EVERETT — Their sweatshirt hoods were pulled low over their foreheads and obscured their faces.
They lost their swagger and hurried across the street when they saw the black Chevy Tahoe slow down.
Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Beau Beckner didn’t need much more than a glance at the kids’ faces. He rapidly listed their names and suspected gang affiliations.
Beckner arrested the duo a month ago for trespassing at an apartment building across from Mariner High School. One is a confirmed gang member. The other kid is on the fringes. Both of them hang out with a teen who was wounded by gang gunfire in June in south Everett.
Beckner, the school resource officer at Mariner, is part of the sheriff’s Gang Enforcement Team. He and seven others have been working the streets since June to crack down on gang activity and gather more information about gang members in the county.
A Mountlake Terrace officer also is working with the team and an Everett officer is expected to join the temporary unit this week.
“We’re making it a priority. If we don’t deal with it now, we’ll have to deal with it later,” Sheriff John Lovick said. “We don’t want to wait until there is a crisis.”
Just last week his deputies were slapping handcuffs on a known gangster from Portland, Ore., whom they tracked to an Everett motel. He was wanted on a $2 million arrest warrant for home-invasion robberies.
The gang unit spent last summer collecting information. They documented gang members in every part of the county. They identified about 250 gang members and about 200 associates linked to 20 different gangs.
The team sought out gang members to learn more about who is connected, who is feuding and where to look for gang activity.
This summer, they are turning up the pressure.
They patrol hot spots on Casino Road and 128th Street SW, just outside the city limits. They stop to talk with kids wearing bright red at a park where gang activity is common. They cruise through apartment complexes, looking for the cars driven by gang members.
They rush to large fights in Sultan and take calls from Marysville parents who are worried about the graffiti in their neighborhood.
“We want them to get out of the gang or we’ll get them out of our county,” sheriff’s Sgt. Craig White said. “We have zero tolerance.”
The enforcement team likely will disband in September when the school resource officers will return to schools. The sheriff’s office, however, has applied for a $300,000 grant to pay for two full-time detectives to combat gangs in Snohomish County. Lovick said he’d eventually like to see a regional unit.
Gang membership has been rising steadily in Snohomish County. Suburbs across the nation have seen similar spikes. Gang members are moving to areas where they expect less pressure from police, as well as fertile markets to sell drugs and commit other crimes.
Gang graffiti is peppered on fences, playground equipment and businesses around the county. The gangs also are bringing violence. There have been gang-related murders, drive-by shootings, beatings and robberies. Gang members are living here and some are coming here from Seattle, Tacoma and other states to commit crimes.
The gang enforcement team was on patrol Thursday when detectives from Oregon contacted them about a fugitive believed to be in Everett. The man is a confirmed member of the Black Gangster Disciples, White said.
The Oregon man was wanted on a $2 million arrest warrant and suspected of stealing more than a dozen guns in home-invasion robberies in the Portland area.
Sheriff’s deputies caught up with the man and two other confirmed gang members at a motel on Evergreen Way in Everett. The suspect had a wad of money in his pocket. Deputies expect to search the man’s Crown Victoria today. Police hope the stolen guns are in the car, not in the hands of criminals in Snohomish County.
“We might never have come across these guys if Portland didn’t tell us they were looking for them,” sheriff’s Lt. John Flood said. “It just goes to show they’re here in our community. They’re not necessarily standing up and announcing it, but they’re here.”
In the past, gang members were more obvious, unafraid to wear the clothes or flash hand signs. Gang members are less conspicuous now. There may be an L.A. baseball cap displayed in the back window of a car or a red bandana draped over the dashboard.
That means the gang enforcement team has to spend more time pounding the pavement, asking questions and talking to people to learn who is who in the gang world, Beckner said.
White and Beckner, patrolling south Everett recently, spotted two kids wearing hooded sweatshirts and walking along 112th Street SW. The deputies know the teens are associated with a gang.
The kids didn’t seemed surprised to see the deputies. They moved through the drill with little protest.
The deputies patted them down for weapons and then asked the kids where they were walking in the rain.
They worked in some questions about some other gang members the boys know. The kids, looking for their own information, asked questions about some of the suspects in a June 11 drive-by shooting in south Everett. They hang out with the victim.
Prosecutors say the Everett teen was shot by a member of MS-13, a violent street gang. The drive-by shooting likely was in retaliation for gunfire that struck a rival gang member outside a Seattle mall in February.
Police arrested two Seattle-area teens and a north Everett woman suspected of being in the car. Prosecutors believe a fellow gang member from California fired the gun. Police say the Everett woman was an active recruiter for MS-13 and communicated with a “shot caller” for the gang who is incarcerated in state penitentiary in Walla Walla.
The two teens with White and Beckner wanted to know if she was still in jail. Maybe they were worried. Maybe not.
If she was out, she’d be shot by now, one told Beckner.
One boy denied being in a gang. The other shook his head and hardened his stare, daring to be asked again. Minutes later he raised his sleeve to reveal scarred flesh, the beginning of a tattoo to honor the gang.
Some of these teenagers come from middle-class families. They are lured in by the “thug” lifestyle, Flood said. Many just want to belong to a “family” or see it as necessary to protect themselves.
Police believe the teens need more structure, a safe place to go in the evenings and weekends.
“It’d sure help. It’d be better than them standing on a street corner, waiting to get shot or be in a fight,” White said.
The gang problem can’t be solved by law enforcement alone, Lovick said. The community, parents, schools, churches and neighbors need to reach out to young people, he said.
“We can never give up on these kids,” Lovick said.
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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