beauty supply shop. A wounded gang member ran into a nail salon carrying a gun, before employees shooed him away.
"They don't care where they are or who's around when they attempt to carry out an act of violence," said Metro police spokesman Don Aaron. "They are not looking for a desolate street or an open field with no one around. The fact this was a congested major North Nashville intersection with a variety of businesses meant nothing."
Metro police gang unit officers received a tip earlier Tuesday that a gang retaliation hit was scheduled for the commercial area. Detective Gerry Hyder drove his unmarked pickup truck into the intersection as gunshots were fired.
Bloods gang member Aaron Gooch was shooting Gangster Disciples affiliate Kenneth Ellis in the parking lot of a small commercial center catty-corner to Swett's, police say.
Hyder stopped his truck in the middle of Clifton, got out wearing a vest marked "police" in bold letters and confronted Gooch. "Police, get on the ground," Hyder yelled, according to Aaron.
When Gooch refused, Hyder opened fire. Gooch was hit in the hip area and fell. Hyder, a nine-year police veteran, went to administer first aid.
While Hyder was focused on Gooch, the wounded Ellis made his way across the street into a nail salon. Witnesses there said Ellis, who was armed with a gun, went out the back door and collapsed in a nearby field.
Both gang members were taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Gooch, 20, was listed Tuesday night in critical but stable condition, and Ellis, 23, was in stable condition, Aaron said. Police intend to charge Gooch with attempted murder.
Both men had previous criminal records.
Ellis was sentenced for an aggravated robbery conviction in 2007, but he was paroled in January 2009, state records show. Gooch has a series of felony and misdemeanor arrests dating to 2008, but no felony convictions.
Homicide 'prevented'
Aaron said police knew the incident was planned to retaliate for some prior gang dispute and arrived to stop it.
"The bottom line is it was going to be a gang hit and Detective Hyder prevented it, and literally prevented a homicide," Aaron said.
He said they believe more than two people were involved. Officers stopped a vehicle nearby around the time of the shooting and recovered a gun, but don't know if those in the car were linked to the crime.
David Swett, whose parents started the restaurant in 1954, was across the street in his gas station store, Swett's Market, when he heard the gunfire.
"I hit the floor," Swett said. "It was a lot of shots."
The incident occurred at 12:20 p.m. at an intersection where many in Nashville come in business suits during the week or their Sunday best on weekends to eat ribs, home-style vegetables and pie at the family restaurant. The crime scene tape and commotion nearby decimated the lunch business.
Swett has built up the area over many years and owns three of the four corners, where he has spruced up or built several well-kept storefronts.
Before the shooting, Ellis had been in Hang Time, an athletic clothing store, in Swett's Plaza strip mall. The nail salon and beauty supply store are also in the plaza, as well as an H&R Block tax service and a Chinese restaurant.
Swett bemoaned the violent decisions of the young.
"The method of solving their problems is through gunfire, which is unfortunate and it's a shame," he said.
"All us older folks have shed tears because that's the only way they know to do it."
He doesn't own the corner where the gang members met in front of A Squeeky Clean Coin Laundromat, flanked by Pop's Bar-B-Q and Givens convenience store. That side was roped off with yellow police tape for much of Tuesday afternoon.
Resident action urged
Community gang activ ist Clemmie Greenlee stood nearby glowering over the scene. She arrived with a sheaf of postcard-size Galaxy Star Drug Awareness cards, calling on people to be peacemakers.
"This is so ugly," Greenlee said. "Something like this makes me want to bring 200 or 300 people into the street instead of everybody going back home and saying 'Oh, did you see the news,' and not doing a damn thing."
Minard Abernathy, a deacon at nearby New Victory Primitive Baptist Church, navigated his wheelchair through the intersection, with police evidence markers nearby on the pavement to mark shell casings and other evidence.
City leaders have their priorities all wrong, he said, sinking money into an expensive new convention center while community facilities geared toward young people lose resources.
He said also community members need to take control of their streets, rather than letting gang members do so. He included parents, deacons and church members in that criticism.
"We set up in church on Sunday and we'll say something about this," he said. "We're not out here. But the gangs are out here."
Brad Schrade can be reached at bschrade@tennessean.com or 615-259-8086. Anne Paine can be reached at apaine@tennessean.com or 615-259-8071.
Police launch new effort against gangs
April 8, 2010 Thursday
LENGTH: 938 words
By Brad Schrade
THE TENNESSEAN
The weeks have piled into months since Loren Johnson's mother held her youngest child and watched her die, shot in the chest by a gang member's errant bullet that pierced their North Nashville home.
But little in the community has changed. Gunfire still disrupts the night. Teenage gang bangers drive up and down their street. Sometimes when the shooting starts, Inez Johnson sleeps alone on the floor.
"She's healing, slowly," said Inez's niece Semika Nelson, who moved nearby to help the family cope with 16-year-old Loren's death last April 25. "It's a slow process. I don't think she'll ever get over it. With the violence in the neighborhood it makes it very hard for her to heal."
The Johnsons' Chesapeake subdivision off Brick Church Pike served as a backdrop Wednesday for Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas to unveil a renewed effort to combat Nashville's gang problem - including using recent civil injunction laws to disrupt gangs.
The announcement comes just a week after a gang shootout at a crowded North Nashville commercial district near Swett's restaurant during the lunch hour, followed the next day by a gang shooting in South Nashville.
It also follows a Tennessean series published a month ago that detailed a growing gang problem across Middle Tennessee, even in suburban communities and small towns.
The shift in strategy seems to be recognition by Metro Police that more needs to be done to combat gangs, but Serpas said the department's efforts the past three or four years have been a success. He simply said "different events" this year "have shown me we need to reassess."
"It's time to make sure you're doing all the right things," Serpas said. "I'm sure an offensive lineup changes its playbook every now and then. What we wanted to do is take a good hard look over this last week backward."
Starting May 1, the department will add six detectives and a sergeant to its gang unit, which currently has 14 officers. The new team will use civil injunction laws adopted last year.
The law allows police to sue criminal gang members in civil court and seek injunctions to prevent them from engaging in gang activity. If gang members persist, they can be put in jail for contempt of court, Serpas said. Similar efforts have been successful in California, Minnesota and Texas, he said.
"Under these injunctions they will be prohibited from being in certain neighborhoods," Serpas said. "They will be prohibited from wearing certain clothes and so forth."
Civil injunctions are an old strategy used for years, according to defense attorney David Raybin. Nuisance laws have been used to shut down gambling houses, drug house and good-time houses - places with obvious illegality. Using them for gangs could prove challenging, he said.
"They may all be criminals, but simply because they hang out together may not be evidence that they are a gang," Raybin said. "That's always been the problem with these gang statutes."
Engage in dialogue
Another new strategy will be drop-by visits to gang leaders at their homes. Metro gang officers and SWAT team members will engage them in dialogue and discuss alternatives to their gang activity.
"That's an important way for us to be visible in their neighborhoods," Serpas said. "It's an important idea to be able to talk to people at that level. Citizens love it. Let's see if the gang members like it."
The department has lowered the number of known gang members in Davidson County. Earlier this year, the department said Davidson County had 5,000 gang members or affiliates who were in the agency's gang database. At Wednesday's press conference, gang unit Sgt. Gary Kemper said that number is now 2,500 to 3,000.
He said the department had purged the list recently to account for gang members in prison or members who haven't shown activity in three years.
"That 5,000 number we actually went through and found the ones who are actually active so we can get a better focus on who we're going to target," Kemper said.
Police rotations planned
The department will also begin rotating patrol sergeants into the gang unit weekly to train them on gang tactics and intelligence.
Police spokes-man Don Aaron said last week was a tipping point for the department in its gang efforts.
"I think the brazenness of the 28th and Clifton incident had caught everyone's attention," Aaron said.
The gang unit started in 2004 with seven officers. It was doubled in size two and a half years later, and the department started Operation Safer Streets to target gangs. The gang unit plus uniformed officers target certain areas mainly on weekends to police gangs and look for criminals.
And inevitably the criminals adapt. Officers have found gangs lying low and waiting for police to move from their area. Part of the new gang strategy will be to mix up the Safer Streets hours and methods.
"As they change some of what they do we're going to change accordingly," Aaron said. "It's a chess game. At times we have them on the ropes. At times they try to figure out how to overcome the police enforcement efforts."
Loren Johnson's family watched from their front porch as Serpas made the announcement, flanked by more than a dozen of officers. Loren's sister Maria spoke later about her sister's dream of being a writer and the ongoing violence in the neighborhood. The family was waiting for an ADT alarm installation representative to arrive in the afternoon, hoping it would bring some sense of security to her mother.
"She does not feel safe at all," she said. "That's not how I want her to feel. She feels like a prisoner in her own home."
Reach Brad Schrade at 615-259-8086 or bschrade@tennessean.com
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